ESPNU, the toddler-age college sports venue that is hoping to broaden its reach in the next couple of years, plans to transition to HD by late next summer—within days of the start of the 2008 college football season.
According to ESPN, the channel is currently available in less than 20 percent of U.S. TV households, although it has various deals in place with several of the major cable, DBS and telco firms, albeit not yet with the biggest of them all, Comcast.
ESPNU HD said it plans to provide coverage of more than 200 events in its first year of operation, most of them exclusively, and all in HD, to include college football and basketball, as well as sports that generally do not attract large TV audiences or ad revenue, such as lacrosse, baseball, softball, volleyball, wrestling and ice hockey.
The collegiate channel also plans to run repeats of some sports contests first aired live on sister channels ESPN HD, ESPN2 HD and ABC Television, and some additional content from ESPNews HD.
ESPNU will celebrate its third birthday in March.
