SK & the Sixers coming to CU
General August 16th, 2007
Woot. Last time I saw O.A.R. in Champaign, Steven Kellogg and the Sixers was opening for them and it turned out to be one of those weird experiences where the opening band is better than the headliner. Now, to be fair, the lead guy from O.A.R. had the flu and toughing it out. He was, as I recall them explaining it, going off stage in between songs to hurl. Ugh. So SK & the Sixers came back out and did two more songs with the band to help things along, and anyway, it was a good time.
I’m on SK’s email list, and they announced their fall tour. They’re doing two sets in CU:
Sun. 10/14
Borders Books and Music
Champaign, IL
2PM
FREE!
Sun. 10/14
The Canopy Club
Urbana, IL
8PM
Plus very special guest Tyrone Wells
Anyway, if they’re coming anywhere your way, and you like that singer/songwriter gritty pop angsty guitar thing, check them out. Looks like they’re in Chicago and St. Louis (and almost everywhere in the next 6 months except the Virgin Islands, sorry Meg)
Insight and the Big10 Network
General August 16th, 2007
www.insight-com.com/contact.asp?
www.insight-com.com/6571.htm
To our Big Ten fans:
Dear customer,
Like you, we at Insight are big college sports fans and there is nothing we’d like more than to be able to add the Big Ten Network to our cable systems.
Unfortunately, The Big Ten Network is demanding carriage on our Classic service so they can collect their expensive license fees from virtually all cable customers, not just those interested in college sports.
Fees for sports programming are reeling out of control as sport franchises spin off a limited number of games to create new narrowly specific networks and demand basic cable carriage forcing all cable customers to pay much higher fees for programming.
Insight has consistently been a leader in delivering sports programming from the top sports networks. We were among the first cable companies to carry ESPNU, College Sports Television and the NFL Network. We carry these specialized networks in an appropriate optional package with similar networks. We would very much like to add the Big Ten Network games to this package but BTN has refused to allow us to do so.
I assure you that we want to try to find an agreeable compromise with BTN. We understand that you and other customers are disappointed. We are too. We serve a number of college towns and understand the passion of college sports fans. But, we also want to be fair to customers who are not interested in additional expensive sports programming and BTN won’t allow this. We hope you understand and will join with us to ask BTN to reconsider allowing our customers a choice.
Sincerely,
Michael S. Willner
Vice Chairman & CEO
I think that breaks down to mean:
* BTN isn’t going to be on Insight until BTN caves and allows them to carry it as a part of their sports package. (Will that be resolved by the end of August?)
* The cost of my sports package is probably going to go up, probably on the order of $1-2 a month.
* Because it’s in the digital sports package, we better get an HD feed from it. That sounds obvious, but it’s not… We currently get the NFL network in “Insight 2.0,” but only in SD.
* It’s not clear how much of this decision is Insight’s or Comcast, who will take over Insight in our area by the end of 2007. Comcast is having its own battles with BTN.
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