Terrible News About the New Media Deal

TheWestie · March 15, 2016

8 hours ago, Aldo said:

While I agree that cable is the new landline, there is already this: http://www.conferenceusa.com/collegesportslive/ which has paid content, and I'd be curious to know if UNT is allowed to broadcast their own stuff away from this service.

http://www.meangreensports.com/collegesportslive/

VideoEagle · March 15, 2016

9 hours ago, TheWestie said:

http://www.meangreensports.com/collegesportslive/

In a word, yuk.

I tried to show my wife, who loves softball, the free "Spring Fling Highlights." On my iPad and my Android phone, I got the pre-roll ad with Jeff Gordon. Then the NT story loaded and I got a play button. Pushing the button, I got the ad again and the story loaded with the play button. This morning I tried it on my desktop and it worked, but being 1990s Flash, it doesn't go full screen, even when using a Chromecast to send it to my TV. I'm underwhelmed by CBS Interactive.

Aldo · March 15, 2016

12 hours ago, TheWestie said:

http://www.meangreensports.com/collegesportslive/

if I'm not mistaken, it's the same CBS interactive service, just the north texas portal.

Wonder if subscriptions get paid out toward the respective subscriber's university, or if it goes into a pool and gets distributed, or just goes straight to cusa.

Has anyone tried this service? @aztecskin, @Mean_Green09?

Edited March 15, 2016 by Aldo

untjim1995 · March 15, 2016

17 hours ago, Wag Tag said:

There is only one way non P5 will make money and that is thru attendance! Start winning and being exciting and I hope we can see 28k plus. This is another reason regional competition is important.

Attendance is a lot easier to have when you play local and regional teams. Plus, it controls costs. The MAC gets it. The MWC gets it. The three southern dummy G5 leagues are the only ones who don't get it, all because they want to have a higher place on the totem pole than to make/save more money.

I got really terrible news for our AAC brethren not named Cincy or UConn. You aren't going to ever play in a higher level of football unless you agree to go independent, like BYU, and become pseudo-P5. That doesn't have long-lasting power, unless you sell out every home game and have a network to distribute your games (see BYU). And even BYU would leave independence if the Big XII would call them to join the league.

NMSU-UTEP, SMU-UNT, UTSA-Texas State, UH-Rice, La Tech-ULM, Tulane-ULL, etc...they need to understand that being in a conference with each other will be fine. Add in Tulsa and Arkansas State and you have 5 states, covering the markets of El Paso, DFW, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, Lafayette, Shreveport, Monroe, Little Rock, Hot Springs, and Tulsa. You cannot tell me that this setup wouldn't draw better than what the current SBCUSAAC does today. And that it wouldn't keep costs down tremendously.

MeanGreenTexan · March 15, 2016

1 minute ago, untjim1995 said:

Attendance is a lot easier to have when you play local and regional teams. Plus, it controls costs. The MAC gets it. The MWC gets it. The three southern dummy G5 leagues are the only ones who don't get it, all because they want to have a higher place on the totem pole than to make/save more money.

I got really terrible news for our AAC brethren not named Cincy or UConn. You aren't going to ever play in a higher level of football unless you agree to go independent, like BYU, and become pseudo-P5. That doesn't have long-lasting power, unless you sell out every home game and have a network to distribute your games (see BYU). And even BYU would leave independence if the Big XII would call them to join the league.

NMSU-UTEP, SMU-UNT, UTSA-Texas State, UH-Rice, La Tech-ULM, Tulane-ULL, etc...they need to understand that being in a conference with each other will be fine. Add in Tulsa and Arkansas State and you have 5 states, covering the markets of El Paso, DFW, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, Lafayette, Shreveport, Monroe, Little Rock, Hot Springs, and Tulsa. You cannot tell me that this setup wouldn't draw better than what the current SBCUSAAC does today. And that it wouldn't keep costs down tremendously.

This would be so great for little bad programs like us. It would be catastrophic for Houston and in the eyes of Tulane, Tulsa & SMU. That's why it will never happen.

untjim1995 · March 15, 2016

15 minutes ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

This would be so great for little bad programs like us. It would be catastrophic for Houston and in the eyes of Tulane, Tulsa & SMU. That's why it will never happen.

