GREENSBORO — Tobacco Road fans of the ACC who get television service through Charter Communications got welcomed news last week.
The ACC Network, which launches Thursday, will be available through the broadband company and its Spectrum television service. Charter and The Walt Disney Company announced a comprehensive distribution agreement.
The ACC Network is owned and operated by ESPN, a Disney company, in partnership with the ACC. The new network will be 24 hours, seven days a week programming of ACC sports.
In the lineup is approximately 450 live contests including 40 regular-season football games, 150 men’s and women’s basketball games, and more than 200 other regular-season competitions and tournament games from across the conference’s 27 sponsored sports, plus a complement of news and information shows and original programming.
The ACC was formed in 1953 and was ahead of the curve when C.D. Chesley put together five stations to televise the Final Four in 1957, when Carolina won a pair of triple-overtime games to take the national championship. The next year, regular season games were broadcast throughout the ACC’s regional footprint in what was the forerunner to Raycom Sports and the ACC Network.
ESPN went on the air for the first in September 1979 and has been television ACC games since its initial year.
All ACCN games will also be available on the ESPN app to authenticated pay TV subscribers.
Before last week’s announcement, carriage agreements were already in place with DirecTV, Google Fiber, Hulu Live TV, Optimum by Altice, PlayStation Vue, Optimum by Suddenlink, TVision, Verizon Fios, members of the NCTC, NRTC, Vivicast and YouTube TV, among others.