Hiestand: TV gung-ho for college basketball aboard ship

• ESPN last year drew top ratings for regular-season college basketball aboard an aircraft carrier
• That success has spawned networks trying for the same result with games on U.S. vessels this weekend
• Golf fans can select which featured group for TV to follow in the first round of an LPGA event

To understand why 14th-ranked Michigan State and Connecticut will play a college basketball game around midnight local time Friday in front of a crowd literally ordered to wear their camouflage fatigues, consider the basics of TV.

Starting with this: Follow the ratings.

Whether it's reality TV or amateur singing contests, any novel TV format that racks up eyeballs will spawn imitators.

So when a North Carolina-Michigan State men's basketball game last year was played on an aircraft carrier docked in San Diego on Veterans Day -- and drew First Fan Barack Obama -- it just seemed like a fun novelty.

Until the Nielsen rating came in. That game drew ESPN's highest regular-season college basketball rating in five years and its highest-ever college hoops rating in November -- a time when other sports can crowd out coverage of the start of college hoops.

Well, ahoy there!

As a result, various networks are suddenly interested in the U.S. military and how it can provide the kind of novel event backdrops -- like the outdoor venue for the NHL's Winter Classic or football games played in heavy snow or fog -- that can lure viewers.

Friday's Michigan State-Connecticut match-up on ESPN (6 p.m. ET) will be in a jet hangar at the Ramstein Air Base in Kaiserslautern, Germany. That's midnight in Germany, so the game can lead-in to a Maryland-Kentucky game in East Coast prime-time. ESPN senior coordinating producer Dave Miller, speaking by phone from Ramstein on Thursday, says there were a few wrinkles to iron out -- the hangar floor is tilted for fuel drainage -- and the military is providing "a four-man rock band." And, he says, "We're still working on getting a humvee or small aircraft alongside the court."

That will be the fourth college basketball game from a military site Friday. It will follow the NBC Sports Network airing a college basketball doubleheader -- No. 6 Notre Dame vs. No. 21 Ohio State in a women's game (4 p.m. ET) and No. 4 Ohio State vs. Marquette in a men's game -- to be played on the deck of the retired USS Yorktown docked in Charleston, S.C.. You might recognize that game venue: It rescued the Apollo 8 space capsule in 1968 and appeared in the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!

Later Friday, NBCSN airs Georgetown vs. No. 10 Florida in Jacksonville from the USS Bataan, which is an active vessel. Dan Steir, NBCSN senior vice-president/production, suggests that presents a TV wild card because "some of their radars and frequencies" are active. And, from aboard ship Thursday, Steir says his crew has to remember to leave slack in its cables from shore "to take into account rising and lowering tides."

The USS San Diego, docked in San Diego, is meant to take marines anywhere in the world to launch amphibious landings. Saturday, it will just launch sports yak as it hosts ESPN's College GameDay football pregame show.

And Sunday (4 p.m. ET), the Fox Sports Net regional channels will cover No. 9 Syracuse vs. No. 20 San Diego State on the retired carrier USS Midway in San Diego. The Fox on-air crew will include Dick Enberg, now a San Diego Padres announcer, TNT/CBS analyst Steve Kerr and Fox sideline reporter Erin Andrews.

The game already produced a novelty -- a college basketball rainout -- when it was moved from Friday to Sunday because of a bad weather forecast. Fox producer Jeff Byle says unlike modern arenas "where everything is pre-wired and it's plug-and-play," setting up on the ship "is completely different. You have to build your entire infrastructure."

Andrews on Thursday wasn't exactly sure what she would be doing in roaming the sidelines Sunday, but she's game: "I'm kind of the person in my family who'll try anything. ... I like being a guinea pig."

And if these TV sporst guinea pigs produce solid ratings, maybe next year we can finally see college basketball played on, say, a sub.

Spice rack: MSG Network has taken down ad signs meant to compel male viewers to stay home and watch its coverage of New York Knicks games. The ad had this subtle suggestion: "It's Friday night. You can either go out and attempt to pick up sixes and sevens or stay home and watch (Knicks guard Jason) Kidd dish out dimes." Charming. ... Disney can thank NBC's Al Michaels for the latest merchandising hit at its theme parks -- new Oswald the Lucky Rabbit hats. Michaels was famously traded in 2006 from Disney's ESPN/ABC in a deal that sent rights to Oswald, a Disney character created in 1927, back to Disney after they had been acquired by an NBC-related business unit decades ago. ... CBS-owned Showtime on Thursday announced the debut date for its new Jim Rome on Showtime weekly talk show -- Nov. 21. ... Golf Channel and the LPGA, for the first time, will let fans vote online to create a player group that will be featured on TV coverage of a tournament. Via golfchannel.com and lpga,com, users can vote on players to be in that featured group for Nov. 15 first-round coverage of the CME Group Titleholders event.