And they have a contract.Aston04 said:
Fairly certain upper mgmt at AT&T (owner directTV) has very close ties to Texas. Just shows what a turd of a channel it is that they don't fully support it nationally. There is almost no demand for lhn outside of Texas.
Only reason it is carried so much is ESPN has so much leverage with ESPN, ESPN2, SEC Network, etc.- cable networks have agreed to throwing it in the package. So while on paper the channel doesn't perform that poorly (given whatever small fee ESPN attaches to it nationally), it actually performs much worse when you consider that ESPN would be collecting likely near those same total fees anyway (since lhn is so worthless). Outside of Texas, there is almost no subscriber demand for it (as evidenced by generally non-existent ratings).
In my opinion, the only reason ESPN has held on to the money-losing lhn is: 1. not admit a mistake 2. conference tv stability- lhn blocks fox or whoever from starting a viable big 12 network.