Latest / Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning / Big Changes Coming To College Football TV Broadcasts In 2024
Transcript
- Welcome to Buck Guyes Tomorrow Morning for Tuesday, May twenty eighth, IM your host Tom or the Akron game in ninety five days the game against Michigan in one hundred and eighty six days. Today's show is a continuation of the one we ran last Friday with Matt Sars of mattsarsports dot com talking about TV in college football, understanding the new TV deals, Understanding all the stuff that's changing this year, conferences, changing TV deals, changing college football playoff, changing the College Football Playoff TV deal got a new wrinkle last week. There is a ton to talk about. So we're going to continue our conversation with him talking about some of the big picture stuff dealing with ESPN and Fox and is one of them going after you the other's turf? And also the new sub licensing deal TNT trying to sub license the College Football Playoff from ESPN. What does that mean? Does the NFL schedule have anything to do with that? You're going to get all of that here in part two of my conversation with Matt Sars of Matt sarsports dot com. So let's talk again a little bit about just some bigger picture stuff. Now, that was pretty nitty gritty on Ohio State stuff. I want to talk a little big picture because you mentioned earlier Fox may not have their game at noon week one, and that's because ESPN has already announced the Clemson Georgia game is going to be played at noon on the Saturday of week one. So that to me feels like Fox has figured out this great thing with big noon Saturday, and they've kind of owned that noon window for several years. Maybe now ESPN's going up, you know, going after that a little bit. And now you mentioned earlier as well, Fox announced their first season of Friday night games. A full season of Friday night games. No Ohio State or Michigan. But it seems like they may be trying to plant a flag there is that how you see that that ESPN may be trying to make a little run at Fox's monopoly at noon and Fox maybe trying to plant the flag on Fridays. I see them more planting the flag on Friday's Fox with respect to Georgia and Clemson. I think this is a particular side effect of ABC and ESPN now having those full rights to the SEC. They have that full schedule that they can look at. They don't have to put Notre Dame at Texas A and m on ESPN, or Miami at Florida, or well less with Georgia Clemson being that that's technically a neutral site game being played in Atlanta, but at least with the latter two, those would never have been a choice for ABC in prior seasons. With respect to New I think what may end up happening, and I had this game originally as my four PM or three thirty PM game on Fox in Week one. I think you will see because Fox has the top choice in the Big Twelve this year with everything that happened where Texas and Oklahoma were allowed to, like you know, be moved over to the SEC, and they flipped the locations of the Michigan and Texas series so that Michigan hosts this year. West Virginia at Penn State is probably your best available or I'm sorry, look those locations. Penn State at West Virginia is your best available Big Twelve game probably over the course of the season in terms of ratings. So I think that might end up being the Week one Big Noon game, and you may still, just like last season, the Big Twelve might occupy one or two twelve o'clock windows when Box doesn't really have a good Big ten choice. So there may be a handful of cases like that. I think they'll be pretty rare, but I think Week one is kind of that exception where they look at it, this is a pretty good game. We do get a Big ten team, you know, in Penn State, so we could still kind of market it that way, and in the end we get Fox. This is their final chance to have the top Big twelve selection. Is those rights change over next year where ESPN's the primary right holder, so might as well go get this one while we can. I think that's what Fox is looking at. So all of that stuff has all happened in the last couple of weeks, maybe month or so. That's all all been stuff that's come out. And then earlier this week another big piece of TV news that I wanted to ask you about college football playoff TV news. ESPN had the rights to that and they bought all the rights, but they said, you know, hey, we made sub license some of that to someone at some point, and it came out this week that they're sub licensing it to TNT. Now what do you know about that deal? How those telecasts may go. I mean, people are wondering who's going to be announcing those games? Is they're gon have Charles Barkley announcing those games? You know how big of it is it of a factor? Is it that, you know, those games that first round games on that Saturday, the NFL has put a couple pretty big games up against those. The NFL is playing on that Saturday as well, Chiefs Texans. So this is not you know, Jaguars and Jets or something, this is Chiefs Texans. You know how big of a role did that play in? You know, maybe the sub licensing deal or maybe who was able to bid on the sub licensing deal. I think it may have played a part. Yes, indeed, because when you look at it, the looking at the NFL side, the two games that are on that Saturday, one on NBC, one on Fox, those four teams are also the same four teams that are going to make up the two Christmas Day games that are on Netflix. So they had to because the NF, to me, the NFL decided to plan on Christmas to make that work, to give those teams enough rest, they had to play on the twenty first, And it's the same four teams just rearranged in a different order. That said, I think ESPN probably got a heads up, you know that this is coming down the pipe, and you know went with TNT as their sub licensed partner. I've read a few different things that you know, ESPN will be heavily involved in the production of these games, so it might be their talent. I don't know if it's going to be their graphics. It sounds like TNT might be able to do some things around these at least in twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five first round games, they'll have two quarterfinal games, and starting in twenty twenty six as well. That said, I think to me it would it would make sense from a scheduling standpoint if I was ESPN the two NFL games on the twenty first, I believe we're at one and four fifteen, give those games to TNT. I at that point, you're not competing with the NFL. You can you can let them have it. You can let those those games go over there. They can sink or swim with whatever ratings those games are from a business standpoint, And then ESPN has a Friday night first round game and a Saturday night first round game then, and those can be pretty exclusive to them to be able to drive whatever ratings that and make whatever advertising dollars they can to defraate the cost of the rights that they paid. Also, ESPN still I believe, is going to be in the market to show Bowl games that they own that typically are you know, their