DANCING UPON MY PAYCHECK

If you pick up today’s paper version of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, you’ll see a full-page ad from the Big Ten Network, letting you know that Time-Warner’s intransigence is the reason you won’t see this weekend’s Wisconsin/Citadel matchup, a game airing exclusively on the Big Ten Network. The paper itself has even taken notice of this, and in what has to be a rare move, JS sports business reporter Don Walker has even held forth on an ad running in the paper that employs him. Sort of. It’s not like he says anything controversial.

It’s an open secret that the Big Ten Network wants to be on basic cable–all the better to sell a “potential audience” to advertisers–and that it wants $1.10 per month per subscriber from cable companies in the greater Big Ten area.

My cable company is one of those that hasn’t signed on yet and the more I think about it, the more glad I am that they’ve held out. I’m already paying more than a hundred grickles a month for digital cable and high-speed internet. I get about 125 channels, by my estimation. That tells me that they’re all getting a whole lot less than $1.10 per month each. In fact, I would imagine that most of those channels are collecting less than 25 cents a month from me. But what if my cable company gave in on this and paid the Big Ten Network $1.10 every month for the right to their programming? How many other channels would want Big Ten-type money? Would I pay $250 a month for cable? Uh, no. Not even close.

The Big Ten’s assumption is that, around here, they’ve got candy everybody wants. And they have a valid objection in that, if their programming is on a tier, customers without digital cable won’t be able to get it. (Yes, Virginia, there are still some people who don’t have digital cable. In fact, there are still some people who don’t have cable.) But is their basic assumption, that most people would gladly pay more to watch their programming, true? Does their business plan assume that cable companies wouldn’t get many complaints about the added costs involved for a channel that not everybody is going to watch? Because, heretical as this may sound, some people just aren’t all that in to sports. In fact, even on the night of the wretched BCS title game, 4 out of every 5 people will be watching something else.

I’d be furious if my cable company started paying the Soap Opera Network ten times what it currently does and passed the charge on to me. Likewise, I’d be livid if all of a sudden The Needlework Network plopped down in my basic cable and my bill went up. And I already wonder what I’m paying for RFD TV, which has to have a pretty limited audience in the Milwaukee suburbs.

Besides, it’s not like there isn’t more football–even more Big Ten football–on TV than I can watch. And I love college football. I’m not sad about missing the Wisconsin/Citadel game. I wasn’t sad about missing the Iowa/Northern Illinois and Iowa/Syracuse games. I’ve already found that following along with the written play-by-play on Yahoo Sports is a far better way to keep tabs on multiple games.

The more I think about it, the more I think that the Big Ten Network may be doomed. They can’t possibly be making any money right now, and they need the cable companies much more than the cable companies need them. Everyone is banking at this point that everything will be worked out in time for basketball season. Reading between the lines, that means that somebody is banking on the idea that Big Ten basketball is more popular than Big Ten football. Seems like a dangerous assumption to me.