Cable subscribers’ increasing embrace of digital services helped lead to a carriage deal between Comcast and the Big Ten Network, and could do the same for Charter Communications and Time Warner, Wisconsin’s two dominant cable providers.
BTN from its beginning insisted on being carried on a basic level of cable service — such as Charter’s Expanded Basic — in the Big Ten Conference states in order to reach a maximum number of subscribers. BTN has since made a partial concession on that point in its deal with Comcast that was driven by the company’s growth in digital subscribers.
In its markets in Big Ten Conference states, Comcast will carry BTN on its expanded basic level from its launch Aug. 15 through the end of the 2008-09 college basketball season. But after that, it will be allowed to move BTN to a “broadly distributed digital level of service in most of its systems in the Big Ten states,” the companies said in their news release announcing the deal.