BYU finding ways to get games on TV

As the year comes to an end, the MWC television distribution with the satellite companies remains up in the air. No pun intended.

But there is a glimmer, little sliver of light, in the issue, and it comes as a result of an outside strategy.

Remember when BYU hired a media attorney early last summer by the name of Kelly Crabb of Morrison and Forester of Los Angeles? And, remember when Utah and then the rest of the MWC agreed it was a good idea to have this guy forage around inside the 100-plus-page contract signed by the league and CSTV?

Well, Mr. Crabb has found some inroads in getting BYU sporting events on satellite, despite the frustrating stalemate negotiations between Comcast and CSTV and dish companies DirectTV and DishNetwork.

The result is live televised BYU basketball games, including Saturday's matchup between Michigan State and the Cougars at EnergySolutions Arena.

Crabb discovered BYU retains all rights to broadcast events when they are staged on neutral sites.

This past week, BYU invoked those rights by airing the Spartan-Cougar game on BYU-TV, a potential U.S. audience of 48 million TV sets, plus distribution over satellite in South America.

It was a classic power play that BYU won in the airways because of Crabb and his reading glasses.

BYU elicited these rights, although Comcast/CSTV partner Versus planned to do the game nationally. BYU never excluded Versus from also airing the game to its broad 60 million-plus audience on cable and dish platforms. BYU even included a local TV station, extending rights to KJZZ-TV.

But while BYU's sports information office tried to figure out how to set three TV broadcast crews and three production trucks at the EnergySolutions Arena on Thursday, Versus pulled out.

The sports network didn't give BYU a reason. It just pulled its game plan and crew.

In a sense, this was a shot fired over the bow of CSTV/Comcast and the dish companies. Better get something done.

BYU-TV has become an ace in the hole for BYU right now. It is found on basic packages of both Dish Network and DirectTV and is on approximately 200 cable TV systems.

It also provides a free live program stream over the Internet (www.byutv.org).

And Saturday wasn't the first time BYU-TV became a player, thanks to Crabb.