Leatherneck Nation

Ok, I'll show my lack of knowledge. Why can't/doesn't WESTERN get any of these television spots? Except for the Summit championship game a few years ago, I don't know I have ever seen the men's basketball team on television- let alone on a Fox Midwest. Yes, I believe they have been on channels requiring extra technology or special stations which a lot of people don't bother to access etc. I'm talking appearing more than once on a common accessed television sports station- Fox Sports Midwest as an example- where folks flipping view the stations or looking at the guide will see them.

Summit deals in the Dakotas does nothing for WESTERN visibility here. Lack of success? Low attendance? Facility? Lack of aggressiveness by administration to cut some deals? It's all about visibility, and WESTERN just doesn't seem to get much in BB.

Both South Dakota (USD) and South Dakota State (SDSU) benefit by their partnership with Midco Sports Network. Midco also carries North Dakota (UND) sports.
https://www.midcosn.com/

It's about media markets.

As previously mentioned, the Dakotas benefit greatly from the Midco Sports Network, which pretty much exclusively covers NDSU, UND, SDSU, and USD sports (as well as a few smaller college and high school events) and is carried by nearly the entirety of the Dakotas, as well as a few nearby regions. They also partner with ESPN to get a lot of their events on ESPN3, as well as carry the Summit League championships.

Outside of the Dakotas, nearly all of the schools in the MVFC and the Summit League are in much larger media markets than we are.

In market rankings:
17 - Denver (1.5 mil homes)
27 - Indy (1.082 mil homes)
60 - Tulsa (530k homes)
74 - Omaha (413k homes)
75 - Springfield, MO (411k homes)
81 - Paducah/Cape Girardeau/Carbondale (377k homes)
90 - Cedar Rapids/Dubuque/Cedar Falls/Waterloo (341k homes)
110 - Sioux Falls/Mitchell/Brookings (262k homes)
111 - Ft. Wayne (262k homes)
113 - Youngstown (253k homes)
116 - Fargo (248k homes) - also included in the previously mentioned Midco SN thing
117 - Peoria/Bloomington/Normal (242k homes)
149 - Sioux City/Vermillion (152k homes)
155 - Terre Haute, IN (135k homes)
170 - Quincy/Hannibal/Keokuk/Macomb (101k homes)

So, we are located in a "secondary" city in one of the smallest media markets in the country (#170 out of 210). Outside of USD and SDSU, every school in our conference has multiple TV stations located in their city. This makes it much more cost-effective to broadcast, as well as being much easier to cover a large % of the local fans (how many people outside of the far northeast corner of the Quincy/Hannibal broadcast area care about Western sports?). We're essentially on the fringe of three different media markets, but not really close enough to any of them to warrant a ton of coverage outside of an occasional mention on the evening sports broadcast.

At this point, if they were going to be able to get Western athletics on TV, they'd probably have to look to something like a secondary channel (.2 or .3) of the Network Knowlege group (WSEC Springfield, WQEC Quincy, WMEC Macomb). It would get pretty good local coverage, and I've heard of other smaller schools using local public stations to broadcast their sports. With as much competition as we have with other schools around the state and region, it's unlikely that we'd make a dent in the interest of any of the regional sports networks like Fox Sports Midwest (mostly St. Louis teams) or Comcast SportNet Chicago (pretty much only Chicago teams). Even the MVFC as a whole wouldn't get much interest, since these networks, when they carry college football, it's the Big 12 or Mizzou to the south and west of us, and Big 10 to the north and east of us.

Scott- Thanks for an explanation with hard facts. The use of public stations sounds interesting. As far as WESTERN, Macomb or Quincy would be something, however, that doesn't really help making WESTERN more visible out of it's back yard. With UIS in Springfield, I doubt they would be interested in promoting much from WESTERN.

So really, WESTERN is pretty much screwed as far as visibility to any larger markets.

A handful of games in Moline each year would do wonders for the market visibility problem if you can pull in some other regional teams to play there.

Seal- excellent point. I believe this is something WESTERN needs to do.

sealhall74 wrote:A handful of games in Moline each year would do wonders for the market visibility problem if you can pull in some other regional teams to play there.

Oh yea....I just realized....

WQPT, the Quad Cities PBS station is actually owned and operated by Western now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WQPT-TV#Ownership_Change
They run two channels broadcasted (24.1, 24.2), but 24.3 is open for standard-def broadcasts (which would be better than nothing)

I don't know who would be the right person to contact, but this is WQPT's directory: http://www.wiu.edu/qc/directories/qc_wqpt.php

Here's WQPT's broadcast coverage (might need to give it a minute to load the color overlay): http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapp ... 26type%3dD
So, it'd cover pretty much the entire area of western Illinois from around Monmouth up past the Quad Cities past Clinton (IA), west to the river, and east to around the Illinois river/Princeton/Dixon.
If we were able to set up something with them and also with WMEC and maybe WQEC, that'd cover just about everything in the area between the Mississippi and Illinois rivers.

So, maybe someone with some connections wants to ask around in Athletics and with some of the people in charge at WQPT and see if there might be an opportunity there.......

That is great information, Scott. I have no connections at WIU or the Quad Cities, but I can't imagine some one on the site- or someone willing to present this option to Ad and SID- can't be found. (WIU712 might be such a person, or yourself)

That really would be advantageous for WIU. Maybe they already have some WIU programming, but, adding some sports would be a great opportunity.

WEIU-TV (Eastern's PBS station) has been televising selected EIU football and basketball games for many years.

I think that WSEC (Jacksonville/Springfield), WMEC (Macomb), and WQEC (Quincy) simulcast the same programming: one studio with three transmission towers.

WTVP-TV (Peoria's PBS station) has televised some Bradley basketball games.

wiu712 wrote:WEIU-TV (Eastern's PBS station) has been televising selected EIU football and basketball games for many years.

I think that WSEC (Jacksonville/Springfield), WMEC (Macomb), and WQEC (Quincy) simulcast the same programming: one studio with three transmission towers.

WTVP-TV (Peoria's PBS station) has televised some Bradley basketball games.

Most of WSEC/WQEC/WMEC is the same programming, but I think there are instances of different programming...rare, but it happens. I don't see why WSEC wouldn't want to have Western stuff on though (unless they're opposed to all sports broadcasting). If they want to also support their local university, then I don't see why they couldn't broadcast both. Sure, there'd be instances of overlap, when both Western and UIS have games at the same time, but if you're just looking at the "revenue" sports, then there's really only basketball (UIS doesn't do football), and if they wanted to just prioritize UIS in the rare instances where both teams are playing at the same time, then I wouldn't have a problem with it. It'd still get all of Western's football games as well as the majority of the basketball games broadcast.

Also, most cable systems in the region carry all "channels" of the PBS broadcasts, so if you have cable in those areas as well, you would most likely be able to view them. For example, on the Macomb Comcast cable system, we get WMEC (Network Knowledge) on channel 6 (SD) and 916 (HD), the secondary broadcast on 219, the tertiary broadcast (that'd be .3 if you have an antenna) on 417, and we also happen to get Iowa Public Television (who frequently broadcasts Iowa sporting events...HS and occasionally college) on channel 4.

I don't know how the payment is usually structured for this type of thing. I know that public radio and tv stations frequently purchase content, especially popular programming, to air, but I don't know if that means that they'd pay Western or if Western would pay them, or what.