Versus (TV channel)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Versus (Formerly OLN)

Launched	July 1995
Owned by	Comcast
Website	versus.com
Availability
Satellite
DirecTV	Channel 608
Dish Network	Channel 151
Cable
	(check local listings for availability and channel)

Versus (known as OLN until September 25, 2006) is a cable television sports channel owned by Comcast and shown in the United States. The OLN brand was retained in Canada, and with the exception of select sports (notably ice hockey), simulcasts all of Versus programming. Formerly, OLN stood for the Outdoor Life Network, and the name was licensed from Outdoor Life Magazine. Under that name, the channel was launched in 1995 and at the time focused almost exclusively on fishing, hunting, and related outdoor pursuits.

1 Programming
2 Coverage
3 Distribution
4 Viewer complaints
5 Versus HD
6 Logos
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Programming

Versus' current programming is an unusual mix of extreme sports, more sedate fare like hunting, and coverage of professional cycling and ice hockey. Versus currently owns the American rights to live coverage of the Tour de France. Versus also acquired the cable rights for National Hockey League games as The NHL on Versus. It also picked up the U.S. rights to the new National Lacrosse League in a Saturday primetime "Game of the Week" format for the 2007 season.

[edit] Coverage

[edit] Extreme sports

In July 2005, OLN revamped its image, focusing on more extreme outdoor sporting events. As noted by an OLN press release, its programming is "designed to be real, bold and awe-inspiring and supports our mission to bring to life the thrills, challenges and competition in the outdoors that our audience craves." In conjunction with the revamp, OLN's logo and website (in the USA) were completely redesigned as well. As part of the revamp, OLN acquired the rights from NBC Universal of the X Games-type Gravity Games as well as the rebroadcast rights to the CBS reality series Survivor, and began airing the series from the beginning of season one on July 24, 2005. Versus is also home to many Professional Bull Riders (PBR) rodeo and bull-riding events.

[edit] Cycling

In 2004, OLN capitalized on the popularity of Lance Armstrong during the Tour de France, showing virtually nothing but Tour-related coverage for over three weeks, including their live coverage, hosted by Phil Liggett, Paul Sherwen, Al Trautwig, and Bob Roll, as well as reality programming such as The Lance Chronicles, a show focusing on Armstrong's training for the Tour, and The Roadside Tour, following the Cutters, a particularly devoted group of Armstrong fans. This coverage was grouped under the title "The Cyclysm," which was meant to refer to Armstrong's effort to win a record sixth Tour de France. Versus marketed this with the line, "Someday, someone may ask you, 'Where were you during the Cyclysm?'" A year later, Le Tour on the network was promoted as "Cyclysm II" as Armstrong went for his seventh consecutive — and final — maillot jaune, which he won.

[edit] Ice hockey

Main article: The NHL on Versus

On August 17, 2005, ESPN chose not to match OLN's three-year, $200 million offer for the NHL's U.S. cable TV rights. [1]. The NHL's deal with OLN parent Comcast also gives the company part ownership of a U.S. version of NHL Network, and distribution on all of its cable systems. Comcast also has the rights to simulcast out of market NHL games on its Comcast SportsNet stations. Both Comcast and the NHL have the right to void the final year of the contract.

During certain games, Versus simulcasts the CBC feed of NHL games, mostly those where teams from western Canada are at home.

[edit] Football

Versus currently airs College Football on Versus games from the Mountain West Conference. This relationship began before OLN rebranded to Versus with the September 9 game between Colorado State and Colorado in the annual Rocky Mountain Showdown.[2] [3]

Earlier in 2006, OLN broadcast some games during the Arena Football League's 20th Anniversary season. Versus televised a weekly regular-season game for 11 weeks as well as a wild card playoff game. [4] With ESPN and ABC taking over the league's broadcast contract for five years, beginning in 2007, AFL games will not be returning to Versus in the near future. [5]

OLN/Versus, however, was shut out of what it hoped would be its biggest prize, the NFL. Versus was thought to be the favorite to land one of the league's cable TV packages, which would cover Thursday and Saturday night games (except in Week 1, which is reserved to NBC), but the NFL opted instead to put games on its own NFL Network, in addition to the primary deal with ESPN for Monday Night Football.

[edit] Basketball

Versus will be adding college basketball to its schedule for the upcoming season, as it has secured the rights to broadcast eight men's Mountain West Conference basketball games, including the Conference Championship game.[6] Versus will also televise all eight games of the innagural T-Mobile Invitational high school basketball tournament. [7]

After losing out on the NFL and Major League Baseball, the next major league professional sport with television rights up for grabs is the National Basketball Association. The current national broadcast contracts with ABC, ESPN, TNT and NBA TV expires after the 2007-08 NBA season.

