That's right The Mountain West Spots Network will be available on DirecTv and there have been reports in the San Diego Union Tribune and in the Salt Lake Tribune who have confirmed this. Before this The Mtn. was only available on a select few cable partners, and the Dallas-Fort Worth area had no coverage and that is where TCU resides.
Both report different starting dates as either being August 1 or September 1 as the latest launch date. The official announcement from the conference is to take plae in a few days, and as of now there is no information of what level the station will be on. If The Mtn. were to have the same coverage as the Big 10 Network which is on the most basic level of DirecTV that would be the best case scenario, but in my opinion that is not going to happen because News Corp that owns the majority stake in DirecTV also owns 51% of The Big 10 Network.
The cost for the channel has been rumored at 15 cents which is more then before when there was speculation that the conference should accept a deal even if it was well under ten cents per subscriber. So who knows if the channel will be included on a package that does not require to purchase the sports pack.
IF the deal is done right for the local fans the The Mtn. would be added to the basic package for subscribers in the region where the schools are, such as the Fox Sports Regional channels and.
Prior to the deal The Mtn. was only in 1.2 million households by adding DirecTv who had an estimated 16 million subscribers will significantly increase the conferences coverage nationally.
Now the league needs to get Dish Network on board and perhaps even other cable companies.
As always check out The Mountain West Conference Connection for all the happenings in the MWC
1 response(s):
Hopefully Dish Network will pick it up. That's the service that I have. They usually miss the boat in relation to Dish Network. They didn't pick up ESPNU until the summer of 2006 and I wasn't able to watch the Michigan/App State game because Dish Network acquired the Big 10 Network one week after its launch.
Looks like The Mtn. is finally doing what it should have in the first place. How are you supposed to spread your product if it's only focused on the portion of people that already know about it? Dumb.
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