In Austin, Haurwitz & Bohls note the perception of the Univ. of Texas as "a greedy, powerful bully when it comes to athletic conference matters 'bothers'" UT President William Powers Jr.. However, he said that he "wouldn't have done anything differently with regard to the new Longhorn Network." Powers: "All we can do is do what we think is the right thing, both for the conference and for our students and our fans." Powers "strongly defended" the net, which has "led to acrimony within the Big 12." He said that LHN "has been a central tenet of the Big 12 -- 'in the DNA of the league' -- since the conference's inception that schools were free to broadcast lower-profile sporting events that weren't locked into the league's contracts with ESPN/ABC and Fox." Powers mentioned that Univ. of Nebraska "maximized such rights and had as many as three football games shown on pay-per-view in a single season" before leaving for the Big 10 (AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN, 10/14).
CHANGE IN SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING: In San Antonio, Valentino Lucio reported many TV providers "planned to start offering" NBA League Pass on Tuesday, but to "avert unnecessary charges, they have postponed selling the service until the lockout is resolved." DirecTV announced that it "wouldn't auto-renew customers who previously bought the service, and if the season is salvaged, NBA League Pass customers would pay an adjusted price to compensate for the lost games." FS Southwest PR Dir Ramon Alvarez said that "without new games to show, the network potentially could broadcast classic Spurs games as a substitute" (SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS, 10/13).
DEVIL DAYS: SI.com’s Richard Deitsch reports truTV will air a documentary on Duke’s back-to-back national championship teams “next March before the NCAA tournament.” “Duke ’91 & ‘92” will be exec produced by Grant Hill and Christian Laettner, who were on those teams. Hill said that he “believed that he and Laettner could produce a balanced documentary that was not merely an infomercial for all things Duke” (SI.com, 10/14).
FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING: MSL, the Spanish company that supplies timing, scoring, graphics and games management software services, will be executing full service provision for a major Games event for the first time at the '11 Pan American Games, which start Saturday in Guadalajara (THE DAILY).
