Army Hockey preps for pair of nationally televised games

Cortesy Photo
The Army Hockey Team hosts rival Air Force in a two-game series Friday and Sunday. These games are the second and third nationally televised games this season.

The Army Hockey Team makes its second and third national television appearances of the season this weekend in a series against service academy rival Air Force at Tate Rink.

The Black Knights host Air Force Friday night at 8 p.m. on CSTV and conclude the series Sunday with a 4 p.m. start on ESPNU.Ben Holden will provide the play-by-play for Friday's contest with Jim Paradise handling analyst duties. Army head coach Brian Riley will be microphoned live during two of three periods for a few minutes. The broadcast will feature a split screen of action and Riley. Players will be interviewed between periods.

E.J. Hradek and Barry Melrose will call Sunday's contest on ESPNU. The same pair was the broadcast team during Army's 3-1 loss to Holy Cross Nov. 4.

Hradek is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine and has more than 18 years of journalism experience. Melrose, a former NHL player and coach and now
an NHL analyst on ESPN, will provide color. Melrose coached the Los Angeles Kings for four seasons and led the team to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in franchise history. He played in the NHL for 11 seasons, spanning 335 career games, and appeared as himself in the movie Mystery, Alaska, and on the television show Spin City.

Army players and assistant coaches will be interviewed after the first period.CSTV Networks Inc., part of the CBS Corporation, is the leading digital and cable programming company dedicated to college sports. Connecting more fans to more college sports than any other company, its many platforms for programming distribution include CSTV, the 24-hour college sports network from CBS Sports, televising regular-season and championship events for 35 men's and women's college sports; CSTV.com and its network of nearly 215 official athletic sites; CSTV All Access and XXL, broadband services providing live audio and video of more than 10,000 events annually. CSTV is widely available on cable systems across the country, including Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Cablevision, Charter, Insight, Bright House Networks, Mediacom, Insight, RCN, Advanced Cable and Bresnan.

It is also available on DIRECTV's Total Choice Premier Package Channel 610 and DISH Network's America's Top 120 Package Channel 152.

ESPNU recently doubled its distribution, thanks to a sprawling deal between parent company Disney and Time Warner Cable. Time Warner Cable has made the channel available on its digital basic tier package to 10 million of its subscribers, taking ESPNU's availability to 20 million homes. ESPNU also stands to gain Time Warner Cable subscriber's quickly, since its deal gives it promised distribution to all Time Warner Cable customers with digital basic - and more customers from a lower basic tier are upgrading.

ESPNU's distribution bump is an outgrowth of a broader deal with Disney that gave Time Warner Cable the rights to carry its owned-and-operated ABC stations and other benefits, such as providing a Disney Channel subscription VOD offering. In exchange, Disney received promises for distribution for a slew of cable channels, including ESPNU. The deal also included a renegotiation of the sub fees TWC would pay Disney for carrying ESPN and ESPN2. ESPNU launched in some 3 million homes in 2005. It will broadcast two Army football games as well as other Olympic events involving Black Knights' athletic teams.

Fans will have plenty of options to follow along with the Air Force series. An audio and video stream will be offered through the Knight Vision subscription package at www.goARMYsports.com and the B2 Networks. A live blog from Friday's game is also being offered through the official Army web site.