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Live sports broadcasts are one of the driving forces for high definition television. On September 5, Samsung Electronics, Sears Roebuck, and CBS Television announced a partnership that will significantly boost public exposure to the format by expanding HD coverage of college football and basketball.

This season, CBS will increase its HD football broadcasts from 12 games to 15 games and will add two regular season college basketball games to its lineup. The sports programming is in addition to CBS's recently announced primetime HDTV programming schedule, sponsored in part by Samsung. The 2002 season is the second year in which CBS has produced college football games in HD.

The network's college sports broadcast schedule began on September 7 with the Miami vs Florida football game. Upcoming football games include Florida vs Tennessee on September 21, Miami vs Tennessee on November 9; and the Southeast Conference Championship game from Atlanta's Georgia Dome on December 7. The HD basketball schedule includes the Florida vs Maryland game on December 14 and the UCLA/Kansas match on December 21.

As part of a promotional effort, Samsung and Sears are producing a weekly "HDTV Game Day": Sears' full-line stores across the US will show an NCAA Division I game each week during the regular season on a Samsung HDTV. The in-store broadcasts will allow consumers to compare HDTV side-by-side with regular analog television. "Over the 16 consecutive weekends of this schedule, viewers will have an unparalleled opportunity to partake of the transforming viewing experience that is HDTV," said Sean McManus, president of CBS Sports.

The games will be broadcast in 1080i, the highest level of digital television, but may not be available to most sports fans—unless they pay a visit to their local Sears store. The HDTV Game Day promotion is being made possible by a feed from satellite broadcaster EchoStar Communications Corporation to a Samsung HDTV receiver in every Sears store. The event "makes Sears stores the destination every Saturday for many consumers' first exposure to DTV," said Samsung sales and marketing vice president John Garrison.

Sears recently announced that it would devote considerable floor space in its 870 US stores to Samsung's HDTV products, including DLP-based monitors and widescreen plasma displays, whose prices have dropped to around $7000 for the smaller models. The move by a major non-specialty retailer is a significant one for HDTV, as it will introduce the format to consumers who might not ever visit an electronics store. "HDTV is here to stay and Sears intends to be the best destination for consumers who are shopping for a home theater system," said Ray Brown, Sears' vice president for consumer electronics.

Sears "HDTV Game Day" football programming:

September 14 3:30pm Georgia @ South Carolina
September 21 3:30pm Florida @ Tennessee
September 28 3:30pm Syracuse @ Auburn or Alabama @ Arkansas
October 5 12 noon Florida @ Ole Miss or Georgia @ Alabama or Arkansas @ Tennessee
October 12 3:30 pm Tennessee @ Georgia
October 19 3:30 pm Mississippi @ Alabama or South Carolina @ LSU
October 26 3:30 pm Alabama @ Tennessee
November 2 3:30 pm Tennessee @ South Carolina
November 9 3:30 pm Miami @ Tennessee
November 16 3:30 pm South Carolina @ Florida or Alabama @ LSU or Georgia @ Auburn
November 23 3:30 pm Auburn @ Alabama
November 29 (Friday) 2:30 pm LSU @ Arkansas
November 30 3:30 pm Georgia Tech @ Georgia or Kentucky @ Tennessee
December 7 6pm SEC Championship Game