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PACIFIC-12 CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYSJuly 24, 2014Lydia Murphy-StephansLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA THE MODERATOR: I'd like to introduce Pac‑12 Networks president, Lydia Murphy‑Stephans. LYDIA MURPHY‑STEPHANS: Thank you, Dave [Hirsch], and thank you, everyone, for being here today. That news spot captures what Pac‑12 Networks is all about, sharing the emotion and excitement we bring to our fans every day and what we're certainly expecting this coming football season. It's great to see you all here today. This will be our third season telecasting Pac‑12 football games and hundreds of hours of in‑depth football programming such as Pac‑12 Game Day, Football Weekly and our newest series, The Drive. Football programming on the Pac‑12 Networks is year round, from media days all the way through the season, to the NFL draft and everything in between. Pac‑12 Networks will be football central for our fans this season. We will be telecasting 35 football games exclusive on the Pac‑12 Networks, and in the first three weeks of the season we'll have games featuring 10 of our 12 teams, including 9 home openers. Yesterday we kicked off the season with a four and a half hour Pac‑12 Football Media Day special. Today we have another four and a half hour show with Mike Yam and Rick Neuheisel, and Curtis Conway interviewing coaches and key players. Some of you in this room will be on the show providing your insights on the Pac‑12 and the college football landscape, and we appreciate your participation, and we look forward to your analysis. This year Pac‑12 Football Media Day is being made available to all of our fans live on Pac‑12.com. For fans who currently don't get the Networks, it's an opportunity to sample our programming and get a feel for the access we have with the coaches and the student‑athletes from all 12 of our universities. Connecting fans with their favorite teams and the content has always been a priority for us, that is why our digital team created Pac‑12 Digital Network this week [on the Paramount Studios plaza]. The plaza is a fun gathering place here on the Paramount Studios lot, and it has already led to more than a half a million tweets, videos, and other social media actions enabling fans from around the country to engage with Pac‑12 Football Media Days and with each other. This coming season, game coverage begins on Thursday night, August 28th with a doubleheader featuring openers for Utah and Arizona State. Then two days later, we'll have a Saturday tripleheader featuring openers for Stanford, Oregon, and Oregon State. As the season unfolds, Pac‑12 Networks will have great match‑ups as we cover the race leading up to the Pac‑12 Championship game at Levi's® Stadium in San Francisco. Our stellar lineup of expert analysts brings deep and very different Pac‑12 experiences to their commentary and analysis, which makes for very insightful and sometimes unpredictable live television. This season fans can expect to hear from our former Oregon defensive coordinator, Nick Aliotti, Rick Neuheisel, Ronnie Lott, Curtis Conway, Glenn Parker, Jake Plummer, Anthony Herron, and Yogi Roth. Live game coverage will be the center piece of football on the Pac‑12 Networks and original, all‑access programming, such as The Drive, will offer a look at Division I football. This season, The Drive will focus on Jim Mora and the UCLA team. It will capture the Bruins drive for the Pac‑12 Championship and much, much more. Coach Mora has agreed to provide us and our audience with unprecedented access. While UCLA is the star of the series, viewers will also get a good, behind-the-scenes look at the Bruins Pac‑12 opponents, providing unpredictable, and very real stories each week of the season. This trailer will give you a taste of what's to come. (Video playing). In addition to The Drive, we'll have an expanded lineup of programming devoted to football. Our flagship show Pac‑12 Sports Report will provide weekly features, best plays and human interest stories. Football Weekly will give the fans an inside scoop and focus on all things Pac‑12 football, and this year, football training camp goes on the road to visit each school. Fans will get to see same day coverage and what's happening at training camp as well as a preview of each team's season. Starting August 5th at Arizona State, Pac‑12 Networks will telecast a one‑hour show from each campus. As we get close to the first game of the season, we'll launch our 12 days to kickoff programming by replaying the top Pac‑12 games from last season on the 12 days leading up to opening night. Two series on our schedule will provide football fans with a chance to relive thrilling moments and maybe learn some things they didn't know about the Conference's remarkable history. Pac‑12 Classics showcases memorable games from the past, and Varsity Days will look back more than 60 years as the 1952 and '53 Pacific Coast Conference football season. Sports fans and history buffs alike will love seeing rare and, in some instances, never‑before broadcast footage. And finally, for fans and coaches who want to watch as many football games as possible with the greatest efficiency, our popular Football in 60 series returns. This series enables fans to watch every Pac‑12 football game, whether it originated on the Pac‑12 Network, Fox, or ESPN, in a condensed 60‑minute format. This season the football in 60s will also feature post‑game