Football Supplement | Penn football Versus television execs

For a while, at least, it seemed like the economic climate that has hurt so many industries would affect Penn football.

Unable to find a presenting sponsor, the Versus television network could not continue its Ivy League-wide package that debuted last season.

But Versus was still willing to carry select games to its 73 million subscribers, and yesterday it announced that Penn's conference opener at Dartmouth Oct. 3 will air nationally.

To accommodate the coverage, the start time will be pushed up from 1:30 p.m to noon.

"This is somewhat typical in the television world," said Alanna Shanahan, Penn's senior associate director of athletics. "You will get a call [on] two or three weeks notice that there is a programming window that needs to be filled and somebody's interested in putting you on TV. Sometimes you just kind of get lucky."

Versus is currently slated to air four Ivy matchups, showcasing seven of the eight schools. Columbia is the only one not represented, while Yale gets on twice because of The Game. So this year's lineup is still not technically a conference package, since the Ancient Eight's athletic directors had insisted that all teams be included.

Last year, the games were branded as "The Ivy League Game of the Week, Presented by TIAA-CREF." This summer, Versus balked when neither the retirement-planning firm nor anyone else was willing to sponsor the package. Those dollars help defray production costs; no Ivy schools received any money.

Versus must have found another way to make the endeavor affordable, since Penn and Dartmouth will not pay Versus.

The network approached institutions individually, selecting games "based on the schedule of availability [Versus] had," Ivy League associate director for communications Scottie Rodgers said. (Nobody involved with Versus' programming decisions was available for comment.)

Shanahan and others in the Athletic Department spoke with Versus early on. But their hands were already somewhat tied. Penn has a longtime relationship with Comcast - its current contract runs through June 2011 with mutual options to renew thereafter - which guarantees the Philadelphia-based provider certain opponents each year. By the time Versus came calling, the Villanova and Yale games were gone. So was the Princeton Homecoming matchup, which was pushed back to 3:30 p.m. to accommodate Comcast.

Comcast owns Versus, but that didn't change the slated lineup.

"Those conversations take place on very different tracts. … As much as you'd think a Comcast-Versus discussion may take place, it's sort of a silo effect," Shanahan said.

"A lot of our most attractive football entities had already been promised to Comcast. So at that point, we probably became a little less attractive than maybe some other institutions to a network like Versus."

As it turned out, the only Penn game on Versus last season was the lowest-rated Ivy telecast. According to Rodgers, the Homecoming battle with Brown received a 0.06 share, the percentage of active TV-watching households viewing the game, which was less than the roughly 0.1 average across the five games. (The rating is even lower, since that includes TVs not in use.)

But Shanahan said that those figures were on par with Comcast's and not "first and foremost" in the conversations with Versus.

She added that over the past few years, Penn television ratings have not fluctuated substantially, regardless of on-field performance.

That on-field performance, though, could lead to an interesting situation: The Quakers' visit to Harvard Nov. 14 could determine the conference champion but is not slated to be carried by any media outlet.

Penn tried to get Comcast to cover it, but the network balked because of scheduling issues. And since the game is in Boston, any Versus discussions would go through Harvard.

"Maybe that becomes an attractive enough entity as the season progresses that there's interest elsewhere," Shanahan said.

Still, Penn is pleased with its exposure. Comcast Sports Network will air three home games, while RCN has the Sept. 26 matchup at Lafayette.

"We've made great strides on the institutional side," Shanahan said. ."To have a league package as well as our institutional arrangements, we could have the majority of our games covered, which would be tremendous."

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