southpaw

The Vikings win?

I don't know the numbers of people who park in the lot and pay the $10. As has been said before, people can park near the lot, walk there and get a free ride I believe. The $80 covers the cost of the shuttle bus but what about the cost of the employees at the parking ramp? The employees driving the busses? It's going to cost more than $820 for all of that.

Bartels is going to have some good receivers to throw to in the future

Not odd at all. Just because they're both government programs doesn't mean they just cover the costs. I work at the admin level at a school district. If a high school wants to use some of our equipment, they have to pay for it. Both of our budgets come from the same place but we have to cover the costs of equipment breaking and replacement. Same deal with busses and UND.

The best thing that could happen for UND sports (and Midco) this season is for Root, Altitude or some other regional network carried on DirecTV and Dish to make an agreement with Midco to pick up the feed of UND hockey. That way it is more accessible to more viewers. However, it would most likely involved Midco just giving away their signal for free, something that they aren't likely to do because then there is no incentive for DirecTV or Dish owners in Midcoland to switch to Midco.

Of course they did. It's the same way UND got FCS to originally air sports other than hockey. It's why the NCAA sells all of its rights (except basketball) to one entity. You want Notre Dame football, you also have to air Notre Dame hockey and basketball. You want UND hockey you also have to air UND football, basketball and volleyball. I highly doubt Notre Dame hockey gets any money from NBCSN.

Hockey East already had a contract with NBCSN prior to Notre Dame joining. By adding Notre Dame, the number of non-ND games on NBCSN went from a whopping 4 last year to an incredible 5! Adding Notre Dame did nothing to help Hockey East's broadcasts get on NBCSN. There was nothing stopping them from getting NBCSN as their broadcast partner after Notre Dame went to Hockey East. Except that NBCSN doesn't care about airing college Hockey East games, so why would it care about airing NCHC games? CBSSN aired 8 Hockey East conference matchups last year, compared to the 4 on NBCSN. What good is a tv contract/partnership if it doesn't really benefit the conference? CBSSN is airing 15 regular season league games plus the playoffs. The network is airing two non-NCHC games this season. Seems like a pretty great television deal. NBCSN is capping their broadcasts of Hockey East games to "up to 12" total over two years. The only positive to that deal is that there isn't an exclusivity clause, otherwise it's a meaningless deal and is crap compared to the NCHC/CBSSN deal.

For the same reason that UND doesn't have the FCS setup anymore. Notre Dame wanted their own broadcast deal in addition to any NCHC broadcast deal. The NCHC wouldn't cave to that (just like it didn't for UND) but Hockey East did. The NCHC was officially formed in July, with Western Mich and SCSU added in September. The CBSSN deal wasn't finished until January. The NCHC members chose the CBSSN deal (except for UND, who didn't want the exclusivity clause). NBCSN didn't sign a new deal with Hockey East once Notre Dame joined, they just reupped their existing contract. There is no exclusivity clause in that deal, other than during games broadcast by NBCSN. However, Hockey East is only getting 17 games aired on NBCSN, one fewer than the NCHC on CBSSN. 12 of those are Notre Dame home games. I'm sure UND fans would have been just fine had UND only been part of just a couple of the games aired on NBCSN. The CBSSN agreement is better for the NCHC than the NBCSN is for Hockey East. The NBCSN deal would have been better for UND, as games would have been allowed on FCS. Although, who knows if the NBCSN deal would have been available to the NCHC had Notre Dame joined.

Actually, my source who told me about Faison being the only one who voted against the CBSSN deal also said the NCHC decided to move on from Notre Dame. The NCHC got fed up with Notre Dame dragging its feet as the school was trying to decide between the NCHC and Hockey East. Apparently, talks had gone back and forth and it seemed like ND to the NCHC was imminent several times, but the NCHC got tired of being played and the schools felt they needed to make a decision on an 8th member so they said no thanks to Notre Dame.

Yup... just a simple press of a button while pointing the camera at the ice. It was difficult to watch because their "tight" camera (the one that looked like crap) was only slightly tighter than the wide one. Pretty brutal to watch.

