The Pac-12 Network announcements keep on flowing as we approach the one-month period before its debut. Bob Condotta be researching.
Stevenson said the conference "made a conscious decision'' to give regular partners ESPN and Fox "the value they are paying for'' in its selection of games, but that "we felt there was a way we could do that and still provide the Pac-12 Networks with the kind of programming that would be of interest to consumers and fans.'' (He also said basketball programming will include eight of the 11 games in the men's tournament on the Pac-12 Network, including one semi-final game).
More useful property to hold. Considering that the conference tournament will be a featured event for most of the West Coast basketball nuts, there should be great demand (outside this last putrid season) for the Pac-12 basketball tournament to be available on whatever service you have.
With the Pac-12 Network will take eight of the 11 games, ESPN should take the other three games--the quarterfinal matchup, the semifinal matchup, and the final. Imagine that ESPN will do their best to make sure they can secure UCLA (or Arizona if UCLA is unavailable) for any of those matchups as much as they can.
The rotation then moves to FOX in 2014, where Fox (or F/X) will broadcast a quarterfinal, semfinal and final.
Stevenson also remarked that there won't be any post-game replays of contests available online.
Stevenson said again that only fans who have a subscription to a distributor carrying the Networks will be able to access live games on-line (games on ESPN and Fox would be subject to the on-line guidelines of those networks).
Stevenson said games will "not be aired (on-line) on any systems that we don't have a system-wide agreement with.'' It'll work similar to that of ESPN, where you'd have to put in your authentication number to get on-line access.
He said there will be replays of games shown on the Pac-12 Networks and others throughout the week on the Pac-12 Networks and there will be Video on Demand highlights of games on-line (though not complete replays on-line).
This is kind of dismaying, but given the limited infrastructure the Pac-12 Network appears to be working with, it's completely understandable that the Pac-12 Network doesn't go all-out on the ESPN3 model yet. The cable providers are probably producing plenty of replays through the week--allowing full-games to be shown online would hand too much power away to the Internet providers and limit the impetus for forcing other cable/satellite companies to show the national network.
Hopefully there will exist some possibility in the offseason for some of these games to be distributed online after the season is over.