When will companies learn that astroturfing is lame? Never!

Comcast’s PR agency has been caught posing as fans on messageboards in an effort to spread their propaganda about the “Big Ten” channel. For those of you who don’t care about college football (this includes us) the Big Ten channel is a channel about Big Ten football. It’s causing some controversy because it’s taking games off of regular non-pay TV and putting them on a special cable channel. People who don’t care about Big Ten football don’t want to pay extra for Comcast to carry this channel and people who do care about Big Ten football don’t want to pay extra for it either. So it’s a channel no one wants to pay for, as far as we can tell.

From Fanhouse:

“Victory4MSU20” (post count: 1) pops up on Michigan State Scout site GoSpartans.net to offer this:

I’m a big fan of State sports so I went to the Big 10 Network’s kick-off party in East Lansing last week. Big 10 Commissioner Jim Delaney was there telling everybody how great this new TV package is going to be for college football and b-ball fans. WHAT A CROCK! Delaney is like the emperor who wore no clothes…the BTC has already sold its best games to ABC and ESPN. How delusional is Delaney and these other Big 10 greedmongers who want to charge us for the games we’d be able to see on our local cable station? If you want to learn more about the Big 10’s big time rip off, I found a web site that explains a lot… http://www.puttingfansfirst.org

VICTORY FOR MSU!!!

Yes, that is the most authentic post ever. Luckily for us (who would have been fooled by this earnest poster’s use of common internet colloquialisms such as “greedmongers” and “b-ball “) the post has been traced to Martin Waymire Advoacy Communications. Whoops. Fail. Astroturfing is never cool, and all these various sports channel wars are bad for consumers.

Comcast Posing as Big Ten Fans in Anti-BTN Astroturfing Campaign [Fanhouse via Deadspin]

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