More on the SoCon/PBS story

For the last four years, SportSouth has broadcast "SoCon Saturdays", the Southern Conference's "game of the week" during football season.  During the negotiations between the conference and SportSpouth for the 2011 season, SportSouth wanted the right to dictate kickoff times for all the entire schedule, with as little as 10 to 12 days notice on any game.  While this is a very common practice in the FBS, where football schedules are often released with kickoff times listed as "to be announced", those school receive major dollars in "television rights" fees for the ability to dictate those game start times by the network.  But that would not be the case for the SoCon, which would not receive any money from SportSouth for "TV rights" for games broadcast for the 2011-12 football season.  Without that alternate source of income for the individual schools, a set kick off time becomes critical to having good ticket sales/gate receipts that all SoCon schools need, as they all rely upon gate receipts for a large slice of their athletic budgets.

Simply put, it all goes to ratings, had the "SoCon Saturdays" been a ratings success over the last four years, SportsSouth or another network/cable provider would have been willing to pay the conference to have the rights to the SoCon games.  Rather than the conference having to pay SportsSouth to broadcast the games & give up TV rights for free, then forced to accept the demand to change game start times at their whelm.

In looking at alternatives, the SoCon's new marketing firm, CSE, put together a package with public broadcasting stations in South Carolina (SCETV), North Carolina (UNC-TV) and Georgia (Georgia Public Broadcasting),
guaranteeing all TV games would kick off at 3 p.m. this season.  The SoCon will also retain rights to the broadcasts, which it would have lost in any deal with SportsSouth or other regional sports provider, such as CSS.

Retaining the broadcast rights means the SoCon can do what ever else it wants with the games, such  as simulcast the games for free via computer stream on www.soconsports.com, something it could not do under previous deals. The league will also have total control over pre-game and post-game content and will share sponsor breaks with CSE.  It's not a perfect deal, but one that has potential, both for the SoCon and PBS.

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