This should come as no surprise -- the Salt Lake Tribune broke a story this afternoon that NBC is going to "use" Notre Dame football to assist them in building distribution for their VERSUS network, by moving one to two ND games a year to their cable network. The story also reported that VERSUS will become the NBC SPORTS CHANNEL in January.
My educated guess is this -- the University of Notre Dame and NBC will also announce a deal with NBC before year's end that will include the following:
- Select Notre Dame basketball (men's & women's) games will be aired on the NBC SPORTS CHANNEL
- Notre Dame hockey games will be aired on the NBC SPORTS CHANNEL
- As will games in every Varsity sport that Notre Dame plays -- they'll all have a select number of games televised on the NBC SPORTS CHANNEL
The NBC SPORTS CHANNEL is going to take on ESPNU, the Big Ten Network and any of the other cable TV carrier with college athletic programming. This pending deal will also give Jack Swarbrick and the Notre Dame Athletic Department with a "platform" that will promote ALL of their sports on TV -- which is what the BIG TEN NETWORK offers the Big Ten schools right now.
And, it wouldn't surprise me if Notre Dame ends up with an "ownership" stake in this new network -- getting a piece of the subscription revenue that NBC is counting on from this play.
When all is said and done -- I believe Notre Dame will be able to say they have the best MEDIA package in college sports and "higher education" history when they get done with this NBC deal and with what they end up doing in the digital space.
Frankly -- I believe we'll have a NOTRE DAME NETWORK/CHANNEL on cable, on the web and possibly satellite radio before the end of this decade -- with NBC as our partner. This network will also carry religious programming -- with the potential to become the CATHOLIC CHANNEL as well. And, I can envision "educational" programming coming out of the academic engine at Notre Dame.
Notre Dame all the time...
It's got to be an exciting time for Fr. Jenkins and his senior management team at ND right now!
Here's a link to the Salt Lake Tribune story:
