Arizona Wildcats Sports Network Unveiled

The UA athletics department, in partnership with IMG College, is launching the Arizona Wildcats Sports Network. The network will produce telecasts for football and men's basketball games starting this fall.

The University of Arizona Athletics Department, in conjunction with its exclusive multimedia partner IMG College, announced a distribution deal for football and basketball games that will allow broadcasts of select games to be carried across a statewide network of television stations beginning this fall.

The Arizona Wildcats Sports Network, or AWSN, will include several local over-the-air television entities including the Journal Broadcast Group's Tucson flagships KGUN-TV (ABC affiliate, Channel 9), KWBA-TV (CW affiliate, Channel 58) and CW's Spanish-language LATV (digital Channel 58.2), plus Phoenix-based KAZT-TV (known as AZTV-7), which is carried throughout a majority of the state and has aired UAa coaches shows for the past three years.   

The network of stations will carry select games not covered by the Pac-10 television agreement.  The AWSN, which is managed by IMG College, will produce the games, as well as sell all advertising. 

Additionally, the AWSN will stream its live game broadcasts for the first time to a worldwide audience on the Internet through All-Access subscriptions to the UA's official sports Web site, ArizonaWildcats.com.

"We're excited about our new Arizona Wildcats Sports Network and our partner stations that will allow us to reach Wildcat fans and viewers across the state," stated Jim Livengood, UA athletics director. "This is another step in ensuring we are delivering the best products and services to the fans of Arizona sports."

The AWSN will produce the UA's football season opener against Central Michigan, which will air live on CW and AZTV, and will broadcast the home game with Northern Arizona as tape delayed on KGUN9 and AZTV. 

Other football games may be included for the 2009 season, as well as at least 13 basketball games, all coaches shows and seven specialty magazine shows that will feature a variety of UA sports and will air between August and April.

"The Arizona Wildcats Sports Network will allow us to reach more than two million households across Arizona through our new broadcast partners," added Brent Seebohm, VP and general manager of IMG College. "We also will be able to utilize channels like the Journal Broadcast Group's  "La Alternativa," for simulcasting Francisco Romero's radio broadcast audio to deliver select Spanish-language UA games to Hispanic households for the first time."

Prior to the creation of the AWSN, football and basketball games were carried on regional cable network Fox Sports Arizona of Phoenix. As a UA broadcast partner for more than 10 years, some games will still be carried on Fox Sports through its agreement with the Pacific-10 Conference.

Two UA football games, at Iowa on Sept. 19 and at USC on Dec. 5, have been selected for showing as ABC regional broadcasts, with all other Arizona games still in the mix for weekly selection by Pac-10 partners ABC, FSN and Versus.

The conference network partners have yet to make early broadcast selections for basketball.