Sean Pickett writes: >The problem the ECAC has is that all eastern games start at >7:00 or 7:30pm and are head-to-head. Hockey East and NESN have >a deal with Prime, so the HE TV game would be seen live over >the network and the ECAC TV game would not be broadcast, or >would be tape-delayed. Has anyone heard anything about a national deal for this season? Last I had heard, it was still up in the air for several reasons, one of which was that I believe Prime was sold to SportsChannel. If SC starts carrying a national game, it could bring up a conflict since SC and NESN go head to head in New England. On the other hand, it also might mean that games which would have been pre-empted for NESN HE games would now be able to be shown live, since NESN also had the Prime games. Fans would just have a choice to make. :-) NESN games always took precedence over Prime national games in New England, which definitely would have been a problem as far as ECAC games being shown in that area. But the fact that very few ECAC regular season games were even available for broadcast made it difficult to land those games on a national outlet. Perhaps the new ECAC deal with the Empire Sports Network will make it possible for more ECAC games to be seen nationally. I hope so. Also, look for college hockey to ink some sort of deal with ESPN (perhaps ESPN2) sometime in the next few years. It sounds like it is a real possibility. Sean brings up an excellent point about the starting times of the ECAC final four games. Every conference championship game was shown live on NESN last year, I believe, except the ECAC game which was shown on delay at 11 pm. I'm not suggesting that the ECAC should cater to NESN, but since much of its audience is in New England, varying the start time of the ECAC final four games so that they don't go head to head with HE might make it possible to increase visibility and get the games on live in one of the sport's bigger markets. --- --- Mike Machnik [log in to unmask] Cabletron Systems, Inc. *HMM* 11/13/93 <<<<< Color Voice of the Merrimack Warriors (station TBA for 94-95) >>>>>