BTN Not Coming To A Comcast Near You

I threw this up on the Fanhouse, but for your discussion here:

Fox executive Bob Thompson said Thursday morning that he is "100 percent confident" that no deal will be struck with Comcast by Sept. 1, when the BTN will telebvise six football games.

"Having been through 15 of these (launches), I have a feel for the way things go," said Thompson, the president of Fox National Cable Sports Networks and a BTN board member. "There really has been no negotiation for a month."

This is potentially posturing designed to increase DirecTV flight, but it's also a direct statement specific to Comcast. Elsewhere there is mention of significant hope deals with other providers get done.

Also interesting:

"We have never made a proposal to them at $1.10," Thompson said in a telephone interview. "It has always been less than that. Other than expanded basic in the footprint, everything else is negotiable. We have gone the extra mile to create opportunities for meaningful negotiation to happen.

"$1.10 is the sticker price for a car."

If the Big Ten Network is really truly available for a number significantly below $1.10 (say 70 or 80 cents) that seems hard to justify keeping off given the prices of other RSNs, the amount of content on the BTN, and the distribution of CSS. But: posturing, maybe.