BURBANK, Calif.—The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the new Pac-12’s launch for the 2026-27 season and continuing through the 2030-31 season.

As part of this long-term relationship, the CW will nationally air 13 regular season football games per year.

In addition, the partnership adds regular season action for men’s and women’s basketball with 35 regular season men’s basketball games and 15 regular season women’s basketball games, as well as the semifinal and championship games for the new Pac-12 women’s basketball tournament.

“The Pac-12 has been a key partner in the success of CW Sports, and we are thrilled to solidify our relationship with the conference for an additional five years,” said Brad Schwartz, president, The CW Network. “We have experienced firsthand the passion of the Oregon State and Washington State football programs and their dedicated fans and we are eager to introduce an additional seven schools in the new Pac-12 to our nationwide CW Sports audience. We are also excited to bring Pac-12 men’s and women’s basketball to our viewers featuring some of the most dynamic and celebrated collegiate programs in the country.”

Pac-12 Enterprises, the broadcast production arm of the conference, will produce all football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball games, totaling 66 events annually.

The new Pac-12 will kick off during the 2026-27 season with Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Gonzaga, Oregon State, San Diego State, Texas State, Utah State and Washington State. All nine current and future members of the new Pac-12 participated in the decision to extend the partnership with The CW.

Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould added that “The Pac-12’s partnership with The CW has been one of mutual growth and transformation, from the development of our Pac-12 Enterprises’ broadcast production business to the significant added value and positive impact to our current and future members via true national reach across 100% of U.S. television households. I am excited for the continued growth of both The CW and the Pac-12 in the years ahead!”

The CW’s partnership with the Pac-12 began in 2024 and will continue with the 2025 football season, which kicks off on Saturday, August 30 at 10:00pm ET with Idaho at Washington State.

During the 2024 football season, the CW also reported that the Pac-12 delivered several notable ratings highlights for The CW, including the three most-watched college football games on the network. The CW’s most-watched college football game of the year was the matchup between Washington State and Oregon State in Corvallis. The two teams will meet again on Saturday, November 29, at 6:30pm ET to wrap up the 2025 regular season.

As the Pac-12 gets set to relaunch in 2026 with new schools and a new schedule, CBS Sports and the conference have announced a media rights extension set to begin with the 2025 football season.

With the departure of many of its schools to other conferences in 2024, the Pac-12 has been adding new schools to the two universities, Washington State and Oregon State, that remained from the conference’s former roster. It has also been working to boost revenue with new deals for TV, streaming and other media rights.

The new agreement establishes CBS Sports as the primary long-term media partner for the new Pac-12, with additional partners to be announced at a later date, the league said. As part of the extended partnership, football and men’s basketball games for the new Pac-12 will air throughout each season on the CBS Television Network (and streaming on Paramount+, as well as CBS Sports Network.

“As the new Pac-12’s primary media partner, CBS Sports’ top-tier coverage will showcase the best of the conference’s football and men’s basketball games annually across our platforms, including the championship game for both sports,” said Dan Weinberg, executive vice president, programming, CBS Sports. “Extending this partnership strengthens our multiplatform college football and basketball schedule and, at a pivotal moment for the new Pac-12, allows us to collaborate, grow the conference and expand its reach."

Octagon, the Pac-12’s exclusive media rights advisor, served as advisor for both the 2025 partnership and subsequent long-term extension.

Highlights of the extended partnership between CBS Sports and the new Pac-12 include:

• Annual football championship game on CBS and streamed live on Paramount+.
• Annual men’s basketball tournament championship game on CBS and Paramount+.
• A minimum of three regular season football games on CBS and Paramount+ each season.
• A minimum of three regular season men’s basketball games on CBS and Paramount+ each season.
• Football and men’s basketball games throughout the regular season on CBS Sports Network, with details to be announced at a later date.

“Our goal with this process was to find transformational partnerships for the new Pac-12, and throughout our discussions and time together it became more and more clear that a partnership with CBS Sports would be just that,” said Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould. “I am thankful to the team at CBS Sports for seeing our vision and investing in our shared future as we build, launch and realize a new Pac-12 together.”

In announcing the deal with CBS, the conference said further media rights partnerships for the new Pac-12 will be announced following finalized agreements with schools set to join. One of the factors that led to the breakup of the original Pac-12 was that some of its most prominent schools felt they could get more media revenue as member of the Big Ten and other conferences.

Last fall, Oregon State and Washington State were joined by Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Gonzaga, San Diego State and Utah State in plans to create a new Pac-12 Conference set to begin play in 2026-27.

Oregon State and Washington State are currently operating as the Pac-12 under a two-year NCAA grace period and will continue to do so for 2025-26. Outside of football, the two schools are entering their second year of a two-year arrangement as affiliate members of the West Coast Conference in men’s basketball and other Olympic sports.

