Skip to main content

The America Channel To Broadcast Patriot League Sports

Thought I was was going to simply shout out a big "Happy Holidays", eh, or talk about the big basketball games yesterday? Although I will spend some time doing both - and I'll also give a thought to some interesting postings for the rest of the year - the first order of business involves a bit of news you may not have heard about.

Five days before Christmas, there was a press release from a fledgling network called the America Channel. It stated that they had entered a multi-year agreement to broadcast Patriot League sports starting in the 2007 season. Here are excerpts from the Patriot League press release:

The Patriot League has signed a multi-year deal with a new national-sports broadcaster, The America Channel, Patriot League Executive Director Carolyn Schlie Femovich announced Wednesday. The arrangement, which will begin with the 2007-08 academic year, will bring additional exposure to the Patriot League, specifically in the sports of football, women's basketball and women's volleyball.

"We are excited about the increased visibility that this partnership will generate for the Patriot League and its institutions," Schlie Femovich said. "In addition, The America Channel will provide the viewing audience with a real-life perspective on the students and student-athletes of the Patriot League and its mission toward balancing excellence in academics and athletics."

In addition to game coverage, The America Channel will also tell the Patriot League story from each of the campuses as part of its new SportsLife initiative. The America Channel along with the Patriot League and its constituents will create video content about the aspirations, achievements, challenges, adventures, community service and lifestyles of its scholar-athletes.


In addition to the Patriot League, the other leagues involved in this blockbuster deal are three other football conferences (the Colonial Athletic Association (formerly the A-10), the Big South, the SoCon, and Big Sky), and four non-football conferences (the Big West, America East and Atlantic Sun conferences). Now, I don't know about you, but this gets my mind turning. What does this mean to our existing TV contracts? What is the America Channel? Is there a way to get this channel on my broadcast station? What are they planning? Of course, by announcing this five days before Christmas it's a near-certainty that I won't get many answers to my questions, but I'll distill what I know so far.

What is the America Channel? It's a network who "was founded with a single idea: tell the ever-unfolding story of America through the eyes of real Americans." It's not really a sports network: it's a channel devoted to seeing what America is. Think John Ratzenberger's "Made in America" and Charles Kuralt's old "On the Road" for CBS This Morning, and you'll have an idea what type of programming they're going for.

So where do sports fit into this? Good question. The idea is that they have the broadcast rights to (for starters; it could be expanded) football, women's basketball, and women's volleyball. This is my biggest question for the folks at the America Channel, but I haven't gotten a response yet from their offices. But from the looks of it they're not really going to have a sports department (or a Saturday show called "Football Championship Series Today") - they're simply buying the rights to rebroadcast the games.

How does it affect any existing TV agreements, for example, Lehigh's broadcasts on Fox College Sports? The answer to this comes from the Patriot League office: it will not change at all. If you enjoy broadcasts on Fox College Sports or Lafayette Sports Network, you'll continue to be able to watch them there. So there's no real downside, to the league or the schools. It's simply another place to watch the broadcasts.

How can I get this network? The network hasn't been launched yet, but it is the spearhead of an aggressive trade association (the Association of Independent Programming Nets) that has been fighting to break into distribution with major cable packages. Called a "rebel rouser" by CableFax daily, they have been politically active in asking for things like "a la carte" channel selection (basically, allowing viewers to pick and choose the channels they want) and other such industry issues. They were set to launch in November 2006, but the launch date has been delayed to either summer 2007 or even November 2007. It has to be said: despite their leadership with industry veterans, it's unclear if the channel will be on your local cable system any time soon - if ever.

Is this good for the Patriot League? Absolutely yes. There is no downside. It is the status quo plus one more broadcast channel to potentially tell the story of the Patriot League. And anything to get Patriot League football in front of more eyes - especially with no reduction in coverage from anyone else - is great by me.

----------------------------------

Next week, I'll be resuming my talk about Lehigh men's basketball (who yet again came oh-so-close to upsetting a great team in Rutgers yesterday 76-71) and women's basketball (who, predictably, got drilled by NC State 66-34). And next week, with any sort of luck I'll be putting together my Lehigh Players of the Year and looking a bit ahead to our football needs for 2007.

But for now, I wish all my readers out there Happy Holidays, and see you next week!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How The Ivy League Is Able To Break the NCAA's Scholarship Limits and Still Consider Themselves FCS

By now you've seen the results.  In 2018, the Ivy League has taken the FCS by storm. Perhaps it was Penn's 30-10 defeat of Lehigh a couple of weeks ago .  Or maybe it was Princeton's 50-9 drubbing of another team that made the FCS Playoffs last year, Monmouth.  Or maybe it was Yale's shockingly dominant 35-14 win over nationally-ranked Maine last weekend. The Ivy League has gone an astounding 12-4 so far in out-of-conference play, many of those wins coming against the Patriot League. But it's not just against the Patriot League where the Ivy League has excelled.  Every Ivy League school has at least one out-of-conference victory, which is remarkable since it is only three games into their football season.  The four losses - Rhode Island over Harvard, Holy Cross over Yale, Delaware over Cornell, and Cal Poly over Brown - were either close losses that could have gone either way or expected blowouts of teams picked to be at the bottom of the Ivy League. W
40 comments
Read more

Made-Up Midseason Grades for Lehigh Football

 We are now officially midway through the 2023 Lehigh football season.  The Mountain Hawks sit at 1-5 overall, and 0-1 in the Patriot League. I thought I'd go ahead and make up some midseason grades, and set some "fan goals" for the second half. The 2023 Mountain Hawks were picked to finish fifth in the seven team Patriot League.  In order to meet or exceed that expectation, they'll probably have to go at least 3-2 the rest of the way in conference play.  Their remaining games are vs. Georgetown, at Bucknell, vs. Holy Cross, at Colgate, and vs. Lafayette in The Rivalry. Can they do it? Culture Changing: B+ .  I was there in the Bronx last week after the tough 38-35 defeat to Fordham, and there wasn't a single player emerging from the locker room that looked like they didn't care.  Every face was glum.  They didn't even seem sad.  More frustrated and angry. That may seem normal, considering the agonizing way the Mountain Hawks lost, but it was a marked chan
8 comments
Read more

Fifteen Guys Who Might be Lehigh's Next Football Coach (and Five More)

If you've been following my Twitter account, you might have caught some "possibilities" as Lehigh's next head football coach like Lou Holtz, Brett Favre and Bo Pelini .  The chance that any of those three guys actually are offered and accept the Lehigh head coaching position are somewhere between zero and zero.  (The full list of my Twitter "possibilities" are all on this thread on the Lehigh Sports Forum .) However the actual Lehigh head football coaching search is well underway, with real names and real possibilities. I've come up with a list of fifteen possible names, some which I've heard whispered as candidates, others which might be good fits at Lehigh for a variety of reasons. UPDATE: I have found five more names of possible head coaches that I am adding to this list below. Who are the twenty people?  Here they are, in alphabetical order.
55 comments
Read more