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BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYSJuly 26, 2012Mark SilvermanCHICAGO, ILLINOIS THE MODERATOR: Up next is BTN President Mark Silverman. MARK SILVERMAN: Great to be here as we approach our fifth year anniversary. Really incredible for us here in Chicago to believe it's been five years since the network launched. We're now available to approximately 90 million homes across the country. Truly a national network with about 50 million subscribers and more subscribers actually outside the Big Ten area than inside the Big Ten area. Its growth has been really something we're all proud of. Our ratings and ad sales have continued to grow every year. This past year ratings grew another 11percent. Ad sales grew over 20percent. So every single year we've continued to grow the viewership, grow our ad revenue and become even more of a fixture for Big Ten fans across the country. BTN To Go we launched this past year as well. Hopefully many of you have gotten the app. Available to 30 million subscribers. We look to now grow the capabilities of BTN To Go and the distribution of it as well for this coming year. You saw in the clips some of our key returning shows this year, and this is really a lot of what's helped brand the network, identify the network with our fans, but everything from Big Ten Football Report and the Live Big Show Big Ten and Beyond Step Into My Office Tailgate 48 we're trying to find the shows that resonate with our viewers and add a couple new shows each year. We're really proud of the three shows we're adding this year. You saw BTN Live which is going to be our BTN radio show. It's going to be broadcast on radio throughout the country and we'll be televising it as well. And then we have our big, Big Ten Football The Journey 2012. So our Big Ten Basketball The Journey show was nominated for Emmy award a couple of years ago, national Emmy award up there with an HBO show and ESPN show and the Big Ten Network show. We're really trying to show more of the student‑athletes lives, more of what happens when they're not on the playing field, when they're at school, when they're in their dorms, when they go home and really bring fans more in touch with what's it's like to be a student‑athlete on a Big Ten campus. We've just had great success for those that have been able to see the Big Ten Journey for basketball. We're hoping to emulate that with our football show this year. And you saw the Big Ten Elite. We showed a couple of clips. Similar in what we're trying to do to Big Ten Icons, Big Ten coaching icon shows, trying to find some of the best teams in Big Ten history. We've gone back and done an hour documentary about some of those teams, and it's something that we'd like to expand in future years as well. This year, for Football Saturdays, we're going to kick off our football coverage with Urban Meyer's first game as Ohio State head coach. That will be a national game across, going to all homes. Week two we're really excited for the big Iowa/Iowa State game, classic game last year, and in total we're going to have four triple headers, the first four weeks of football season this year. And we're expecting to air about 22 games just the first four weeks alone of the football season. So as we are planning to cover these games, we've also added a series of new on‑air talent to complement what we already have on the network. Names that many of you are going to be familiar with and are already familiar with Antwaan Randle El, J. Leman, Tom Waddle, Chuck Long and Brian Anderson, all will be joining our overall coverage crew and excited to have them onboard. Now, moving forward now it's just about growth of the network and getting better. Our new media business is going to continue to grow. Our BTN To Go is going to be available internationally. So it's available domestically only for BTN subscribers. Internationally, you're obviously not going to be a BTN subscriber, you can buy it for a monthly fee and be able to watch all the football and basketball games. It's something we think a lot of our ex‑pat alums will be interested in. We're going to have actually our inaugural Big Ten K on Saturday morning. Initially we thought we'd maybe have a couple thousand people sign up. We had to close the entry, over 5,000 runners for the first one on Saturday in Chicago. Great initiative by our marketing department. And then we're going to have over 900 events this year. Our first year we had over 350 events. We've grown that steadily. We'll be close to about 900 or so this year. Then talk about our coverage, how we're able to cover stories and developments in the Big Ten. A couple of weeks ago during the Freeh press report, we missed it. We kind of whiffed on the coverage there, and it's something that we have to come to grips with. You can make a mistake from time to time. I think we did a great job the last couple of shows we've done on the Penn State coverage, where we were able to rally the troops together, overcome some hurdles that we have and then put on some great programming that I think many of our fans are really pleased with. And coverage that we're really proud to put on on the network. And that's what's going to be something that as we grow and learn we'll get better at. We need to really improve our communications on some kind of these breaking news stories that are a little bit of a challenge for us. But I think we're dedicated to improving and getting better, and we're happy to see some signs of that in the recent weeks. And with that we really look forward to 2012. It's a pleasure to be here to talk to you all again and I'll open up for any questions. THE MODERATOR: Questions? Q. Could you talk about any numbers increase in terms of market penetration and more specifically can you talk about some of the challenges you faced in the Philadelphia market? MARK SILVERMAN: Yeah, Pennsylvania I believe remains the only state where we don't have in the high 90percent distribution. And there are a couple of cable operators mid‑sized cable operators in Pennsylvania that just indicated they're not interested in carrying the network. It's disappointing for us. We'd like to bring the network to everyone throughout the Big Ten region, and we're always willing to try and engage in those conversations to get those deals done. But to date Pennsylvania‑‑ and I believe in particular, the eastern part of Pennsylvania, there are a couple that it's really a better question for them. I can't explain why they have elected not to carry us. We'd love to be able to add them this the group because it's really just there. I mean everywhere else throughout the Big Ten region it's available. Q. Can you talk a little bit about why the Big Ten doesn't play mid‑week games, especially on the Big Ten Network? MARK SILVERMAN: Football? Q. Right. MARK SILVERMAN: I think the Commissioner coming up after me would probably be a better person to answer as to why that's not being done. The conference‑‑ my sense is they're looking after student‑athletes and what they believe is best for student‑athletes, and I would venture that it's related to having mid‑week, missing classes and travel and things like that. But I think the commissioner would be a better person to answer that. Q. Question about the new programming this fall, The Greatest Teams, is it a team versus team or spotlight a team in history? MARK SILVERMAN: Right. It's not a team versus a team. It's really just a one‑hour full in depth documentary on what happened to that team that made it great and memorable. It can cover national championship. It can cover something that the team did. Northwestern didn't win the national championship, but they are the team going to play in the Rose Bowl, was a remarkable occurrence at the time. We went back and found a series of these teams that we think are going to make interesting stories for our viewers and if it's something that works I think you'll see many more of these ahead. Q. I know we're here for football days but I was wondering if you might be able to speculate on what coverage you expect to have for hockey? MARK SILVERMAN: I always get a hockey question. I was waiting for the hockey question. We're just starting to put our plans together. We're actually meeting with the hockey coach‑‑ I've met with the hockey coaches several times as well as the hockey athletic directors. The coaches, I believe, are coming in in September. We're just starting to really get our arms around what this is all going to mean. The network is excited about Big Ten hockey launching next year, and we hope to be a key part in expanding the appeal of Big Ten hockey across the country. But it's just a little early right now to give you any kind of details. THE MODERATOR: Thank you so much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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