THROWBACK THURSDAY: Yes it has really been 5 years without Pac-12 on DIRECTV.

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Seriously. Back in 2012, we talked about DISH’s sponsorship of Pac-12 Networks and the fact that DIRECTV still wasn’t jumping on this station. Fast forward and things haven’t changed much. A lot of people thought that the DIRECTV-AT&T deal would mean the Pac-12 channel would go onto the largest satellite service in the world but it hasn’t happened yet, and maybe it never will.

Back then, it was Chair Mike White who said in essence that he just didn’t see how Pac-12 could make financial sense for DIRECTV. It was one of the first sports channels that DIRECTV simply refused to carry for the price that was being offered. For most of its first fifteen years in business, DIRECTV was known as the service that had every single available sports channel… of course in those days there weren’t as many of them. Today some major markets have five regional channels in addition to the national sports channels like ESPN, BeIN, and others. Mr. White looked at Pac-12 and simply said, “enough is enough.”

Of course it’s a bit of a bummer for people out west who enjoy college sports, but even today it still seems like there just aren’t enough people like that who are willing to pay high rates. Here at Solid Signal we’re big fans of the University of Arizona and yet we can’t watch the games. It’s annoying, but I suppose paying another $5 for DIRECTV would be annoying too, especially if I didn’t want to watch those games and I still had to pay it.

I have every confidence that I’ll be writing another TBT article in 5 years about this, because the channel isn’t coming to DIRECTV anytime soon.

About the Author

Stuart Sweet
Stuart Sweet is the editor-in-chief of The Solid Signal Blog and a "master plumber" at Signal Group, LLC. He is the author of over 10,000 articles and longform tutorials including many posted here. Reach him by clicking on "Contact the Editor" at the bottom of this page.