BURBANK, Calif.—The CW Network has announced it will be the broadcast home for 11 Pac-12 football games featuring Oregon State and Washington State during the upcoming 2024 season. The network will provide full nationwide coverage for the games. 

The deal comes in the wake of the recent collapse of the Pac-12 conference, with 10 of the conference’s 12 teams opting to move to other conferences. The conference, which is more than a 100 years old, played its last football championship game in Dec. 2023. 

The CW coverage of the remaining two schools kicks off on Saturday, August 31 with a doubleheader featuring Portland State at Washington State (3:00- 6:30pm ET) and Idaho State at Oregon State (6:30-10:00pm ET). All broadcasts will be produced by Pac- 12’s production facility, Pac-12 Enterprises.

“Adding the Pac-12 conference to The CW’s growing roster of live sports gives the network coast-to-coast coverage in key markets and solidifies our position as a national player in college sports,” said Dennis Miller, president, The CW Network. “The CW will truly be a destination for all sports fans this fall with impressive weekend lineups consisting of Pac-12 football, ACC football, LIV Golf and NASCAR Xfinity Series playoff races.”

“We are thrilled to announce this national partnership with The CW,” said Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould. “Oregon State and Washington State football student-athletes deserve this elite stage as they continue competing for the College Football Playoff, and Beaver and Cougar fans have a great opportunity to enjoy their teams’ successes.”

The is part of an ongoing expansion of live sports on the CW, which includes a new season of ACC football, the final tournaments of the current LIV Golf season and the network debut of the NASCAR Xfinity Series. Last season, The CW aired two college football games that delivered over 1 million live Total Viewers according to Nielsen and set a viewership record for the most-watched Saturday national primetime in network history. The CW is poised to broadcast over 500 hours of premium sports programming in 2025.

“National exposure and the ability for Beaver Nation to easily access our games was a top priority during the process,” added Oregon State University vice president and director of Intercollegiate Athletics Scott Barnes. “Additionally, the ability to announce game times well in advance provides an improved experience for our student-athletes and fans.”

“We are excited to partner with The CW to broadcast Cougar Football nationally for the upcoming 2024 season,” added Washington State University interim director of athletics Anne McCoy. “Having WSU in 100 percent of the homes across the country will amplify the exposure of our student-athletes and program, and grow the connection with our fans and alumni. Additionally, the partnership provides for nearly all home game times to be set in the spring, allowing our fanbase to plan their fall weekends around Cougar Football.”

At Pac-12 Networks, the collegiate sports-focused digital cable and satellite TV network run by the Pac-12 Conference, we are proud to bring about 850 live sports events from over 100 venues each season to our viewers. For over 20 years, our broad spectrum of broadcast activities — from remote and studio productions to broadcast ingest, transmission, and game officiating — had been based out of our San Francisco facility. 

However, as our lease was approaching its end in June 2023, we made the decision to relocate to the Bishop Ranch campus in San Ramon, California. This move was more than just a change of scenery; it represented a significant upgrade to our broadcasting capabilities. In collaboration with Advanced System Group (ASG), we developed a cutting-edge facility equipped with SMPTE ST 2110 technology, built on a centralized spine and leaf network architecture. 

Need it Yesterday
The shift to San Ramon was not without its challenges. One major issue was the extremely stringent deadline. It was imperative that we were fully functional in time for the kickoff of the Pac-12 2023 football season. So, we had a window of just 16 months for researching, choosing, and acquiring the necessary equipment for our facility, a task made all the more difficult by COVID-induced product shortages.

 Additionally, signal conversion would prove to be a critical aspect of our system. With numerous simultaneous updates underway, a full upgrade to 1080p HDR was not yet achievable, leaving us with a 720p SDR transmission path. However, we would be receiving 1080p HDR signals from various satellite and fiber sources, necessitating efficient conversion. 

After thorough market research and a fact-finding trip to the 2022 NAB Show, we chose Imagine Communications’ Selenio Network Processor (SNP) for signal conversion at our San Ramon site. The SNP was selected not only for its ability to handle our extremely demanding workflows, but also its potential to greatly streamline our operations. To validate our choice, we conducted a proof of concept in January 2023, ensuring everything would function as intended.

Simplifying Operations
Our San Ramon facility boasts an impressive array of 34 SNP units, each handling a diverse range of functions. The processors are serving as IP gateways and facilitating both SDI-to-IP encapsulation and IP-to-SDI de-encapsulation. Additionally, they are responsible for frame synchronization and up/down/cross conversion. The SNPs also come with multiviewer processing capabilities and will allow us to utilize JPEG XS for interfacility connections in the future.

A key benefit of incorporating the SNPs into our facility is the significant simplification of our operations. Traditionally, different devices have been required for IP conversion, up/down/cross conversion, and HDR conversion. However, the SNP combines all these functions into a single path. 

