Let's take our first look at what the Pac-12 in 2012 Football Schedule will look like.
In week 1, to ensure every game was televised, the Pac-12 moved several games to earlier in the week, at least for the first week of the season. Northern Colorado at Utah was already Thursday night, and Northern Arizona at Arizona State got moved up too. San Jose State at Stanford also was rotated up to Friday. You have to figure since Stanford is still out of session, they're more flexible with when to schedule their games.
After that? Every other Pac-12 Network game ends up on Saturday. You can see that no more games were moved outside of Thursday/Friday night, even thought that might take a few national telecasts off the air. But I'm guessing everyone seemed reluctant to agree to more games outside of the weekend, especially considering the majority of those contests had already been pre-scheduled.
So there are a few windows where multiple games are on at the same time. What will happen here? A partial explanation came via the media teleconference. Jon Wilner provides us with further explanation.
Every Pac-12 football game will be on. It's just that some will only be available on your computer or mobile device (TV Everywhere). Pac12Net CEO Gary Stevenson: Some cable partners may take both national and regional feeds. So for Week 1, with Cal and OSU games starting at noon, and both on Pac12Net, 1 game on national network and 1 on regional. Game NOT on national will be shown on mobile device/computer unless your cable company shows both national and regional feeds. Stevenson: "Partners sorting thru that" option. On Sept 8, there are 3 teams on Pac12Net at noon: WSU, Cal, Col. 2 of those teams won't be available on TV sets everywhere, so mobile device.
Well then. I guess there are only a handful of games that are under threat might not be nationally telecast, and most of them come int he first two weeks of the season (like the Cal-Nevada/Oregon State-Nicholls State issue in Week 1).
One possibility is the Pac-12 Network creating a set of overflow channels like the Big Ten Network does, although it might be hard to create additional channels now that there are seven networks being set up. But it might just turn into an ESPN3 dealio live, where you have to watch the contest online if it's not being distributed in its own time slot, like the September 8th situation.
Most of the rest of the schedule won't be slated out until the season begins via six or twelve-day selections, meaning you won't know the full schedule until the last weeks of the regular season.
Here are some additional details about programming via Bryan Fischer of CBS Sports.
Games will be the center piece of the network because there likely won't be any highlights or daily news show during the first few months (if not a year) of operation. Pac-12 Enterprises, the conference-owned subsidiary the networks operates under, will move into their new downtown San Francisco headquarters on July 9th and be the focal point of operations.
"Of course we'll have classic games and preview shows. There will be a lot of programming between (August) 15th and the 20th and we'll probably have somewhere between 10-12 live events before our first football game," Stevenson added. "We will probably have studio shows for a lot of our events, particularly football and basketball, and we'll have a lot of recap shows."
Expect to see great Pac-12 games (like Stanford-USC last year or USC-Notre Dame 2005 or anything from the archives) to get their time to shine during the week, along with re-airs and new telecasts.
Also, another thing.
Interesting. Pac-12's Stevenson: Pac-12 Network to have 'extended live look-ins' of league games airing on ESPN/ABC & Fox.
— George Schroeder (@GeorgeSchroeder) June 14, 2012
Exposure within exposure. It's starting to sound like every Pac-12 game will be carrying the conference banner on every network telecast, whether on the Pac-12 Network, the Pac-12 on FOX, and the Pac-12 on ESPN. All one property, all Pac-12.