Aug. 19, 2011
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.- For the fifth straight year, Dave Revsine, Gerry DiNardo and Howard Griffith are traveling across Big Ten country to bring fans a 30-minute, on-site preview show from every Big Ten campus on the Big Ten Football Preview Tour, presented by Culligan. The BTN crew will travel over 3,000 miles during the 15-day stretch.
Penn State's preview show will debut on Sunday, Aug. 21 at 8 p.m. ET amongst seven consecutive hours of Nittany Lions football programming on BTN. The studio crew visited a Penn State practice earlier this week.
BTN visited with head coach Joe Paterno and assistant coaches Tom Bradley and Galen Hall for the preview show. A pair of pre-season first-team All-Big Ten players, senior wide receiver Derek Moye (Rochester) and junior linebacker Michael Mauti (Mandeville, La.) also sat down with the BTN crew.
The Penn State Football Preview Show will debut as the centerpiece event of seven consecutive hours of Nittany Lion Football programming on Sunday. The network will air Penn State's 2006 FedEx Orange Bowl win over Florida State at 6:00 p.m., followed by the debut of the Preview Show.
At 8:30 p.m., Penn State's dramatic 35-21 comeback win over Northwestern in 2010 for Paterno's 400th career victory will air on BTN, followed at 10:30 p.m. by a re-airing of the Preview Show. 11:00 p.m., the Nittany Lions' wild 1989 Holiday Bowl win over BYU will air on the network, followed by the Preview Show at 1:00 a.m.
The Big Ten Network is available to more than 80 million homes through agreements with more than 300 cable, satellite and telco providers in all 50 states and Canada. Among the 27 Pennsylvania cable providers who carry BTN are: Atlantic Broadband, Beaver Valley Cable, Cablevision, CATV Service, Comcast, Consolidated Communications, Kuhn Communications, Nittany Media, RCN, Service Electric Broadband, Service Electric Cable TV & Communications, Service Electric Cablevision, Shen-Heights TV, Time-Warner Cable, Windstream, Zampelli Electronics and Zito Media.
Armstrong, Blue Ridge, MetroCast and Adams Cable, though, do not carry the Big Ten Network in Pennsylvania and the Youngstown and Media, Ohio areas. More than 35,000 Penn State alumni live in the communities served by the four cable providers in Pennsylvania and the Medina and Youngstown areas, in addition to thousands more fans and current Penn State students.
Armstrong, Blue Ridge, MetroCast and Adams Cable customers missed 115 Penn State events on BTN during the 2010-11 academic year, in addition to coverage from 15 conference championships.
BTN will carry multiple Penn State football games in 2011, including the Sept. 3 season opener vs. Indiana State (12:00 p.m.) and the Oct. 22 primetime game at Northwestern (6 p.m. CT).
About BTN: A joint venture between the Big Ten Conference and Fox Networks, BTN is the first internationally distributed network dedicated to covering one of the premier collegiate conferences in the country. With more than 800 events, all in HD, the 24/7 network is the ultimate destination for Big Ten fans and alumni across the country, allowing them to see their favorite teams, regardless of where they live. Events include football, men's and women's basketball games; dozens of Big Ten Championship events; studio shows; coaches' shows; and classic games. The network televises and streams more Olympic sporting events and women's sports than has ever been aired on any other network. Original programming highlights activities and accomplishments of some of the nation's finest universities. The groundbreaking Student U initiative provides real-world experience for students interested in careers in sports television. The network is available to more than 80 million homes across the United States and Canada, and currently has agreements with more than 300 affiliates, including AT&T U-Verse, Atlantic Broadband, Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox, DirecTV, DISH Network, Insight, Mediacom, Rogers Cable (Canada), Shaw Cable and Shaw Direct (Canada), Time Warner Cable and Verizon FiOS. For updated information on BTN, go to www.BTN.com.