This integration means that regardless of the signal coming from a broadcasting truck or satellite, it can be directly processed through the SNP before being transmitted to our channel. This consolidation into one path not only minimizes the likelihood of errors, but also greatly eases the workload for our operators, who now only need to familiarize themselves with a single destination — the SNP.

The building of our new facility commenced in November 2022 and reached completion by September 2023, just in time for the college football season. Despite encountering some initial hiccups, the facility is now operating seamlessly, surpassing the ease of operation of our previous setup. Having successfully navigated our first football season with this new system, its stability, reliability, and flawless performance have been clearly demonstrated. 

As we now shift our focus to the basketball season, we are confident in our system's capability to handle the demands, thanks in large part to the efficiency of the SNP.

SAN FRANCISCO—In a notable move towards remote work and production, the Pac-12 Conference announced new flexible and remote work policies that will entail moving out of its current headquarters and production facility in San Francisco when its lease ends in June, 2023. 

Pac-12 had been a pioneer in remote production at its current facility, which was a pioneer in IP infrastructures that allowed the Pac-12 Network to produce many of its games remotely. 

The conference has not as yet released details about where its production facilities will be located after the move but said it will “forego permanent headquarters to best support employees and deliver savings to member universities” and that the “production facility location” is “to be determined for continued broadcast production activities.”

The current office is located in expensive real estate in San Francisco, with a lease that costs around $8.35 million a year, NewscastStudio has reported. 

The move would enable both a “flexible and remote work environment to best support Pac-12 staff” and reduce expenses to “deliver more revenue back to member universities to support student-athletes," the conference said. 

The conference explained that new remote work policies were designed to “provide Pac-12 staff with the benefits of work flexibility while also envisioning regular opportunities for employees to come together in person within the Pac-12 geographic footprint, including at Pac-12 campuses to foster greater collaboration with member universities.”

“In addition to the remote work environment, the Pac-12 will continue to support and invest in its state-of-the-art broadcast and content production, including relocating to a new production facility after the end of the Conference’s current lease in June 2023,” the conference announced. “The location for the new production facility has not yet been determined."

“The Pac-12 is committed to best supporting our employees by providing a work environment that accommodates today’s modern world and gives our employees maximum flexibility to live and work where they want, while still fostering collaboration among staff and our valued member institutions,” said Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff. “We are also committed to ongoing best-in-class production of Pac-12 events. We are excited for what this new remote and flexible work environment can do to support our employees, and for the new ways it will allow for us to reinvest in our member universities so that they can best support student-athletes.”

SAN FRANCISCO—The Pac-12 Conference last week announced it has expanded its relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) by choosing the cloud service as its standard for machine learning and media workflows.

The organization was already using AWS services for a variety of production applications, including its website, mobile applications and live TV networks. By choosing to go all in with AWS for cloud services, Pac-12 will move business-critical databases to Amazon Aurora.

“As we standardize on AWS machine learning and media services, we’ll be able to usher in a new era of entertainment for collegiate sports enthusiasts,” said Mark Kramer, VP Engineering & Technology at the content arm of the Pac-12 Conference, Pac-12 Networks.

“Our fans will benefit from highly reliable and personalized viewer experiences, even in times of rapid traffic spikes like conference championships or rivalry games, and our internal teams will be able to experiment with ease using AWS services to rapidly test new ideas.”

AWS analytics, machine learning and digital media services enable Pac-12 to develop new cloud-based solutions. Pac-12 currently runs its advanced media infrastructure on AWS using Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), AWS Elemental MediaLive and AWS Elemental MediaPackage to deliver games to a broader audience on any device.

It is setting up new production workflows at scale on AWS for live-to-video-on-demand (VOD) content and over-the-top (OTT) streaming, Pac-12 said. It also will use AWS machine learning services, such as Amazon SageMaker, to automate core content workflows. The machine learning will build, train and deploying models that capture gameplay and highlight clips and deliver closed captioning for broadcasters in real time.

More information is available on the AWS website. 

SAN FRANCISCO—Twitter continues to grow its stable of live streaming content, as Pac-12 Networks has announced that the social media site will be its streaming partner for Pac-12 Plus, a broadband network of live events produced by the conference’s 12 universities. More than 150 games are expected to be live streamed via Twitter during the 2016-2017 academic year.

The Pac-12—which consists of the University of Arizona, Arizon State, University of California, University of Colorado, University of Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford University, UCLA, USC, University of Utah, University of Washington, and Washington State—will provide live streams of soccer, volleyball, gymnastics, baseball, ice hockey, swimming & diving, softball, track & field, wrestling, lacrosse, tennis and water polo.

The events are also expected to be streamed on university official athletic sites and Pac-12.com.

