One of the great things about modern cable and satellite TV is all of the sports programming now available to subscribers across the country. Many years ago you would only see a couple of college football games on Saturday and two or three on Sunday, today you can literally pick from dozens of games every weekend. Even the NCAA Men’s tournament has expanded coverage with the Mega March Madness package on Direct TV.
Content is king today, and as the saying goes the sports networks want to bring as much content as possible to the end user so they can sell more advertising. Quite a few brand new all-sports channels have popped up in the past couple of years. Some of these include Altitude Sports, which carries NBA Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche matches, as well as the Big Ten Network and the mtn, the broadcast home of the Mountain West conference.
Sure these networks are great for people in certain parts of the nation, but disputes between the providers of sports programming and cable networks that deliver the content have resulted in trouble at times to the customer. Consider what happened last year, the Big Ten Network started airing in 2007, but they were unable to strike a deal with cable TV provider Time Warner. Subscribers of Time Warner in the midwest were not able to see some of the local teams play due to this dispute. Finally however, the parties came to an agreement before the fall football season, so customers could remain with with Time Warner rather than having to switch over to one of the satellite TV companies such as DISH Network or Direct TV. An important thing to do when considering providers is to consider all factors, comparing Direct TV vs Time Warner.
Out of market sports programming are another consideration for the customer. The NFL TV Sunday Ticket package is exclusive to satellite TV, so if you want this football fest, you have to switch. This has upset some consumers, who do not understand why a high demand package like this isn’t available to every provider, especially a big company like Time Warner. Other sports packages though are more fan friendly, like the NHL Center Ice and the NBA League Pass, which are available on almost every cable TV and satellite company. Direct TV seems to have all of the sports programming.
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