The Big Ten Network — college sports programming from one league on one cable television outlet 24 hours a day — is a surprising and unqualified success.

The network has helped make the Big Ten, comprising 11 universities including Penn State, the revenue leader among college sports leagues.

From modest beginnings in 2007, the network has picked up deals with 320 cable service providers, including Comcast, the nation's largest.

Big Ten Network calls a blitz

But not Blue Ridge Cable, which serves about 175,000 customers, including residents of parts of Lancaster County and Carbon, Schuylkill, Monroe, Berks, Lehigh and Northampton counties.

Blue Ridge is the largest cable provider in a Big Ten state not offering BTN. There are about 15,000 Penn State alumni among Blue Ridge subscribers, according to Penn State spokesmen Jeff Nelson.

Which is why Big Ten Network President Mark Silverman and Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley were in Lancaster Thursday.

Silverman and Curley held a press conference at Lancaster Marriott at Penn Square, and then moved down King Street to meet with writers and editors at Lancaster Newspapers.

"I guess we're hoping for a greater degree of understanding from the public," Silverman said. "Hopefully, that will result in pressure on Blue Ridge to change their position."

Silverman admitted that that's not likely. That's one of the few things on which Silverman and Blue Ridge spokesman Joe Lorah agree.

"Our position is still the same," Lorah said Thursday. "We still think it's too expensive."

Lorah said adding the network to its basic cable lineup would cost about $1 per subscriber per month, or about $2 million per year.

Lorah said if Blue Ridge could offer BTN in just Lancaster County, "that might help the negotiations," but the conference won't go along with that.

He added that much of Blue Ridge's coverage area, particularly in the northeast part of the state, is considered part of the the New York market, and, "New Yorkers don't care about Penn State."

Lorah also said Blue Ridge would like to offer BTN as part of a "sports tier," or other beyond-basic package.

Silverman said if the network went along with that, it would be contractually obligated to do the same for the other 320 providers.

"That would be the end of the network," Silverman said. "We couldn't even pay our rights fees."

Silverman acknowledged that the two sides are at an impasse, and little if any actual negotiation is taking place. He also said that adding Blue Ridge would do little to impact the network's overall profits.

"The Big Ten doesn't want to do anything 95 percent," he said. "I would say I wouldn't want to go into football season not knowing we did all we could."

Football is the magic word. BTN offers coverage of all Big Ten sports, but football creates far more revenue than everything else combined.

Lorah said BTN would offer only two Penn State games Blue Ridge subscribers won't be able to get elsewhere, and one of those will be with overmatched Youngstown State.

Silverman said which games are shown on which broadcast entity is decided during the season, but he guessed that four Penn State games would be exclusive to BTN.

Both Silverman and Curley insisted that this is about more than money.

"We get a lot of students, and recruit a lot of student-athletes, from this area," Curley said. "The network is very important to us financially, but also from a marketing standpoint and from a recruiting standpoint."

About 83 percent of Pennsylvania cable subscribers get BTN. That's the lowest figure of any Big Ten state (Iowa is at 99 percent), even though in raw numbers Pennsylvania has the most subscribers due to its large population.

Armstrong Cable, which serves parts of Western Pennsylvania and the Youngstown, Ohio area, is the second-largest provider in a Big Ten state not on board. Curley and Silverman were in Pittsburgh and Youngstown Wednesday, in Allentown Thursday morning and planned to go to Harrisburg later Thursday.

"We may do this again, closer to the kickoff of football season," Silverman said.

Meanwhile, satellite provider DirecTV has entered the fray. It is offering Blue Ridge subscribers who switch to DirecTV 225 channels, including BTN, NFL Sunday Ticket and Home Box Office for $85 per month for the first five months, local channels, two free regular and two free HD receivers and no start-up costs.

Some local DirecTV retailers are also offering incentives like a 32-inch HD television and a program in which a new customer will receive a $100 gift card for referring a friend who also signs up. The friend also will receive a $100 gift card.

DirecTV took out a full page ad in last week's Sunday News which read in part, "Don't miss a single Nittany Lions game. DirecTV's got the Big Ten Network. Blue Ridge Cable doesn't."

Lorah suggested the ad probably came from BTN and/or Fox, which distributes BTN programming.

"It's a business," he said. "They want more than $2 million, so they're going to do what it takes."

"We don't do DirecTV's advertising for them," Silverman said.

mgross@lnpnews.com