Covering University of Colorado sports, mostly basketball, since 2010

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Quick Post: Time's running out, DirecTV *shakes fist*

The season is quickly approaching.  In fact (*looks at calendar*), we got three days til gameday.  Still, when I, a simple DirecTV customer, look at my channel lineup, I see a gaping hole in my guide.  Namely: there's still no Pac-12 Network.
Pull your head out of your ass, DTV
Almost from the start, the Pac-12 had a deal with the major cable outlets (including loathsome Comcast) to carry the channel and it's six regional affiliates.  While that deal never got so far as satellite providers, we DirecTV subscribers were told repeatedly that it's as good as done (in fact possibly due as early as this past Monday), but they'll wait til the last minute to forge a final deal.  (Dish Network Subscribers?  You guys are up shit creek.  Better find an escape route.)

Well, the last minutes are quickly approaching, and, if uplink testing news and the president of Pac-12 Enterprises are to be trusted, DirecTV is prepared to start the season without offering any of the seven versions of the Pac-12 Network.  Remember, with no paid access to a Pac-12 Network provider, there's no access to the streamed online content (what I am most looking forward to).
Bullshit.  If we're still sitting here on 9/21 without any satellite provider coverage of the Pac-12 Network, we're way past panic date.  If you want a real drop-dead date, how about tomorrow when football games start being played?  I'm most worried about September 8th, when CU is scheduled to open the home portion of the season against Sacramento State.  Coverage is supposed to be on the P12N, but how am I supposed to see it, or the subsequent replays if DirecTV is playing some asinine game of chicken?  I had also planned on watching soccer and volleyball games (both teams still undefeated) this fall, but no dice if DirecTV is still sitting on their hands by Sept 16th (CU vs Air Force in soccer).

I'll tell you right now:  I hate Comcast.  Hated 'em for years.  I'd rather lick Cam's ram-sack then deal with their customer service system.  However, I'll embrace them in a second if DirecTV keeps stalling, and fails to deliver some version of the network.
This is what I want, and I'll go elsewhere to get it, I promise you.
We're already in a situation where my beloved hometown of Chicago is being deprived of access to Buffs content (Comcast has decided that no one outside of the Pac-12 footprint should even have access to the network on an sports tier, leaving the Chi and Washington DC out of the loop), if satellite subscribers in Boulder/Denver can't even get it, then we've got a problem.

Fixit, fixit, fixit, fixit, fixit... Fixit fixit fixit.

1 comment:

Shaun said...

DirecTV is kind of weird about what channels it puts on; ok maybe they don’t seem to have a plan. Leaving the Pac-12 in the dark is a bad decision, but I bet their thinking of how much their normal price increase will be in February and don’t want to make it rocket up anymore. I was worried Dish wouldn’t either; it was looking like the Pac-12 season would be missed by me as well. When I was getting ready to leave from my shift on Friday night from Dish I saw the communication saying the deal had been reached saving my college football season. I enjoyed the game as I usually do, but it looks like my Buffs might have a tough year ahead of them, especially looking at the fourth quarter, at least I can enjoy the USC-Cal game coming up.