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Pac-12 Launches New Pilot Program Looking To Reduce Length Of Football Games

Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott yesterday announced the "most significant effort yet to counter the ever-expanding length" of football games, according to Zach Helfand of the L.A. TIMES. The conference will "launch a pilot program" during some nonconference games that will "experiment with game-shortening measures." This comes after the "average length of a college football game last season was 3 hours and 24 minutes," the "longest average game time in college football history." Among the "biggest changes: fewer commercials -- a cut totaling several minutes of advertising." Also, halftime "will be 15 minutes instead of 20." Scott, speaking at the start of the conference's media days, said that research from ESPN and the Pac-12 Networks "found as much as 30% of viewers tuned out after the first half." Scott: “You're at a risk of people tuning out with a long halftime." Helfand notes widespread adoption of the Pac-12’s program will "almost certainly require a demonstration that fewer commercials won’t hurt revenue" (L.A. TIMES, 7/27). Scott said, "We’ve worked with our universities on these proposed modifications and over the next few weeks, we’ll be finalizing exactly which games during the non-conference season we will be piloting." Scott said that "reducing TV timeouts in number and length isn’t the only option ... citing British Open television coverage as a model." Scott noted NBCU's Open Championship telecasts featured "some new ways of some split screens instead of breaking away from the action," and the Pac -12 is "going to be on the forefront of experimenting with some of those techniques.” Washington coach Chris Petersen: "I love it." Petersen added he "can’t stand how long college football games" have become (USA TODAY, 7/27).

WEST COAST SWING: Scott also announced the conference's football championship game will "continue to be held in Santa Clara" at Levi's Stadium through at least '19. In S.F., Rusty Simmons notes the new agreement "adds two years, with an option to extend through" '20. The championship game moved to Levi’s Stadium in '14, its "first time at a neutral site after being hosted on Pac-12 campuses for three years" (S.F. CHRONICLE, 7/27). In California, Joey Kaufman notes the '20 option coincides with the "planned openings of two additional new NFL stadiums on the West Coast." There is the $2.6B stadium in Inglewood for the Rams and Chargers, as well as the $1.9B stadium in Las Vegas for the Raiders. Scott said reps from the Rams and Raiders have "contacted the Pac-12 to discuss hosting the conference title game." But he later added it was not an “active conversation” between the conference and Rams and Raiders officials (ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, 7/27). 

ALL ABOUT CONTEXT
: The L.A. TIMES' Helfand writes under the header, "Pac-12 Networks' Revenue Dwarfed By SEC, Big Ten Counterparts." In overall distributions from all sources in the last FY, the Big Ten "paid an average of almost" $35M to each school, while the SEC paid $40.5M. The Pac-12 paid roughly $29M. Scott defended the net's performance, saying that its "original vision was to expand exposure of its Olympic sports and to provide deeper coverage of football and basketball." Scott: "It really has hit a lot of the objectives that we had for it. What's also true is that our schools hope it's going to generate more money.” Helfand notes the Pac-12’s "biggest disadvantage is its subscriber base," as the net has "19.1 million subscribers to its mother network." The SEC Network has "about three times as many subscribers." Scott said there was “no new news” on carriage negotiations with DirecTV (L.A. TIMES, 7/27). 

NIGHT OWLS
: Scott said that the Pac-12 "believed that having late-night games (for folks on the East Coast, anyway) was better for the conference than having a majority of games being late kickoffs." Scott: "There’s a perception that all of our games are at night, two-thirds of them are what you would consider during day. But of the third of our games that are at night, while there is less East Coast viewership, we dominate it. We’ve got the most market share." He added, "While somewhat counterintuitive, the research actually shows some of our best-rated games are 7 p.m., 7:30 p.m. kickoff times. If it’s a compelling game, there are a lot of fans still watching TV, and we dominate the market share at that hour. Oftentimes more eyeballs than if we’ve got a game kicking off at 12:30 or 1:00 up against 15 other games" (SPORTS.YAHOO.com, 7/26). 

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