BTN update.

• Still more negative publicity re: the Comcast negotiation, this time from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
• Trouble in Iowa: while Waterloo and Muscatine may be covered, Mediacom, the state's largest cable provider, is not on board, yet seeks to distance itself from Comcast's public pronouncements:

  "They are in a very public battle with the Big Ten Network," Peters said of Comcast. "Their market is not the same as our market, and what they do is entirely different."We are not in an acrimonious situation at all." At the same time, Mediacom hasn't given any indication it will give in by Aug. 30 just to make sure it can show three or four Iowa football games. "If (the BTN) really wants their place on expanded basic, then maybe they can give on the price," Peters said. "We hope we can still work something out."

  Perhaps Mediacom's conciliatory tone is based on this:

  Klatt showed that in recent years, more than half the TV sets in the Des Moines area are tuned to Iowa football when it is on TV, and about a quarter watch Iowa men's basketball when they play.

I still remain mostly convinced that this essentially is a price negotiation. We shall see.