“There has been no movement with the negotiations with Comcast,” said Mike Vest, a spokesman for Big Ten Network. “No meaningful conversations have taken place between the two sides, and we remain miles apart. We’re not anticipating making a deal for quite some time.”

The network is scheduled to broadcast the men’s season tip-off with an exhibition game against Grand Valley State on Friday and close with the regular season finale against preseason conference runner-up Indiana on March 2.

Patrick Paterno, a spokesman for Comcast Michigan region, said the provider maintains its stance that the network belongs on a sports tier package of channels for a monthly fee.

“We definitely want to have the Big Ten Network, we just want to make it available for our customers who really want it,” Paterno said. “There are a number of folks out there that really don’t care (about the games), and we want to be fair to those customers.”

Paterno said national networks like ABC and ESPN have picked up the big games played during football season and will continue to make them available.

Vest said he expects the frustration among Comcast customers to go up during the basketball season. The network will televise 140 men’s Big Ten games, including 64 of the 99 in-conference games.

“You’re talking about almost two-thirds of the conference schedule,” he said. “I think if you talked to any coach in the Big Ten, he would tell you that every conference game is important, but we’re going to have some of the biggest games for MSU on our network.”

Comcast has sponsored Putting Fans First, a consumer group petitioning against Big Ten Network. Bob Nelson, co-chairman of Putting Fans First of Michigan, said the conference could be hurting its teams recruiting efforts by making the network unavailable to most cable customers.

“There’s no question that if the Big Ten continues its position on this, other conferences are going to benefit from it,” he said.