Baba Bevo: How Texas & Big 12 Mirror Howard Stern & Sirius
By Kyle Kensing
The Longhorn Network made Texas the King of All College Football Media. The Big 12 Conference needed to bend to UT’s will in order to survive last summer, yet the league is no closer to survival now than June 2010. If anything, the conference’s position is more precarious than it has ever been, but Texas’s life raft off the sinking ship is a plush yacht with DirecTV and a keg of Shiner Bock. UT’s situation in some ways mirrors the partnership between King of All Media Howard Stern and Sirius Satellite Radio.
When Sirius signed Stern to a five-year, $500 million contract in late 2004 to begin in Jan. 2006, the fledgling company was struggling to survive. The satellite radio medium was niche at best, and Sirius was a decided No. 2 to XM in said niche. Stern’s arrival on the un-FCC-encumbered medium was met with much fanfare and elevated Sirius to the satellite genre’s forefront.
Love him or hate him, Stern’s impact on entertainment the last three decades is undeniable. In Stern, any platform to host him has a face, and with that face the promise of millions guaranteed to follow. Texas football is similar. Plenty of fans aren’t exactly enamored with the swagger, the Hook ‘Em hand gestures, the burnt orange and white pomp and circumstance. But few fan bases, if any, have the same devotion as the Longhorns’. Texas is the quintessential face of a conference, and the Big 12 recognized that in the same way Sirius saw it in Stern.
Sirius gained over two million subscribers in Stern’s first year, and in less than three consumed its former competitor XM. Stern was the driving force behind the company’s survival and expansion. Yet, Sirius never quite expanded beyond a niche capacity. Sure, it comes standard in certain new car models, but subscriber figures have been stagnant in recent years. So have Sirius stocks, which are slightly more valuable than a chili-stained ticket stub to Texas’s 2007 game vs. Arkansas State. A merger wasn’t the surge of energy Sirius needed, and its flagship’s contract was nearing expiration last year. Desperate to keep the subscribers it gained upon Stern’s arrival, the company re-signed him for another five years, another $500 million, and with a lighter schedule. And still, the medium appears destined for a sooner-than-later collapse in part because of its savior.
UT commands the lion’s share of Big 12 revenue even without the Longhorn Network. Factor that in, and UT is on an entirely different tax bracket from its Big 12 brethren and boasts a major benefit over the rest of the league. OK’ing the Longhorn Network was the Big 12’s way of keeping UT on board in the short term, but potentially sinking its future long-term. Similarly, Sirius gave Stern three-day work weeks but the same money while doing little to improve the overall product. The company is in a no-win position of needing to keep its franchise in order to succeed, but needing to simultaneously have the resources and resolve to complete restructure its model, the exact same position the Big finds itself in.
Meanwhile, other conferences are evolving, only exacerbating the Big 12’s broader issues. The Pac-12 just brokered a record breaking television contract, while splitting revenue among its members equally. The SEC is on tap to negotiate its own record breaker. The Big 12 remains in television limbo, but UT singularly is just fine. Its history and its loyal following will ensure that. Stern can move to any medium, including those like phone/internet based applications that are far more cost efficient and accessible than Sirius, those programs that are the wave of the future both the Big 12 and Sirius strove to be, but weren’t. Stern doesn’t need Sirius, but Sirius needs Stern. Sound like a familiar partnership?