press conferences, locker room sound, all of which will provide more color to the shows. Fans can expect to see 80 Pac‑12 football games in this format. Those games will be telecast across all seven of our Networks on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays each week of the season. I know many of you are interested in the distribution of the Networks. I'm happy to share with you, this football season Pac‑12 Networks will be available to more fans. When we launched the network two years ago, we were available in 40 million homes. Pac‑12 Networks, this coming football season, will be available in 60 million homes through various levels of service. That expansion includes the recent availability of the network on all Cox systems nationwide, and Time Warner Cable will be making all seven of our networks available to their customers in the LA area, in the Midwest, and on the East Coast where we know so many of our Pac‑12 fans and alumni live. On the digital front, I'm thrilled to announce Pac‑12 Networks will have international distribution via YouTube this fall. The Pac‑12 national network will be the first 24/7 network available on YouTube's platform. We'll launch the online subscription service in 27 countries and add more countries throughout the year. We know Pac‑12 fans from around the world will love watching the hundreds of games we've produced across 27 different sports. This subscription service will be available only outside the United States and be geo-blocked domestically. Sometimes when we talk about all the developments and distribution, it's hard to understand how it all fits together and what it really means to our fans. Our goal is to be wherever our fans are, at work, at home, on the road, even in sports venues when they're watching live games and events. With Pac‑12 Now [app], our TV everywhere service and at Pac‑12.com, we're making Pac‑12 Networks available to as many people as possible. The expansion of Pac‑12 Now has given our fans the availability to watch Pac‑12 Networks no matter where they are. Video viewership on Pac‑12 Now has more than doubled in the past year, and with Google Fiber activating the service, we now have 36 of our distribution partners enabling their customers to access Pac‑12 Networks via TV everywhere on our Pac‑12 Now app. To give you an idea how immersive this experience can be, fans attending a football game between USC and Utah can watch and listen to the broadcasts of the game on their mobile devices. Immediately following the game, they can relive individual plays on Twitter, which replay is produced by the Pac‑12 Networks staff in San Francisco. Later that night they can log on to Pac‑12.com, see a recap of the game, and share those highlights with their friends via social media tools. It may sound like a media geek's fantasy, but it's not. It happens all the time in our Pac‑12 Network world. This past spring, JB Long, one of our announcers was on his way back from calling a Pac‑12 baseball game in Seattle. He was startled to hear his voice on the airport shuttle bus, and realized fans going home from the game were watching highlights on their cell phone. Apparently they were excited about the extra innings win and wanted to relive some of the big plays. JB introduced himself, surprising the fans and providing a degree of personal engagement that technology is now enabling. This example isn't the future of sports media, it's today's Pac‑12 Networks reality.       Commissioner Scott mentioned it yesterday, and I'm going to elaborate in this area, an important component of the Pac‑12 Networks is the educational mission we have woven into our live‑game production. Since we've launched the Network, students who were interested in learning about and working in television production have been a part of our team. Over the past two years, Pac‑12 Networks have created the most extensive remote TV production training program in the country, offering students at all 12 of our universities an opportunity to get valuable training from skilled professionals and hands on experience while being paid for their work. In every live game production, students work in positions from runner to camera operators to stage managers. Last year, more than 125 students were trained and worked consistently for the Networks. This year we expect more than 250 students to participate in our Pac‑12 Networks production training program. In total, students filled almost 200 paid positions in the 760 live events we produced last season. Today we have two students here from Arizona State's Cronkite School LA bureau helping produce content. That means it's very likely one of our camera operators is a Pac‑12 student. The support we've received from our schools and the students have helped make Pac‑12 Networks unique. We will continue to work closely with all our university partners to deliver fans from around the world the highest quality telecast. This year, Pac‑12 Networks will produce 850 live events in high definition, and all our football games will be made available in 5.1 surround sound. For those of you who are sampling the network for the first time today, we hope you enjoy what we have to offer. Thank you all for coming to Pac‑12 Football Media Days. This is going to be a great season, and I know that you and the fans will surely enjoy it on the Pac‑12 Networks. Thanks a lot and have a great day. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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