GamePlan begins on Labor Day weekend and continues through the first Saturday in December. It includes all regional telecasts on ABC, as well as games from various syndicators like ESPN Plus, Raycom Sports and SportsWest, and some local stations like Allentown, Pennsylvania's WFMZ-TV which broadcast locally produced college football games. Viewers can watch games from their cable or satellite provider or on the ESPN3broadbandInternet service. Subscribers to Internet service providers that have ESPN3 can access GamePlan games for free.
In 1992, Showtime Event Television supplemented ABC's airing of regional college football telecasts by creating "Option Play."[1] This allowed viewers to watch games not airing on their local ABC station via pay-per-view. The original cost for a single game was $8.95 (with each additional game costing $1 extra),[2] with the full "season-ticket" package priced between $49.95 and $69.95.[3] The following year, ESPN took over for Showtime and offered the purchase of up to three individual Saturday afternoon blocks for $8.95, as opposed to only a single game. In 1993, the package was renamed "Season Ticket", followed in 1994 by "ABC College Football on ESPN Pay-Per-View." In 1996, the name was again changed to "ESPN GamePlan", as the formation of ESPN Regional Television allowed for additional out-of-market games from conferences such as the Big Ten and MAC to be broadcast. ESPN would also pick up telecasts from other conferences such as the ACC, Big 12, Big East, Conference-USA, Mountain West, Pac-10, SEC and WAC for inclusion in GamePlan.
1 Indicates the channel is still in existence, but currently operates as a basic cable channel. 2 Star Channel was part of Warner Communications' QUBE interactive cable service, and was the precursor to present-day The Movie Channel.