place MAC team or usually troop of five teams. And because they still own these balls, ship the big games to TNT. Let us air our relative, you know, mostly minor bowl games on the twenty first. Nobody's nobody's hurt whether they're aired or noteople people will seek those out if they want to seek those out, and then let the NFL do its thing on on the twenty first. So I beyond that, Yeah, I think TNT is going to get those first two in future years, with it again being one Friday and I believe three Saturday games each year. I think they'll they'll figure out a regular cadence and the same thing with the two quarterfinal games that tn T will get in the future. Those might be afternoon games as well, because if the Rose Bowl is one of those quarterfinals, I don't see esping given that up to TNT and same thing maybe with you know, the Sugar Bowls, the night game, same thing there. They may say, go ahead, take take the peach or take the cotton and take the you know, fiesta, take those two in the morning, and we'll step out. We'll step aside till you know, the Granddaddy and the Sugar Bowl show up in the even So that's kind of where I look at it. These folks have their business cases and their ratings numbers and projections all behind, you know, for years that they know they know what is best for them. That's just my conjecture on it. Well, that's much more further, you know, a little further in the future. But man, a lot of stuff to think about and to talk about their little shorter term. We already know Fox or ESPN's plans for Week one and some of the early season games. When do you think we're going to get maybe the rest of those those early week one, week two kind of game lineups out from Fox and some of the other broadcasters. Is that coming in the next few days, Is that coming in in the next month. When when do you think you know, Ohio State acron whinter Ohio State fans going to know what time the acron games kicking off and what channel it's going to be on. From releases that I saw from both ESPN and Fox, look for those games next Thursday, probably mid afternoon, maybe a little bit earlier. I think CBS now that they are more attached at the hip with the Big Ten, unlike what they used to do with the SEC, where they kind of went and did their own thing, maybe a day or two in advance of everybody. I think they'll also wait. So if CBS is choosing one of the early well, yeah, they could choose a game on like the seventh for example, or even week one, they'll probably go ahead and wait till the thirtieth as well. I think that's when you'll see everything pop up. Should also mention too that there was something from Big ten Leaves An Associate commissioner Kry Kenny, who works in the is like a television liaison for the conference. He did mention as well that there are still Friday night games to be announced. It probably won't be on Fox, They'll probably be on Big ten Network and FS one, but those probably will show up. Oh and also on Black Friday, so CBS has one, NBC will have one as well those will show up on the thirtieth as well. All right, so lots of stuff to look forward to starting little maybe next Thursday or so, the thirtieth, gonna have more information about the start of the season. And man, there is just so much to think about, so much to talk about, and so many enormous games involving Ohio State this year will be they will don't worry, they will be on TV somewhere. You will be able to watch them. Matt, I guess before I let you go, let people know at sarsports dot com, explain a little bit about what you know, what you do there, and you know, you go through and you make predictions about where stuff, You know which which games are gonna be where and when, and let people know what they can find there at matsarsports dot com. Sure so, At matsarsports dot com. Since about two thousand and five, I've been tracking telecast windows and television decisions that get made for Division one FBS and FCS college football. That includes your streaming at areas now like Peacock, ESPN, plus other networks you know, small ones like full Sports. They handle the the FCS area. So I tracked things there and there's a there's mats are sports dot blogspot dot com, because I haven't really decided to go and get a nice WordPress site. That's typically where I'll do some analysis around weekly picks for television. I'll try to have something out usually on Sunday mornings, by a day in advance of when television decisions are being made. I'll say also twenty twenty four being very different with respect to well the P five P four because there is no P five anymore. This is going to be me flying very blind because as much as I knew everything with the SEC is going to be new, because it's all under one ten now, they don't have the old appearance minimum or maximums that they might have had on CBS for a school. We just don't know how many games each ESPN Fox would take from the Big twelve. We don't really know yet what Fox is going to do with respect to their larger share of Big ten games. It appears at CBS and NBC will stay to very very fixed numbers, stay with Peacock, so Fox, FS one and BTN will probably get all these extra games that are that are coming in. But I really don't know. I mean, the whole idea of Big ten after dark is uh is now a thing. It's it's now a thing that has to be planned for. Same thing with Big twelve actor. So everything is brewed. Nearly everything is new. Yeah, nearly everything is new. Rutgers is playing a conference game at eleven PM on a Friday. Thank you, World Series. Yes, thanks to say Yes, everything is new. Thank you too, Matt for coming in to help to try and help make sense of what is going to be a crazy and very exciting TV schedule this fall. All right, Thank you Tom. Thanks again to Matt. I love talking to him, I love reading his site. I love talking to him. This is like real, real college football, nitty gritty minutia stuff. This is this is stuff. I' I love this more than you do. And that's okay. But when you are asking us questions on the board, the Huddle Board presented by Jeff Ruby, Steakhouse at Buckeyehuddle dot com, when you're saying please, I am going to the Oregon, Ohio stated organ game. What time is that going to be? Is it could be a night game. I need to plan my flights. We're checking Matt Sars because Matt Sarus is the ultimate authority on all of this stuff. Sometimes the answer is we don't have an answer yet, but if there is an answer to be had, Matt is a guy to have it, So thank you again to him. Make sure you check out mattsarsports dot com. It is a very very minimalistic website with a ton of great information. Check out his blog as well. It's just a very small link. It just just the word blog is highlighted in hyperlinked Click on that though. He goes through all of his game predictions, all that kind of stuff. And so make sure you check out Matt Sarsports and make sure you check out Buckeye Huddle dot com as well. That'll do it for today. Thank you guys all for joining us. Have a great day. We'll talk to you tomorrow.