My understanding is that one or more of the commissioners of the four
DivI conferences is working on negotiations to at least expand the
coverage of Prime's game of the week, at most have a game of the week
shown on ESPN or ESPN2.  For example, I am told Hockey East might alter
its schedule so that two games on Sunday could be shown on tv - an
afternoon and an evening game.  Currently HE plays few or no Sunday
games a season, but that's a day that they could have a good shot at
nailing down an audience.
 
Of course, college hockey has tried in the past to have ESPN show a
game of the week, but the sad truth is that with ESPN being in
something like 60 million homes, they are able to garner higher
ratings and more advertising dollars by showing a monster truck pull
than major college hockey.  ESPN2 would seem to be the best chance
right now, but I think it is only in about 13 million homes - and mine
is not one of them.
 
The way the Prime schedule is done needs to be revamped, too.
Apparently one of the stipulations was that every CCHA team must
appear once.  That's nice, but it doesn't benefit the game to show a
weaker matchup instead of one like Minnesota-Wisconsin or Harvard-RPI.
In fact, most of the better teams in the nation will not appear on
Prime's Game of the Week this season.  Seems to me that if the
objective is to showcase your sport, you'd try to have the best teams
appear as often as possible.  However, I also believe (correct me if I
am wrong) that the contract may have been negotiated by CCHA commish
Bill Beagan, and if so, he appears to have been looking out for the
interests of the CCHA first and college hockey second.  Any future
negotiation needs to be handled on the hockey side by someone with
their priorities in order.
---                                                                 ---
Mike Machnik                                          [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                  *HMM* 11/13/93
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