Channel 739 for the Florida at UT game... About 30 years ago John Ward spoke at a media luncheon about building the UT sports brand. I was barely out of school and it impressed me greatly how they built public image and market share. Their plan was simple: Make UT games available as far and wide as possible. If somebody wanted to throw on orange and white and cheer for the team, it didnt matter if they attended UT or not. Welcome to the party and thank you for your support! JFG built a 70% East Tennessee market share the same way. It was a food brand built by a family over decades. Our relatives and friends worked there for years. Cas Walker himself pushed JFG practically as much as he did his own Blue Band store brand. One day JFG’s brand value became so great that it attracted a large buyer and, while the new owner was a good one, they didnt have an investment in the history of the brand. Personal relationships with stores disappeared, and the brand lost its dominance here. The UT sports brand and The SEC became so great that they attracted national attention. With that attention came huge amounts of money. Now a national cable sports network has invested major dollars into carrying as many SEC games as it can get its hands on. There’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself. It’s a testament to the value of the SEC brand and its teams. Until recently, you could find most of UT’s games on local TV stations. 99% of the population has access to over-the-air TV. The station that carried the game would make a week out of it with televised tailgates, live interviews, and inviting as many viewers as possible to watch. Most broadcast UT games generated Super Bowl-sized audiences. It didn’t matter if it was a home game or not. There could be 100,000 at Neyland and another 300,000 watching at home. The easier it was to watch, the larger the audience. Yesterday’s game was on channel 739 at my house. There’s probably 20% of the Knoxville-area population that couldn’t get the game, plus a more difficult-to-calculate number that had trouble finding the game and gave up. My mom was one of those. She’s become more a shut-in these days, and a UT game would have given her a break from some of the sameness she experiences most days. It’s hard for me to understand why ESPN stopped carrying its noon games over the air. I’m sure the stations paid them for the rights to carry them in their home markets, and ESPN should have easily generated 20% more audience (and, by extension, revenue) for its advertisers. It also gave them a platform to drive additional viewers (and subscribers) to its cable-only channels. The SEC has leverage in this. I hope it encourages ESPN go back to over-the-air broadcast of a noon game before college, SEC, and ESPN shares begin to erode. The more accessible the games, the easier it is to reach a larger audience. If viewing erodes, UT, a loyal fan base, and local businesses all stand to suffer. It would take decades to build back up.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 21:24:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015