If you tune into the Pac-12 Networks this spring to watch a baseball or softball game or even one of the spring football games, you may be viewing a bare-bones television production. In fact, the on-air talent broadcasting the event may even be sitting in an edit studio in the downtown-San Francisco headquarters calling the game off a monitor.

Insiders reveal that’s the state of the conference’s media company.

The spring production schedule for the Pac-12 Networks was distributed to staff last week and it created a buzz among longtime production staff. Particularly, because it comes with a jarring change. There is only one traditionally produced, fully staffed, on-site broadcast event on the schedule -- the Oregon Ducks’ spring football game.

It’s not that the Pac-12′s owned and operated media company won’t broadcast as many live sporting events. It just won’t utilize the usual number of experienced on-site broadcasters, producers, unit managers, technical directors, camera people, audio technicians and graphics editors.

The Pac-12 is going on the cheap.

Andrew Walker, the conference’s vice president of communications, said in a statement on Tuesday:

“Pac-12 Networks will be producing the same amount of live events this Spring at the same high quality that we have in prior years. Pac-12 Networks has been a leader in pioneering efficient remote production over the past years, and every year we have become more efficient in our production while maintaining high quality for our fans and schools. This includes increasing each year the number of events in which we use best-in-class emerging technologies to ensure the most efficient, and high-quality, production possible."

Offered one longtime Pac-12 Conference staffer: “The network continues to sabotage itself.”

In prior years, Pac-12 Networks viewers in each market could typically count on many as a dozen or more fully staffed and on-site produced baseball games, a handful of softball games and at others times, lacrosse, track and field, tumbling, and even field hockey. In Los Angeles last spring, for example, there were nine on-site, fully produced live events.

This spring in LA?

Zero.

Also, in 2019 the Pac-12 Networks sent full production and broadcast crews to 10 of the conference’s 12 spring football games. Only Stanford and UCLA were produced remotely from San Francisco. This spring, per a Pac-12 source, 11 of the 12 spring football games will feature remote broadcasts with limited on-site staff and a reduced number of camera operators at the stadium.

The Pac-12 owns its own media company. Or it IS a media company, depending on who you ask. Whatever the case, Commissioner Larry Scott and his team spent the last 13 months seeking a $500 million private-equity investment in the media company. To date, the conference hasn’t found a willing partner and it now appears the Pac-12 Networks is in full-blown, cost-cutting mode.

Said a Pac-12 high-level administrator at headquarters: “A lot of people behind the scenes believed in the conference’s message four years ago and we’ve watched as the vision for the network has slowly died.”

Scott is paid $5.8 million annually. Scott has justified that salary because he says he’s running both a conference and a media company. But both are now apparently struggling.

There’s great public interest in the health of the conference network given the number of publicly funded universities vested in it. I’m interested in just how lean the network will run and whether conference leadership believes it should still own and operate its own television network. I reached out to Walker, the conference spokesperson, on Monday with specific questions for Scott and Pac-12 Networks head Mark Shuken.

A) How viable/healthy do you believe the network is?

B) Is the network budgeted to run more cost effective this spring vs. prior years? If so, where did the cuts come from?

Neither Scott nor Shuken were made available.

Walker’s reply came back:

"Both Larry and Mark have made many public statements about the health and strategic value of the networks, along with the significant interest our strategic discussions with potential future partners have generated. So, I would refer you to previous quotes from Mark and Larry on that question.

“Regarding financials, we are constantly working to be as efficient as possible in realizing our objectives, and per our normal practice we will be providing an update on our financial performance later this year."

When asked where the pubic might specifically find those “previous public statements,” Walker offered a nine-month-old link to an interview with Shuken. Walker added, “Also pretty certain Larry was asked at the SBJ conference in NYC in December but can’t find the video of that interview online.”

So that’s where we are today.

I’m dealing with the Pac-12 run-around and the viewers who want quality content on the Pac-12 Networks are facing a spring left watching a network that hasn’t delivered revenue or audience, even when fully staffed and equipped. And now, they’re cutting back.

Meanwhile, eight full-time sales people left the Pac-12 Networks in the last year. Also, the network reduced the number of traveling crews for the football broadcasts last season from three groups to two. Also, the network has become more reliant on letting cheap labor (Read: students and interns) handle a larger share of on-site production of events.

In order to curb expenses in the last year, the Pac-12 Network has also had broadcasters call an increasing number of matches and games off television monitors from editing suites in San Francisco. It’s not unprecedented for a network trying to save travel expenses and have an off-site crew call a game it’s watching on television. In fact, industry insiders told me this week it’s happening more and more across the spectrum. But the Pac-12 is clearly in a hard-core cost-cutting mode.

The ACC Network and SEC Network are owned and operated by ESPN. The Big 12′s television rights and the Longhorn Network are owned the ESPN family of networks, too. The Big Ten Network is owned and operated by Fox Sports. Those entities reach far more homes and generate far more revenue than the Pac-12 Networks.

Maybe the objective here is to get the Pac-12 Networks balance sheet to look better on paper to a prospective private-equity investor. Or maybe Pac-12 leaders took so much heat for paying exorbitant rent in downtown San Francisco it’s been asked to go lean in every manner possible. Or maybe the Pac-12 is simply creeping toward a slow exit from this “media company" experiment when the conference’s current rights contracts run out in 2024.

Regardless, the end result this spring isn’t likely to be a more professional and higher-quality broadcast product.

“They no longer care about content, just cost,” said another longtime staff member, who pointed out that the Pac-12 Networks doesn’t replace staff when a person leaves for another job.

The cutbacks at the Pac-12 Networks have created a growing divide between employees at the conference’s network and those working across the building for the Pac-12 Conference itself. They operate as two distinct entities, but staff at the media company are frustrated by what they perceived as continued lavish spending across the way at the conference.

The release of that bare-bones schedule last week prompted some longtime staff members of the Pac-12 Networks to say they’ve put out feelers to other college sports television networks. The best camera operators, producers, broadcasters, graphics designers and sound technicians have to do what’s best for their bottom line, too.

As one Pac-12 Networks employee put it this week: “The irons are in the fire."