Marketplace Today Blog

By Don Walker
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Time Warner Cable and the Big Ten Network, a year-old network featuring Big Ten sports, announced Monday that they had reached an agreement-in-principle on a carriage agreement for high definition and video-on-demand programming.

The deal, reached after extensive negotiations over the weekend, means that Time Warner Cable customers in Big Ten states, including Wisconsin, will be able to watch Saturday’s Big Ten football season openers as well as all future Big Ten Network programming on expanded basic cable. Expanded basic cable is a step above the minimal cable television service.

In a short statement, Time Warner said, “Time Warner Cable and all parties worked through the weekend to complete this agreement in principle. Our company worked diligently to ensure a deal that was in the best interest of our customers.”

Spokesmen for Time Warner and the Big Ten Network would not comment beyond the initial announcement.

In Northeast Wisconsin, the network will be on channel 72.

More details on the agreement are expected to be released today.

The agreement came only days before the start of the Big Ten football season. The Big Ten Network has the broadcast rights to this Saturday’s game between the University of Wisconsin and the University of Akron at Camp Randall.

If not for the agreement-in-principle, the game would not have been made available to Time Warner customers.

As recently as Friday, Mark Silverman, the president of the Big Ten Network, said he was pessimistic that a deal could be reached in time for the start of the football season.

For months, the cable giant and the network differed on the merits of a channel devoted to Big Ten sports. The network argued that, particularly in the Big Ten states, there was a demand for Big Ten programming. Time Warner argued that such a channel belonged on a special sports tier, in which customers who wanted Big Ten athletic events to watch should have to pay extra to see them.

With Time Warner now in the Big Ten Network fold, that leaves Charter Communications, which has extensive cable operations in Wisconsin, including Madison, without a deal with the Big Ten Network.

A Charter Communications spokesman could not be reached for comment.

The network, which went on the air last August, has national agreements with Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network, AT&T U-Verse, Verizon FiOS and more than 230 smaller cable operators.

The network is currently available to an estimated 55 million households. The network says it is available in approximately 70% of all homes in the eight Big Ten states.

In June, Comcast, a major cable carrier with operations in Detroit and Chicago, reached agreement on a multi-year deal that called for Big Ten programming across television, broadband and video-on-demand.

Under the terms of the Comcast deal, Comcast said it would launch the network as part of its expanded basic level of service to promote it to its customers in states with Big Ten universities. In spring 2009, Comcast has the right to move the network to a broadly distributed level of service in most of its systems in those states.

The Comcast deal also called for digital customers in the Big Ten states to have access to live games and events in high definition, Big Ten programming via Comcast’s video-on-demand service, as well as other Big Ten shows.

Outside of the Big Ten area, Comcast has the option to provide Big Ten programming on any level of service, including special sports tiers, which cost customers extra per month.

The Big Ten Network is a joint venture of the Big Ten Conference and Fox Cable Networks. Fox controls 49 percent of the network.