I hate to burst the bubble to many of you:  the press up in WCHA/CCHA country
probably screwed up.  There is no way that ESPN(1) can have college
hockey on Saturday nights in early November since those slots are filled
with college football.  Since the Saturday night slots on ESPN2 "tHe deUce"
are available due to the NHL lockout, I suspect the college hockey games
are on ESPN2 instead of ESPN(1).  Call the ESPN viewer hotline
at (203)585-2236 during business hours (9am-5pm Eastern time Monday
to Friday) to ask for a clarification.
 
Considering that NHL hockey only get an average rating of 0.7 and
college hockey would be lucky to get a rating of 0.5 (1 rating point
equals 954000 households), ESPN can't make money on college hockey.
Since ESPN will have to send a production crew and a broadcast crew
to do college hockey, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for
ESPN to do too many college hockey telecasts.
 
ESPN has a huge library of stuff in its archives that it can show
to get ratings higher than college hockey or even NHL hockey.
Taped auto racing seems to be a favorite at ESPN since it can
get better ratings than the NHL!  In addition,
ESPN can sell the time to anyone who wants to air their sports
events such as dog shows and woodchopping.  ESPN also has access
to lots of stuff from ESPN--International that is usually not
shown to US viewers such as 6-8 international soccer matches per week.
 
--
Oliver Tse                                  Phone:    +1(607)255-6684
Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering  FAX:      +1(607)255-2365
416 Bard Hall, Cornell University           Internet: [log in to unmask]
Ithaca, NY  14853-1501   USA