Oh, there's no doubt about it. But when the P5s fully pull away, teams in the AAC, which are no doubt higher on the totem pole than we in the SBCUSA are, will have to make a choice. Keep playing in a league where SMU plays UH, Tulsa, and Tulane in conference play, but also travel to Temple, Navy, UCF, and USF for conference games in every sport. The regional teams that they play don't bring anyone to their stadium like we do. I'd be willing to bet that a lot of teams will look closely at this. Temple shouldn't be playing football against SMU in a conference game. Same with East Carolina and Houston. UNT has no business being in a conference with F_U, nor does Rice need to be in one with Old Dominion or Marshall. And Texas State and Appy State playing each other as conference mates is beyond ridiculous, too.

The only other possibility out there, to me, is that the top end of the G5s, your MWC and AAC schools, plus a couple of others like Marshall and Northern Illinois, will get exempted from a P5 pull away, somehow keeping quasi-affiliation for OOC purposes. Those of us in the SBCUSA and MAC get dropped down, where other high-end FCS teams move up and that becomes the new FCS/I-aa. That would protect the P5s from almost all kinds of media our legislative outrage, not that they cared about any of that or had to worry about it anyway.

Cerebus · March 15, 2016

On the TV Front: It takes money and expertise to setup and kind of professional media sharing platform. Yes we could use one of the cloud platform to do the hosting but that still leaves all the tv production talent. The sad fact is there is no where near enough fans who would be willing to pay the cost to make that possible. WE aren't going to be able to stand up our own quality streaming services. CUSA might as well go crawling back to ESPN, take whatever pittance they throw on the ground, and then at very least we can see away games on ESPN3.

On the Conference Front: Game over man. The P5 has won, or actually, the future P4 has won. There are more than a few current P5 teams that in ten years will be on the outside with us looking in. A big win for us will be if Iowa State decides to join CUSA instead of the MWC. Speaking of membership, time for CUSA and SBC to understand where we are, on the outside, and swap membership. The CUSA Texas school, LaTech, ASU, ULL, and TexSt would make a good geographically compact football conference. Maybe UTEP goes MWC, maybe we can convince USM to stat in the same conference as us.

The truth is 15 years ago TCU made all the right moves and we didn't. They will probably be in the P4, we for sure won't. Let's get this over with and realign with whatever makes the most sense.

NTXCoog · March 15, 2016

3 hours ago, untjim1995 said:

Attendance is a lot easier to have when you play local and regional teams. Plus, it controls costs. The MAC gets it. The MWC gets it. The three southern dummy G5 leagues are the only ones who don't get it, all because they want to have a higher place on the totem pole than to make/save more money.

NMSU-UTEP, SMU-UNT, UTSA-Texas State, UH-Rice, La Tech-ULM, Tulane-ULL, etc...they need to understand that being in a conference with each other will be fine.

Rice brings zero fans to games at UH. Sam Houston brings more fans than Rice does. You can argue that game still increases attendance because the students love when we beat Rice, but the increase has nothing to do with Rice fans coming.

The Rice/UH attendance increase is primarily one way. UH fans coming to Rice doubles their normal average. That's why it remains and will remain an OOC game but only if UH benefits. Notice that the latest renewal of the series is only for 2 years.

GreenN'walinsVet · March 15, 2016

18 hours ago, UNTexas said:

Frisco's new stadium opens this Summer. It will be nicer than Allen, Apogee, & McKinney. Sure they are splitting it with Cowboys but that is going to be cool for the kids.

Apogee is really nice. Much nicer than most stadiums. If we could ever sell it out I'd be thrilled.

Splitting it is being very generous. They are putting up 30 million of a $250 million + complex. I understand that is not just the stadium, but one would argue that the stadium is at least half that so they are getting a $125 million dollar domed stadium for just $30 million.

When comparing to other high schools or colleges i don't think this should be included.

NTXCoog · March 15, 2016

1 hour ago, GreenN'walinsVet said:

Splitting it is being very generous. They are putting up 30 million of a $250 million + complex. I understand that is not just the stadium, but one would argue that the stadium is at least half that so they are getting a $125 million dollar domed stadium for just $30 million.

When comparing to other high schools or colleges i don't think this should be included.

Stadium only holds 12k though, much smaller than most new HS football stadiums.

Arkstfan · March 15, 2016

Nothing has really changed.

