Football signs with Comcast Channel 8 to televise games

Local Penn alumni and other sports fans -- but not students living on or near campus -- once again have an alternative to the traditional Saturday afternoon Big 10 and Atlantic Coast Conference powerhouse football matchups. For the third straight season, the Comcast Network, CN8, will televise four Penn football games, allowing loyal Penn supporters to wear their favorite red and blue clothing and be hardcore Quakers fanatics in the comfort of their own homes. The channel is separate from Comcast SportsNet, a network carried by Wade Cable, the company that serves off-campus students in University City. The University's ResNet video network does not carry either channel. Comcast SportsNet -- which shows Phillies, Flyers and 76ers games -- will, however, televise the Quakers' season opener this Saturday afternoon at Dartmouth. The Comcast cable company serves most Philadelphia area residents, but Penn students, without Comcast, cannot watch most Quaker football games, nor any other Penn athletic contests, on CN8. The University's affiliation with the Comcast Network enables local residents to "receive a broad-based range of games that wouldn't ordinarily get coverage," said Decker Uhlhorn, the Penn Athletic Department's director of development and public affairs. While students in off-campus housing have no way to watch the CN8 games on TV, students living on campus can settle for student-run UTV-13's coverage of all Penn football games on ResNet. But, as Uhlhorn explained, the expected audience for CN8 is Penn alumni and other Philadelphia-area sports fans, not the students themselves. "We hope that Penn students are at the game. That's our expectation," Uhlhorn said. Comcast will televise the Quakers home games against Columbia on October 17 as well as Penn's final game of the season, a November 14 match against defending Ivy League champion Harvard. The October 31 Homecoming game against Yale will be broadcast on CN8 and will be available, via satellite, to Quakers fans across the country. The November 7 grudge match in New Jersey against rival Princeton will also be available on satellite. CN8 serves about 1.7 million people in the Philadelphia and southern New Jersey regions, but with the help of satellite packages, expects to distribute its games to more than 4 million people nationally. According to David Siroty, a Comcast Network spokesperson, one of CN8's primary goals is to televise sporting events of local interest. "The whole idea of our network is to televise our areas," explained Siroty, listing Penn, Princeton, Rider, Seton Hall, Villanova and Delaware as examples of local colleges and universities that are frequently televised. In an attempt to garner as much interest and audience support as possible, the Comcast Network often televises a game between two teams of local interest, such as Penn and Princeton, as their game of the week. Indeed, the connection between these local schools and the Comcast Network, according to Siroty, is an attempt to reach out to alumni who might not ordinarily be able to catch their alma mater playing on television. "These schools had the foresight to look at the situation and say: 'What can we do to generate alumni interest?" said Siroty. Suburban Cable, a cable provider serving Philadelphia suburbs in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, will broadcast Penn's home game against the Richmond Spiders on September 26. All home football games are on Franklin Field and begin at 1:30 p.m.