ABC, College Football Add Pay-Per-View Option

College football on ABC this fall will have a new wrinkle--a pay-per-view option.

The network announced Monday that it will continue with a full schedule of free telecasts, but, as part of a supplemental pay package, also will offer viewers games not shown in their area.

ABC opens the season Sept. 5 with three regional telecasts--USC at San Diego State, Texas A&M; at Louisiana State and Notre Dame at Northwestern.

The USC game will be shown in Southern California. But under the new plan, a cable subscriber wanting to see one of the two other telecasts can get it for a price.

ABC has a deal with the Big Ten Conference, the College Football Assn. and pay-per-view distributor Showtime Entertainment Television (SET) for a one-year experiment. The Pacific 10 Conference is awaiting final approval from the presidents of member schools. Pac-10 athletic directors have given preliminary approval to the pay-per-view plan.

Jim Delaney, Big Ten commissioner, said the price has not been set, but it will be less than $10 per game.

Steve Solomon, ABC sports senior vice president, doesn’t anticipate a large number of viewers participating. He estimated that the audience will be between 20,000 and 40,000 homes in a pay-per-view universe of 18 million homes. That would be a buy rate of about 0.3%.

“This plan will enable fans and alumni to watch their favorite teams, regardless of where they live,” Solomon said.

“As always, viewers have the option to watch the game chosen for them by ABC sports on their local ABC station. Now they can also watch ABC sports’ production of other games that are not being shown over the air in their area via their participating cable system. This additional exposure will benefit the fans, the universities and the conferences.”

A Big Ten fan living in Southern California, for example, will be able to watch Big Ten games on pay per view, where before he or she was often deprived of those games.

How many games--one to four--will be available on pay-per-view each Saturday will vary among cable systems.

Solomon said the experiment would be reviewed after the 1992 season.

“We don’t view this as an enormous revenue intake,” Delaney said Monday during a conference call. “We want to find out whether in the future it’s a viable, reasonable method of showing games.”