When the NCAA held the TV deal, the small conferences got a token regional ABC appearance or two every two years. That was too much thus the change to I-A criteria after the 1981 season.

Under the CFA deal the Big West and MAC got zip.

CUSA leadership had no fricking clue how TV worked after the AAC raid. The market model is bunk. Why would anyone look at markets and guesstimate viewership when there are multiple ways to get real time data about what people are actually watching? The large ad firms subscribe to that data and they aren't falling for some BS line about maybe viewership when they can get actual data.

People fail to understand the expiring in June television deal CUSA had was a quirk.

First there were different schools involve which everyone understands.

Secondly the needs of CBSS and Fox were different than they are today.

CBSS needed content and at the time had nothing but MWC but the bulk of college football viewership exists in a band from Texas and Oklahoma heading due east. Exception noted for B1G schools, but CBSS had NOTHING to offer to viewers in the Eastern and Central time zones. That has changed with ESPN selling content to CBSS.

Fox at the time had ZERO college football games it could distribute nationally. The Pac-12 and Big XII contracts precluded distribution outside of their region. Not until those two deals were redone could Fox distribute nationally. Now FS1 and FS2 weren't online yet but it still applied to national clearance for Fox regionals and Fox college. CUSA was the first college football they could show nationally.

The needs of the networks have changed.

As to the bubble bursting, let B1G finish their negotiations before digging the grave of sports media rights.

The business remains drawing people willing to pay for the privilege of watching and if you can't do that, it becomes about people just watching to deliver eyeballs for advertisers.

I am pretty confident that the bubble for prime brands not only hasn't burst, it hasn't hit potential. In a cord cutting environment selling to the consumer on a subscriber basis has a great deal of potential. Five years ago MLB had 2.2 million online subscribers at $100+ and not offering any local teams, Netflix had around 24 million with most of them DVD subscribers. Netflix just passed 75 million online.

Subscription packages are going to be a really big deal. In the UK a single day pass to Sky Sports is $9.90 with their service. Online you can buy two one day passes for $35. That's for a channel offering essentially one significant sport. Just wait for ESPN to offer only a school, or for a bit more only a conference, a bit more a single sport, and for even more all you can eat. Sports fans will pay it.

Less than 18 months ago ESPN bought 100% of MAC rights for 13 years because it gives them week night filler, they resell some to CBSS, and the rest fills ESPN3. The folks in Bristol haven't even bothered to scratch the surface in the online space as far as monetizing it. More people watched Mizzou at AState on ESPN3 as watched La.Tech-Rice on FS1. Yeah it was mostly Mizzou fans since the game was at AState but it was part of ESPN3 teaching people to watch ESPN3.

Would Fox look at it differently if they were talking to a conference built around the core of the old Fox SW (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, parts of New Mexico and Mississippi) and tossed in a national game or two? Maybe. Then the games would be in a distribution area that would make regional ad sales work. But part of the problem is neither Fox nor CBS is currently positioned to do a lot in the online space the way ESPN is.

UNTexas · March 15, 2016

2 hours ago, NTXCoog said:

Stadium only holds 12k though, much smaller than most new HS football stadiums.

It's a good thing Frisco High Schools are a fraction of the size of neighboring cities. Plus every game will sell out indoors with air conditioning. The kids in Frisco are extremely excited. Especially with their Nike contract on top of new facilities. Hell, they already play at Toyota Stadium.

Much different than my High School team in West Texas and far better than several D1 schools I played at. Light years ahead of Fouts and better than many current Conference USA facilities. Thank goodness for Apogee. Fouts was terrible.

filmerj · March 16, 2016

On March 15, 2016 at 7:15 AM, VideoEagle said:

In a word, yuk.

I tried to show my wife, who loves softball, the free "Spring Fling Highlights." On my iPad and my Android phone, I got the pre-roll ad with Jeff Gordon. Then the NT story loaded and I got a play button. Pushing the button, I got the ad again and the story loaded with the play button. This morning I tried it on my desktop and it worked, but being 1990s Flash, it doesn't go full screen, even when using a Chromecast to send it to my TV. I'm underwhelmed by CBS Interactive.

