Comcast buys half The mtn.

The Mountain West Conference has a new television partner. And that's good news for a lot of Ute and Cougar fans who live in Utah.

The MWC and CSTV have joined with Comcast, ceding half-ownership of The mtn. — the channel devoted solely to Mountain West sports — to the cable giant. Comcast is by far the largest cable provider in Utah and the largest in the United States, with more than 23 million subscribers.

Immediate plans call for The mtn. to be available on Comcast's expanded basic cable package in Utah; CSTV will be available on the digital basic tier. (In the Salt Lake City area, expanded basic costs $46.60 a month; digital basic costs an additional dollar per month.)

Comcast will operate The mtn. and will be in charge of marketing it to other cable and satellite providers. CSTV president and CEO Brian Bedol said he expects other deals with other cable companies — as well as satellite providers Dish and DirecTV — to be announced shortly.

(CSTV is already available on both DirecTV and Dish; negotiations for The mtn. are ongoing.)

Utah (vs. Northern Arizona) and BYU (vs. Tulsa) both make their debuts on The mtn. on Sept. 9. The Cougars have seven games scheduled on The mtn. and three on CSTV; the Utes have six (possibly seven) on The mtn. and three (possibly four) on CSTV.

Ironically, the first local team to appear on The mtn. will be WAC member Utah State. The Aggies' Sept. 2 game at MWC member Wyoming is scheduled to air on the channel.

The Comcast deal quickly puts The mtn. into the Salt Lake City, Denver and Albuquerque television markets, which cover five of the nine schools in the MWC (Air Force, BYU, Colorado State, New Mexico and Utah). CSTV, the MWC and Comcast made it clear they expect more announcements before the football season kicks off.

"We assure you there will be distribution that will deliver on the promise of giving the most fans in the Mountain West territories the most access to the most games," Bedol said in an interview with the Deseret Morning News. "Whenever you go and disrupt a business as it's existed for 10 or 15 or 20 years, sometimes it takes a little bit of negotiation to get to the point where it works for the fans, where it works for the distributors. We're in a very disruptive period for the television industry and the media industry, and sometimes it just takes some candid, frank discussions to get to the point where everyone recognizes the value."

The Comcast deal begins to put The mtn. — which many scoffed at when it was announced last year — in a position to succeed.