INDIAN WELLS, CALIF.—The name of the remote game is pressure—the pressure to make live event television coverage instantly accessible, more effectively, for less money with no particular pipeline of trained recruits. That was the upshot of remote production panel discussion at the HPA Tech Retreat this week.

NEP elected the economy-of-scale model, making acquisitions that give it a global television production footprint, including, most recently, Consolidated Media Industries in Hilversum, Netherlands. Hilverum is 17 miles southeast of Amsterdam, home of Dutch TV production giant, Endemol.

“There is pressure to do production effectively and cheaply,” said NEP chief technology officer, George Hoover. Infrastructure is part of that. NEP also has 100,000 miles of phone lines in the Netherlands and operates two data center content delivery networks.

“Unlike some other places, the data center is part of our package,” he said.

LIVE TV OVER IP
The network presence gave NEP the ideal opportunity to deploy IP-based remote production. With trucks, when they’re in use, they’re making money. When they’re parked, they’re not. IP technology held the promise of a more efficient architecture versus the truck fleet, if it could work for live TV production.

NEP CMI division, DutchView Infostrada, aired “Carlo’s TV Café” live on RTL4, last November, using remote-controlled cloud production using SMPTE-2022 over Grass Valley IP camera technology. (SMPTE-2022 is the standard for encapsulating video signals for IP transport.)

“The control room can be anyplace,” Hoover said. “We’ve been doing two or three shows a week. We’ll probably be doing three or four a day.”

Michael Harabin, vice president of technology, engineering and media management for Pac-12 said the collegiate sports network televises 850 live events every season, now over IP transport.

“The challenge was how to produce field hockey and lacrosse and rugby… and break even,” he said.

“We have partners in the 12 consortium, so all we did was fiber the network,” he said. “Our farthest campus is Salt Lake City. Latency was 24 milliseconds. Everything’s about latency, routing and who’s the best provider.”

Pac-12 Network now has no other products in the field. The networks uses JPEG2000 with Nevion encoders. Everything comes out of San Francisco, to master control in Denver, he said.

Down the road Harabin said Pac-12 is looking at virtualizing master control, because they see the cable business going away, and they like the idea of spinning up as many networks as they want. The would like to get to the point where master control operator can go to Starbucks and operate playout. He said they’re looking to move everything from capex to opex.

$K
Philip Garvin, president of Colorado Studios/Mobile TV Group, thought they might get ahead of the competition with 4K, so MTVG built a 4K mobile unit, assigned it to HD productions and slo-mo, and “keep waiting for someone to call and say, ‘we’d like to use that 4K truck,’” he said. Garvin estimated that making outfitting a remote unit for 4K production costs an extra $1 million to $2 million.

Garvin said the the same cameras that do 4K can also do super slo-mo.

“That’s been extremely helpful to us, so we can invest in these cameras and use them while we’re waiting for 4K,” he said. “You’re looking way, way in the future when you build a truck.”

Garvin said 4K is not so hard, but that 4K high-dynamic range is not so easy. There are implications for the entire workflow, he said. For now, MTVG is working to recoup its 4K investment, and it’s not a seller’s game.

“The only place to squeeze is the truck companies these days,” he said. “We have to use all the technologies to provide a better fan experience, for less. They’re not just looking for 5 percent or 10 percent, but ‘big cuts,’” he said.

Joe Wire of flypack supplier Bexel said that when executives look at their investment cycle, they ask, “what are people going to do to improve the fan experience at home? That’s been a challenge for us… When we look at our investment, it’s really around how we can use our equipment best. Sometimes, you get a long-term contract for your truck. Sometimes, you don’t. So, for example, what is the lifecycle of HDR? What is the business case?

“It’s a struggle,” he said, with lots of hedging around 4K.

Asked if high-dynamic range 4K would be as compelling as the transition from standard to high definition, Garvin said it wouldn’t be quite the same.

“When we started HD in 2001, there were about 50,000 homes with HD sets. They were very expensive. Today, there may be somewhere between 20 million and 30 million 4K sets—they’re not HDR—and that tips the scale. Many are software-upgradable to HDR,” he said.

PEOPLE
Another issue in the truck business is finding qualified crew members. Harabin said it’s a challenge to get people in San Francisco, where a guy turned them down because he couldn’t bring a dog to work.

“It’s not glamorous to work at a television station,” he said.

Hoover said you have to “grow your own. Nobody else makes them. Harvard doesn’t graduate 5,000 of them every year.”

Harabin lauded NEP’s training program and said PAC-12 is doing likewise. Interns work for NEP for two years, then they’re sent out on the road as a third engineer on a three-person truck crew. Hoover talked about the necessity to balance personalities on a truck crew.

“Typically, an OB truck will send two or three people,” he said. “So those two people pretty much live together 220 days a year—you find the right personality mix, and it takes time to do it—it benefits both of them.

“It doesn’t take long. We’ve replicated this thing so many times, it’s second nature.”