http://www.meangreensports.com/collegesportslive/?media=526506

To view content that was posted in the past or aired in the past you must go to the on demand portion ion of the portal. The highlights are a clean feed you won't get score bug or batter stats like the stream has. When I rotate my device it goes full screen. If you go to meangreensports front page any free video lives on the player below the rail. Should it be higher? Yup. Can the platform be better? Yup. But that's what C-USA contractor is. I know all schools are required to provide content for c-USA DN.m. Obviously anything that is premium, is paid content. You should see some of the other schools in our "price range" and what they do. Some is better but not by much, because they understand the money it takes and some are way worse. My understanding is there has been work to get the product better, is it where they want it to be? Of course not. I know the new director of media and his new assistant are Alumns and care about the product. And have been working hard. I know they would want it much better but it takes small steps and convincing. I do know the video department has made it a mission to use students from Media and Journalism to fill positions and use it to help supplement their education and they do get paid. So the product may get better or it may stay as good as the students they use and as much as the students want to take it and run with it. As far as the website, CBS is contracted by c-USA. The schools that are on another platform are there because they already had existing contracts when they were added to the league.

Edited March 16, 2016 by filmerj

VideoEagle · March 17, 2016

17 hours ago, filmerj said:

http://www.meangreensports.com/collegesportslive/?media=526506

To view content that was posted in the past or aired in the past you must go ...

Thanks for the info. I personally consider content distribution separate from content creation as those are two very different skill sets, tools and systems. I'm guess the full screen on both devises and computers works only on the premium content and not the free, on demand content.

I'm hopeful either CBS will improve or CUSA will find a better provider. Again, it's not difficult to create your own CDN today IF you have a competent php programmer. What CBS might bring to the table is an easier place for the general public to search and find the links to the archived and live streaming material. But for G5 schools, the athletic departments themselves are the main supplier of the links people use. It's the same with ESPN 3 - it's easier for the general public to search, but with G5 content I'm sure more people follow links on either the school or conference websites, emails or texts.

Getting a video link in a text makes it EXTREMELY easy to watch an archive or steam on your phone. I will be vary curious to follow the number of views for this NCAA Basketball playoffs that's on mobile devices - especially for the women's games as those are sometimes harder to find.

filmerj · March 17, 2016

3 hours ago, VideoEagle said:

Thanks for the info. I personally consider content distribution separate from content creation as those are two very different skill sets, tools and systems. I'm guess the full screen on both devises and computers works only on the premium content and not the free, on demand content.

I'm hopeful either CBS will improve or CUSA will find a better provider. Again, it's not difficult to create your own CDN today IF you have a competent php programmer. What CBS might bring to the table is an easier place for the general public to search and find the links to the archived and live streaming material. But for G5 schools, the athletic departments themselves are the main supplier of the links people use. It's the same with ESPN 3 - it's easier for the general public to search, but with G5 content I'm sure more people follow links on either the school or conference websites, emails or texts.

Getting a video link in a text makes it EXTREMELY easy to watch an archive or steam on your phone. I will be vary curious to follow the number of views for this NCAA Basketball playoffs that's on mobile devices - especially for the women's games as those are sometimes harder to find.

They Definatley are separate, unfortunately in today's climate content creators are being asked to also be CDN Saavy. As far as free vs paid it works the same. Like I said my mobile devices iOS have had no issue playing free vs streamed in full screen. It's all archived and placed on the on demand portal. I know the stream is sent to CBSi for distribution and they encode for multiple platforms. Links are usually tweeted out. And are placed on the website calander as well. Should more of a push be made, yes absolutely. But a link is a link no matter what platform it's on. For people who follow the softball program for example and will pay for the service, they know where it is. In fact , I know the followers of SB drive most of their subscriptions. Of course it will vary by season since you can pay month to month or yearly. Unfortunately, it's rather expensive for an athletic program our size to not only produce but have the data streamed and archived. I don't think people realize how many events are streamed and produced by our students because by comparison it's rather good. I have heard ESPN 3 may be a possibility for next football season. But don't expect ESPN3 to be shelling out money for schools of our size to produce content like they have done for sec schools. A&Ms. 4 control rooms were mostly paid for by them. Remeber our game vs SMU was an espn3 game and a local truck was brought it to produce the game. I am hopeful a free distribution model will surface, but for now it must be paid service. If you pay for MGS service I believe you can get CUSA portal as well. Those that have mentioned fans would pay, that's not true in our case. Our fans only want free stuff. However,I do know MGS leads the conference in subscriptions, views and revenue brought in.