ESPN Classic’s days as one of the country’s biggest sports channels may be over.
Executives in Bristol are set to allow cable and satellite distributors to swap ESPN’s classic sports channel for its college network, ESPNU, which they hope presents a newer, hipper alternative to Classic’s staid, dated programming.
As part of the offer, ESPN also is looking for added distribution for its Spanish-language channel, ESPN Deportes, and its broadband network, ESPN360.
An interesting wrinkle to ESPN’s proposal would allow operators to move ESPN Classic to a sports tier, where it would be ESPN’s first channel to reside on the traditionally low-penetrated mantle.
Right now, ESPN Classic is in more than 63 million homes, typically on analog and digital basic tiers.
By contrast, ESPNU is in about 25 million homes, mainly on digital basic tiers, and ESPN Deportes is in fewer than 5 million homes. ESPN360 has not yet been able to reach carriage deals with the top cable operators, though it has reached broadband agreements with Verizon and AT&T.
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Though I don’t watch either much, I used to watch classic quite a bit, but I can see where ESPNU which focuses on what’s going on now in college sports, rather than say, Lew Alcindor’s first NCAA championship, would attract a broader audience, so I think swapping the networks makes sense.
Not to mention they could just as easily show classic college sports on ESPNU in off-peak hours and it would still make sense. There’s really nothing wrong with this plan at all – who needs 14 hours of boxing and 7 hours of poker per day?
Why not swap ESPNU with ESPNews? That’s the station that seems the most useless to me. Or is ESPNews not in every provider’s basic package?
jon, i agree News is the most useless. in my market only ESPN and ESPN2 are on basic cable, while News, U, and Classic are all basic digital. Deportes is clearly the channel that is the most relevant. Soccer does great numbers on Spanish language networks, and I assume that’s what Deportes focus is.
It’s a smart move by ESPN.
ESPNU certainly is a better option right now, as they get a good amount of live games throughout the year that people may otherwise be unable to see. Plus it might help ESPN in competition with the conference-based college sports nets like Big Ten. Classic used to have a lot of good stuff, but now it seems like it’s in a rut. Bring on U!
ESPN360 Is the biggest news for me one day. Where I live I can’t even receive ESPN360.