Steve Attempts to Explain the NET Baseball Debate

Steve Pederson in today's Lincoln Journal-Star tries once again to explain the ill-fated decision to dump Nebraska ETV for Husker baseball. The first change in the story is that NET only asked to do 3 games, 2 of which conflicted with the Big XII's agreement with FSN. The implication is that it wasn't worth it to only have 1 game on NET, so that's where Cox came into the picture.

Of course, nothing is said about whether the athletic department ever gave NET the opportunity to try some other dates. We are left to assume that NET was denied the opportunity to look at other dates.

The next broadcasts on Cox will have a slightly larger audience. Charter Cable (which covers Kearney, Grand Island, Hastings, North Platte, and Scottsbluff) will carry the game as well as Cox cable systems in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and Kansas. Still not the same reach as CSTV, though.

Pederson also implied that Kevin Kugler played a part in the decision to dump NETV, though he claims it has more to do with "branding" than Kugler's criticism on KOZN radio:

“As we do with Pinnacle and everybody else, we have made the request that we be able to select the talent for our broadcasts. A lot of that is branding. We want to use our people. We try to use Jim Rose as much as we can. We try to use Greg Sharpe a lot. He did the basketball broadcasts for us. We have asked (to have) input on that, which as far as I know, is pretty typical for most universities.

“Our issue is not one announcer. Our issue is we want our own announcer brand in our product, and that’s a pretty reasonable request on the part of any university.”

"Branding"? Does that mean that Steve Pederson will be requesting that ABC use Sharpe instead of Brent Musberger?

In other words, Kevin Kugler: "Good Night and Good Luck."