I can already tell that Midco/UND has changed how they're sending the game to AmericaOne this game. It's the straight truck feed where in past weeks it went to Midco HQ and then was uplinked. It could be that the internet at the Alerus is not strong enough to handle this high quality of the stream. It could be that the computer UND uses for football isn't fast enough. Lots of different possible reasons, just wish they could get it figured out so we get the HQ feed without the buffering issues.

Nice to see AmericaOne/Midco are now sending the widescreen feed of today's football game. It looks pretty nice, although it's buffered more than any of the hockey games I've seen this year.

It is not a Midco sports net production. It's being produced by whatever company does Miami games. It's just being picked up on the UND webcast because Miami also does Neulion. No clue about HD or quality.

One huge reason why Minnesota is often able to skate the puck in is because they play most of their games on Olympic ice so they have the room to do that.

How does one go about forcing special tv rights to a conference?

Without the NCHC, UND would have been in the minority in the WCHA. Without Western Michigan and SCSU there wouldn't have been an NCHC. Without DU and CC there wouldn't have been an NCHC.

I feel bad for the people who haven't invested in a laptop to stream the games. I'm fortunate that I have a work laptop I can use. However, I would much rather buy (or use) a laptop than have to pay $60+ a month in cable fees just to watch UND hockey. I don't watch TV outside of UND sports so it would be expensively pointless for me to invest so much money when for a $40 internet feed, a $63 Neulion membership and a $400 laptop I can watch all of the home games. I easily break even in one year compared to the monthly costs of cable with the added sports package.

As an NCHC fan, thank you to those suit coats who increased the exposure for the league by signing this deal that brings 18 regular season games, plus playoffs to a national TV network. As a UND fan, thank you to Brian Faison for not accepting the watered down WCHA and bringing us into the NCHC. Thank you for voting against the TV contract that took away UND games on FCS. Thank you for continuing to work to get the other UND sports aired nationally on FCS.

I had the game running in the background of my computer but missed nearly all of it. I'm glad they dropped them handily in 3 games but sad I didn't get to really watch it. Let's make it 10-0!

I definitely think there is the demand for it. Everyone in Midco's viewing area should be contacting Midco as often as possible to inquire/pressure about picking up away feeds.

Just bought three plane tickets from Denver to Omaha. So glad we don't have to drive! Leaving Saturday afternoon, arriving back Monday afternoon.

I never doubted they were capable of putting the signal out there. Most stations don't own their own HD sat truck. Even in larger cities, most companies just rent. Especially for sports broadcasting, there are companies that handle just the sat uplink aspect of the broadcast. You don't just add a couple hd cameras and a few other pieces of equipment and suddenly you're making HD tv. We did it on the cheap for the 100k and we have at least 20 pieces of HD specific equipment in the trailer alone. I haven't been inside Midco's HD trailer but I've seen pictures. It's a legit trailer. It easily rivals what Altitude, Root Sports Rocky Mountain, and CBSSports Network have (I have been in those trucks). No way any of those trailers were even close to $400,000. That's a lot of money for a company in Grand Forks/Fargo that isn't pulling in cash like crazy. It most likely has to do with the history of the stations (ownership groups). KVLY has been doing broadcasts for years (think state hockey tournament, etc). WDAY/Z haven't been doing it nearly as long. However, when Forum Comm got into the live sports industry, they most likely had just purchased a fairly new SD setup. Having worked at KVLY, they were using their very old equipment even up until at least 2007. It was likely much easier for them to buy HD equipment because they hadn't recently invested in SD, like Forum Comm had.

Capable of what? Putting an HD signal on FTA? That's nowhere close to the same as producing a sports broadcast in HD. I just purchased a very basic HD production trailer for work. It's a three camera setup (two of which aren't very good) and has a basic graphics system. Total cost was $100,000. But it's for high school sports, so it doesn't need to be top-notch. To have a truck capable of producing high quality broadcasts in an arena the size of the Ralph would be at least four times that price.

I have been able to stream it great on a 64-bit computer.

Keikla, SiouxTupa and myself will be there. Trying to decide if we want to fly from Denver now that we can get roundtrip tickets for $83. Not really looking forward to the long drive from/to the Springs.