SportsChannel America


SportsChannel America
image:Mid 1990's SportsChannel Logo.png
SportsChannel logo from 1995 to 2000.
Launched 1976
Closed 2000
Owned by Cablevision
Country United States
Replaced by Fox Sports Net
Comcast SportsNet
Sister channel(s) Prime Network

SportsChannel America was a cable television network operated by Cablevision. While the network did not survive, its basic gameplan (a sports cable network with national programming, but that let each local market get the rights to show their own local teams in their market) survives on in the form of Fox Sports Net, and more recently Comcast SportsNet. SportsChannel New York was the first of these networks and was launched in 1976. Cablevision later partned with Fox and Liberty Media to rebrand these networks as FSN in early 1998.

Contents

History

Former SportsChannel Networks

Notable SportsChannel America programming

National Hockey League

SportsChannel of America, the official American television rights holder of the National Hockey League from 1988–1992. Note: The logo is from 1976–1995.

The network is probably most notable for getting the National Hockey League rights from ESPN in 1988, by offering almost triple the amount of money that ESPN was offering at the time for the NHL (a move not unlike the 2005 NHL rights grab by Comcast/OLN over ESPN). Much like the Comcast deal as well, SportsChannel America was only in a few major markets, and reached only a 1/3 of the households that ESPN did at the time. After 4 seasons, the NHL got out of the deal[1] and went back to ESPN, leaving SportsChannel America with little more than outdoors shows and Canadian Football League games.

Although SportsChannel America wasn't showing NHL games, the NHL continued to show games on their local SportsChannel station (Two examples were the Chicago Blackhawks and the Hartford Whalers as they had local SportsChannels stations in their respective areas). But this wasn't the case for all NHL teams, as teams showed games on non-SportsChannel stations (such as Prime Ticket for the Los Angeles Kings and KBL (later Prime Network) for the Pittsburgh Penguins).

Prime SportsChannel Networks

In 1993, Cablevision partned with Liberty Media and NBC to form Prime SportsChannel Networks combining SportsChannel America with Liberty's Prime Network. This partnership would produce NewSport and American Sports Classics.

Fox Sports rebranding

In 1998, Cablevision partnered with Fox Sports and Liberty Media to rebrand most of the SportsChannel America networks as Fox Sports Net stations. The first network to rebrand itself was SportsChannel New York (currently MSG+) when it became Fox Sports New York on January 27, 1998. The others networks (except SportsChannel Florida) were rebranded later that week. The last network to rebrand itself was SportsChannel Florida, which became Fox Sports Net Florida (now FSN Florida) in March 2000.

References

  1. ^ For SportsChannel, the deal was a disaster. While the cable channel three years later was available in 20 million homes, the broadcaster lost as much as $10 million on the agreement, and soon faded into obscurity.
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