[NU Sports] TV and sports

[Joe Thiegs]

Yeah.

For example, did any of you know that there's this channel called C-SPAN?
Just the other day, I saw it in the digital guide.  From the name I assumed
that it must be another ESPN spinoff, so, naturally, I wanted to check it
out.  Let me save you some time:  don't bother.  All it was was a bunch of
guys and a few women standing up and taking turns talking in some huge room
with a lot of chairs.  Blah, blah, blah.  No highlight reels or anything.
They didn't even have instant replay.  Needless to say, I didn't stick with
that for long.

Because I'm an open-minded guy, though, I decided to give it another chance
later that night (thinking perhaps it was an infomercial or something when I
watched before).  I saw there was actually a C-SPAN2 (!) so I figured I'd
give "the Deuce" a look.  Even worse this time, it was a couple of people
sitting around talking about some book.  A BOOK!  If I want to hear about
books, I'll watch The Library Channel, thanks.

There was another channel right next to the C-SPANs on the guide called CNN.
Having never heard of it before, I was guessing maybe it stood for
"Celebrity News Now."  Boy, was I disappointed.  A lot of talk about the
stock market and the economy (something bad, I think), and then some video
of President Bush doing something and shaking someone's hand, and then about
a half hour of people talking about hurricanes.  At least I did see
something scrolling on the bottom of the screen about Lindsay Lohan--you
know, where the score updates are supposed to be.  (Side note--It sounded
like they had that guy from Field of Dreams doing one of their station ID
clips:  "This is CNN."  Weird.)  

Oh well.  Personally, I think it's good to stretch your boundaries every
once in a while, even if it ends up being boring.

What channel number is Comedy Central, again?  I think it was somewhere
between ESPNU and Spike TV . . . .

-Joe

-----Original Message-----
From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
Behalf Of Clark Zahn
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 12:08 AM
To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
Subject: Re: [NU Sports] TV and sports

Dennis W. Brandt wrote:
> Interesting stat on http://www.bigtennetwork.com/.  In football-mad 
> Columbus, Ohio, 39.4% of households watched Ohio State football games 
> during 2006.  Due to that popularity, Directv adds the Big Ten Network 
> to "basic" packages, and a an extended basic package is where, in all 
> likelihood, it will wind up once on cable.  Let's put it another way.  
> 61.6% of Columbus households don't give a hoot about Ohio State 
> football but still have to pay the increased cable or satellite bill.
> _______________________________________________
> nwu-sports site list
> nwu-sports at tssi.com
> http://romaine.tssi.com/mailman/listinfo/nwu-sports
>
There are lots of channels in the basic package that far less than 39% 
of the subscribers view.  You'd have to be a TV addict to watch even a 
majority of the channels.  In Big Ten country I would expect the BTN to 
be one of the higher rated channels.

Clark Zahn

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