With the Super Bowl coming up this weekend, a number of students will miss out on shows previewing the big game since the nation's leading sports-entertainment channel is unavailable in many dormitories.
But administration officials have heard their complaints, and are negotiating to bring ESPN to more dorms.
Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman said that he will join University Information Technology (UIT) officials in meeting with the university's cable provider, Falls Earth Station, Inc., to discuss the possibility of adding ESPN to students' options in on-campus dorm rooms.
"We've asked [UIT] ... to see if they can arrange to have some premiums brought in, but particularly ESPN, which is what students seem to ask for most," Reitman said.
Adding ESPN to dorm rooms is not a new goal. Negotiations have been going on for years, and Marj Minnigh, the manager of networks and special projects at UIT, spoke with Falls Earth about the issue multiple times last semester, according to Dawn Irish, associate director of outreach for UIT.
"Basically, we know that ESPN is an important station for the students, so we're always looking to expand ESPN coverage for the campus," Irish said.
In the fall semester of 2006, Tufts Computing and Communication Services (TCCS) announced the availability of ESPN channels in the common rooms of Hodgdon, Carmichael, West, Haskell, Houston, Lewis, Stratton, South, Wren and Sophia Gordon Halls.
But the service hit roadblocks. Soon after TCCS' announcement, multiple students reported difficulties accessing the ESPN channels. Remotes or instructions for accessing ESPN went missing in some lounges, and televisions were reportedly broken in others.
"Falls Earth was able to negotiate with ESPN to put it in the common areas for a price that was semi-reasonable, but it wasn't something that we could extend to all the dorm rooms," Irish said. Other dorms, Irish added, did not have enough occupancy space to fulfill pricing criteria.
Prices prohibit ESPN in dorm rooms
Irish estimated that the costs of carrying ESPN to all campus dorm rooms would be between $50,000 and $70,000. The main obstacle to bringing ESPN to dorm rooms is that the Walt Disney Company, which owns ESPN, forces cable providers to buy a package of less popular channels in order to get the flagship network. This type of practice, known as bundling, makes it very expensive to acquire the station one wants.
"If it was, let's say, $75,000 to get the entire feed we now get - 95 channels or something - the one premium of ESPN would cost another $75,000, which seems kind of ridiculous to me and is something that the [School of Arts & Sciences] would not choose to [buy]," Reitman said. "Instead, we're hoping [that after negotiations,] that feed would just go to the monitors in the common areas ... for a lot less money."
Reitman would like to add ESPN to more dorms' common areas, which would promote the use of these areas for social events.
Under the current pricing package, adding ESPN to each dorm room would force the university to start charging students an additional cost for cable television, Reitman said. Currently, students do not pay for cable television, which is provided through UIT, he said. The addition of ESPN, though, would double the university's cable spending, according to estimates from Reitman and Falls Earth Chief Operating Officer Gerald Barnes.
'? la carte' service not an option
Barnes said that the practice of bundling prevents Falls Earth from providing dorm rooms with ESPN. He said that the problem might be alleviated if he could use a method called "? la carte," in which individual students would be able to pay specially for ESPN along with some other sports stations. But Walt Disney mandates that cable providers offer ESPN only in its basic packages.
"If we could go ? la carte and only charge the ones that want it, that would be wonderful, but that's not going to happen. ESPN doesn't allow that," Barnes said.
Barnes said cable providers do not prefer the idea of ? la carte cable either, because it could lead consumers to limit their cable packages to a handful of channels.
"If people only bought the channels they wanted, who would buy Women's Entertainment or something like that? Nobody would buy them," Barnes said.
UIT and Falls Earth are considering another option, in which they would offer ESPN through subscriptions through IP addresses, although Barnes would not go into detail.
"At some point, what will happen is we may be able to offer a subscription to service in a different venue that the individual students would pay," Barnes said. "We'll see where that goes; we don't know yet."
