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Message: [QUOTE="CuseLegacy, post: 2962232, member: 469"] [URL]https://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/news/2019/03/18/espn-acc-officials-introduce-soon-to-launch.html[/URL] By Erik Spanberg – Managing Editor, Charlotte Business Journal Mar 18, 2019, 6:54am EDT A documentary about Coach K’s early-career struggles as Duke basketball coach. A multi-part series exploring the history of the men’s basketball tournament. And a daily morning show featuring a pair of North Carolina broadcasters whose fathers became synonymous with college basketball in previous decades. Say hello to ACCN, as in the ACC Network, an ESPN-owned cable channel that goes on air in August. On Friday afternoon at Spectrum Center, hours before the tip-off of the men’s basketball tournament semifinals, the conference commissioner joined ESPN executives, announcers and producers to preview the new channel and some of its first shows. The main draw will be live sports — 1,300 games and events annually — featuring the 15 schools in the Greensboro, N.C.-based conference. ESPN’s main broadcast campus in Bristol, Conn., will be headquarters for ACCN. Even so, the channel’s signature program, Packer and Durham, will air live for three hours on weekday mornings from a soon-to-be-converted basement in the Charlotte, N.C., home of co-host Mark Packer. Rosalyn Durant, ESPN senior vice president of college networks, whose oversight includes ACCN, told me Friday that other staffers and aspects of the network will run through Charlotte. Durant herself is based in Charlotte. “It’s marrying two tremendous brands in ESPN and the Atlantic Coast Conference,” John Swofford, commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, said Friday. Conference and network executives disclosed in December, at a news conference in Charlotte before the ACC Football Championship, that ACCN would debut Aug. 22, 2019. And, they said then, Clemson and Georgia Tech would play in the first football game on the network on Aug. 29. Notre Dame at Duke on Nov. 9 is also slated for ACCN, with more football games to be added in the months ahead. On Friday, ESPN/ACCN senior director of programming and acquisition Stacie McCollum said the first four men’s basketball games to be shown on the network will be consecutive doubleheaders featuring Louisville at Miami and Georgia Tech at N.C. State on Nov. 5 and Notre Dame at North Carolina followed by Virginia at Syracuse on Nov. 6. “We were really excited to start the season with conference matchups,” she said. “We worked hand in hand with the conference to ensure that we had marquee teams. … Those four games only equate to about 8 hours of programming; I still have a lot of work to do.” McCollum and her co-workers have 9,000 hours a year to fill with ACC games and related programming. The impetus for the network is two-fold: promoting the conference to prospective recruits, students and fans; and increasing revenue to keep up with rivals, including the Southeastern Conference and Big Ten. Big Ten Network, owned by Fox Sports and the conference, started in 2007 and is based in Chicago. SEC Network, like ACCN an ESPN-owned channel, followed in 2014. SEC Network is located in Charlotte as part of ESPN’s 38,000-square-foot offices and studios in Ballantyne. Big Ten and SEC Network each have distribution in the range of 60 million homes, with SEC Network slightly ahead. Durant declined to estimate how many homes ACCN will be in when it goes on the air, but she said distribution deals and advertising commitments are progressing as anticipated. This week, ESPN disclosed an agreement with DirecTV, an important national distributor. Revenue from dedicated college conference channels, derived mainly from subscriber fees, helps fuel the arms race of lucrative coaching contracts, training centers and stadiums and arenas in football and men’s basketball. Big Ten schools receive $50 million each from media rights and other shared revenue, including the dedicated network, while the SEC stands at $43 million. In 2016-17, the most recent data available for ACC revenue, each school received less than $30 million. Swofford did not share internal revenue projections for ACCN, but he did say he’s confident the channel will strengthen the league financially. The advantages of ESPN’s sprawling media empire to fuel ACCN became apparent Friday. John Dahl, an ESPN Films executive who has played a lead role in the “30 for 30” documentary series, showed previews of “The Class That Saved Coach K,” scheduled to premiere on Aug. 22 on ACCN, and “The Tournament: A History of ACC Basketball.” Coach K is Mike Krzyzewski, who became head basketball coach at Duke in 1980 but struggled for several years before creating a powerhouse that remains one of the nation’s top programs. Krzyzewski has led Duke to five national titles, and he’s won more games than any other Division I coach. One of his former players — and a member of the 1982 recruiting class featured in the documentary — is Charlotte resident Jay Bilas, who is also ESPN’s lead college basketball analyst. Bilas is an executive producer of the documentary. Younger fans, Bilas said, will see the history of the ACC through the documentaries. And, referring to basketball fashion in the 1970s and 1980s, he added, “They’ll be really horrified at the shorts.” The weekday talk show, called “Packer and Durham,” is co-hosted by Mark Packer and Wes Durham. Packer’s father, Billy Packer, played basketball at Wake Forest in the early 1960s and became much better known as a game analyst for Raycom Sports, NBC and CBS. Wes Durham is the son of the late Woody Durham, who was the radio voice of UNC Chapel Hill for 40 years. Mark Packer and Wes Durham have covered the ACC as broadcasters for most of their careers. Last year, they teamed up for an ACC-themed show on SiriusXM satellite radio, leading to the ACCN version that will start in August. (It will also be simulcast on SiriusXM.) Packer and Durham said Friday that they are most excited about ESPN’s focus on making the new channel feel familiar and comfortable to ACC fans. And they both emphasized their interest in telling stories about coaches and teams in all sports, not just football and men’s basketball. So-called Olympic sports, including soccer, volleyball, track, swimming and gymnastics, “will be incredibly important to the network,” said Amy Rosenfeld, ACCN senior coordinating producer. “We have to best reflect the conference,” she added, describing the network’s approach. Gesturing to Packer and Durham, seated nearby, Rosenfeld said, “How can you be more authentic than these two? All the things that are working in the ACC, we’re going to continue that, amplify it and kind of get out of the way.” This week, a promotional campaign started for ACCN. It included frequent mentions of the August debut during ESPN’s coverage of the men’s tournament in Charlotte as well as banners and other nods to the conference cable channel throughout the city's uptown area and Spectrum Center. Swofford, the commissioner, said ACC and school administrators heard an update about ACCN on Wednesday in Charlotte from ESPN President James Pitaro and came away impressed. ESPN has final say on the conference channel’s programming and on-air crew, but Swofford said the ACC is working closely with ESPN to provide ideas and suggestions. [/QUOTE]

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