MMM Question for Chicos

[Eye]

Have a buddy who's a U of L fan who has DirecTV. We usually watch all the tournament games at another buddy's house, but he was wondering how many of the tournament games via the MMM package will be available in HD? I don't have HD capabilities, so this is a guess, but I'm guessing locals aren't available in HD in La Crosse, WI, so that would eliminate approximately 27 games if my math is correct? But how many of the other 36 or so games that are available only via the package will be shown in HD?

Thanks much in advance for you answer and GO WARRIORS!

[ChicosBailBonds]

Have a buddy who's a U of L fan who has DirecTV. We usually watch all the tournament games at another buddy's house, but he was wondering how many of the tournament games via the MMM package will be available in HD? I don't have HD capabilities, so this is a guess, but I'm guessing locals aren't available in HD in La Crosse, WI, so that would eliminate approximately 27 games if my math is correct? But how many of the other 36 or so games that are available only via the package will be shown in HD?

Thanks much in advance for you answer and GO WARRIORS!

This year...ALL OF THEM. There are 37 games in MMM, all 37 games this year will be delivered to us by CBS in HD which we will then pass through to customers.

Now, if you are in a city that doesn't have HD locals, the games that are blacked out on MMM would be on your local CBS and "should" be in HD if we have launched those markets.  LaCrosse is not a market that is in HD yet...you are correct.  So basically you would get the 37 games in HD that are in HD.  For customers with a local market in HD, they would get, in theory, all 64 games (ESPN has the play in, 37 MMM, 26 on your local CBS).  There is ONE EXCEPTION to this rule, and that is in the Multicast markets (Milwaukee is one of them) where the local cable company is broadcasting the tournament.  Out of 210 markets, there are something like 23 that have permission to do this.  In those markets, sometimes the local CBS has to use up all of it's capacity to put the games on, so it pulls down HD so it can show all the games locally say on Time Warner.  As a result, they don't emit their signal in HD.  They are not supposed to be able to do that and last year we raised holy hell, so we'll see what happens.

As an example, last year Stanford's game was on in HD everywhere in the country except...you got it...the Bay Area.  That's because the Bay Area local CBS station was multicasting and as a result the pulled down their HD feeds in order to put up all the games to save bandwidth.  Thus, they send only an SD local signal out.  That meant Stanford fans couldn't see the game in HD in their own television market.

Hope that helps

[Eye]

Thanks much Chicos. You've just made another sale.

And GO MO ACKER!