Keep the remote nearby

If planning ahead for next football season, Utah and BYU fans will want to make sure they have access to four — possibly five — channels to see all of their team's games on TV.

Well, all of the Cougars' games and all but one of the Utes' matchups. There is no TV planned for Utah's Oct. 13 home game against San Diego State.

(And if you're asking yourself if we were promised that all games would be telecast under the terms of the Mountain West Conference's deal with CSTV, yes, we were. Pretty much. But this is a decision made at the U. to try to sell more tickets by holding a home game out of the package.)

Anyway, you'll need The mtn. to see five Utah games and six BYU games. You'll need CSTV to see one Utah game and three BYU games.

You'll need either The mtn. or CSTV to see the BYU-Utah game, because it will be simulcast on both channels.

Two Utah games and one BYU game will be on Versus, which is as close to a national telecast as the Mountain West Conference gets these days. Versus is available in more than 70 million homes; CSTV in maybe 20 million; The mtn. in 1,436 homes. (OK, just kidding about The mtn. But firm numbers are not forthcoming from the distributors.)

And there are a couple of games that will be on TV — we just don't know what channel yet. And we won't for a while. Utah has a game at Oregon State, and BYU has a game at UCLA, both Pac-10 schools. The Pac-10 has contracts with ABC/ESPN and with Fox Sports Net, so those games could be on an ESPN channel of some sort, Ch. 4 or FSN.

(In college football, the home team's TV contract is the one that matters. BYU's game at Tulsa is on CSTV not because the Mountain West has a deal with that channel, but because Conference USA does.)

The good news is that most cable or satellite packages available in Utah have ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and FSN in their lineups. (Not all of them have ESPNU, however, which is available in far fewer homes nationally than even CSTV.)

The bad news is that not all cable or satellite packages have CSTV, The mtn. and Versus. That was once again painfully obvious when viewers started calling the paper, confused because the MWC men's basketball tournament was on all three channels — The mtn. for the first round; CSTV for the second; Versus for the third.

As for the question that's asked over and over again — when will The mtn. be available on Dish and/or DirecTV? — I have absolutely no idea. Neither, apparently, does anyone else.