CSTV to launch sports network to carry Mountain West sports

SAN DIEGO -- The first regional sports network dedicated to a single conference has a name and a football schedule. It just doesn't have agreements to be carried on cable in two of the Mountain West Conference's biggest markets.

The MountainWest Sports Network will debut on Sept. 2 with four games, starting with Utah State at Wyoming.

Chris Bevilacqua, president of CSTV Regional Networks, said that while his company has a national agreement with Cox, it doesn't yet have agreements with local providers in San Diego and Las Vegas.

Bevilacqua and MWC commissioner Craig Thompson are optimistic agreements will be reached before the season starts.

"This kind of stuff in our business happens all the time," Bevilacqua said following a news conference Wednesday. "The value of the programming is clear. Everybody knows how valuable San Diego State is in this market. Cox doesn't have 90 percent of the market because they don't know how to serve their local customers. They know that in order to best serve their local customers, this programming is very, very important to that end."

In August 2004, the nine-team Mountain West Conference, which spans three time zones, signed a seven-year, $82 million deal with CSTV that began last year.

It will carry 36 football games, 150 basketball games and more than 200 games in minor sports, as well as other programming.

"You've got to take it sequentially," Thompson said. "We're announcing it, announcing what's going to be on it and showing some of the programming that will to be on it. Hopefully that will spur local interest and local cable operators to say, 'This looks like a must-carry station.'"

Thompson said it will aim to be fan-friendly. The majority of the network's football games will be played on Saturday afternoons, rather than in the evening, and only one will be on a Thursday night.

When CSTV came looking for a conference partner, "Our board just said, 'ESPN, we're very thankful and appreciative, but we don't want to play on Tuesday night in football, and we don't want to play at 10 o'clock on Monday nights,"' Thompson said. "We were tired of the times and the commitments that they were putting us into."