[edit] Baseball

There had been reports that Versus might take the Monday night, Wednesday night (plus most Wednesday afternoons), and Sunday night cable telecast rights to Major League Baseball games away from ESPN, but ESPN managed to work out a new deal allowing fewer local blackouts of Monday games (a major sticking point for ESPN). ESPN's other package, which includes a Thursday game, games on holidays, and Division Series playoff games, expires after the 2006 season and has been awarded to TBS, replacing the Thursday night games with a Sunday afternoon package. OLN was expected to bid on those rights as well. [8] Versus had one last opportunity to acquire baseball rights, as one of the League Championship Series was up for grabs (the other LCS was previously announced to air on Fox), but TBS won those rights as well. [9]

[edit] Combat sports

Versus is beginning to program a variety of combat sports. In 2006, Versus entered the boxing arena with a series of fight programs promoted by Bob Arum's Top Rank group.[10] Versus also televises Chuck Norris's World Combat League, a kickboxing promotion where fights are contested in a unique round ring without ropes.[11] Versus recently announced a partnership with World Extreme Cagefighting (WEC) to bring mixed martial arts events to the network starting in summer 2007.[12]

[edit] Other sports

Versus has secured coverage for the 2007 America's Cup, which was also a staple on ESPN and ESPN2 for years. OLN began to show qualifying regattas in late 2005. Versus will air the Louis Vuitton Cup for challengers in 2007, and the America's Cup match between the Louis Vuitton winner and current champions, Alinghi of Switzerland in Valencia, Spain. In 2006, it picked up American broadcast rights (in conjunction with The Tennis Channel) of Davis Cup events. In addition, the network has signed for a Saturday night "Game of the Week" for the National Lacrosse League starting with the 2006-07 season.[13] Also in 2006, Versus began airing the Professional Darts Corporation's Holsten Premier League Darts starting in 2006. Versus has also added the Major Indoor Soccer League games, and the IRB Sevens World Series, the top annual event in the sevens version of rugby union.

[edit] Other programs

Versus has also aired several sports movies, like Rocky III and Miracle on Ice and classic episodes of Survivor.[14]

[edit] Distribution

In October 2005, OLN elected not to provide its NHL coverage to a number of distributors, including EchoStar (Dish Network) and Cablevision, which both refused Comcast's request to place Versus on a much higher-penetration package. During this time, Versus blacked out NHL coverage on these systems, replacing them with other programming. It is believed that the reason behind these blackouts had to do with a penalty fee that Comcast would have had to pay the NHL if they did not significantly increase their distribution.

While Cablevision eventually came to an agreement making OLN/Versus available to any customer with digital cable, EchoStar retaliated by pulling OLN from its service; it was Dish Network's stance that few of its customers would be willing to have the channel if it meant raising rates. On April 24, 2006, the same date that OLN announced the late-September name change to Versus, Dish Network and OLN reached a long term agreement to restore the channel.

[edit] Viewer complaints

Although Versus covers several important cycling events outside the Tour de France, the coverage is generally poorly received by serious cycling audiences, who complain it consists mostly of 1-hour, heavily edited summaries, rather than the several hours of daily live coverage given to the Tour. Also noisome to many American cycling fans was a perceived overwhelming focus on Lance Armstrong and the Tour de France to the exclusion of all other riders and races; this programming attitude has given the channel such nicknames as "Only Lance News" and "Our Lousy Network" in cycling circles.

As of 2005, OLN was still offering live coverage of the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France, but, due to poor ratings, all other events were relegated to compressed, tape-delay coverage, including the Vuelta a España, despite its status as a three-week long grand tour on par with the Tour and Giro. However, in 2006 OLN has offered live (and commercial-free) coverage via streaming video on its website of the Giro and Vuelta, with a Sunday highlights show of the week in review of not just the Grand Tours, but Classics as well.

Versus is available in significantly fewer television households than ESPN, a fact that became apparent during the 2006 Stanley Cup playoffs. At least two columnists complained publicly about being unable to watch playoff games on the network when it has exclusive rights to carry them. Versus avoided more trouble when several teams in markets where Versus is not available on digital cable, such as New York (except for some New Jersey suburbs served by Versus's parent company, Comcast) and Los Angeles, either did not make the playoffs or exited in the early rounds. One of them joked that OLN really meant "Outside Looking iN."

[edit] Versus HD

Versus recently announced Versus HD, a new high-definition simulcast of Versus. On certain Comcast markets, another channel, Golf Channel / Versus HD, will be simulcasting both the Golf Channel and Versus, switching between the two. The channel's call sign is "VSGLF". Previously, Versus HD content was simulcast on InHD/InHD2, but this ceased with the discontinuation of InHD2 and the launch of VSGLF. All HD content from Versus is in 1080i.

[edit] Logos

Original OLN logo, used from 1995 to 2002.	Logo used from 2002 to 2005.	Logo used from 2005 to 2006, still used in Canada.	Current logo, used since 2006.
Logo of Versus HD.