Citytv is a Canadian television network owned by the Rogers Media subsidiary of Rogers Communications. The network consists of six owned-and-operated (O&O) television stations located in the metropolitan areas of Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, a cable-only service that serves the province of Saskatchewan, and three independently owned affiliates serving smaller cities in Alberta and British Columbia.
The Sports Network (TSN) is a Canadian English language sports specialty channel. Established by the Labatt Brewing Company in 1984 as part of the first group of Canadian specialty cable channels, since 2001, TSN has been majority-owned by communications conglomerate BCE Inc. with a minority stake held by ESPN Inc. via a 20% share in the Bell Media subsidiary CTV Specialty Television. TSN is the largest specialty channel in Canada in terms of gross revenue, with a total of $400.4 million in revenue in 2013.
Sportsnet is a Canadian English-language sports specialty service owned by Rogers Sports & Media. It was established in 1998 as CTV Sportsnet, a joint venture between CTV, Liberty Media, and Rogers Media. CTV parent Bell Globemedia then was required to divest its stake in the network following its 2001 acquisition of competing network TSN. Rogers then became the sole owner of Sportsnet in 2004 after it bought the remaining minority stake that was held by Fox.
CITY-DT, virtual channel 57, is the flagship station of the Citytv network, licensed to Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The station is owned by the Rogers Media subsidiary of Rogers Communications, as part of a triplestick with Omni Television flagship stations CFMT-DT and CJMT-DT. The three stations share studios at 33 Dundas Street East on Yonge-Dundas Square in Downtown Toronto; CITY-DT's transmitter is located atop the CN Tower, also in Downtown Toronto.
CJMT-DT, virtual channel 40, is a television station licensed to Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of two flagship stations of the Canadian multilingual network Omni Television. CJMT-DT is owned by the Rogers Media subsidiary of Rogers Communications, as part of a triplestick with sister Omni station CFMT-DT and Citytv flagship station CITY-DT. The three stations share studios at 33 Dundas Street East on Yonge-Dundas Square in Downtown Toronto; CJMT-DT's transmitter is located atop the CN Tower, also in Downtown Toronto.
The television rights to broadcast National Football League (NFL) games are the most lucrative and expensive rights of any American sport. Television brought professional football into prominence in the modern era after World War II. Since then, National Football League broadcasts have become among the most-watched programs on American television, and the financial fortunes of entire networks have rested on owning NFL broadcasting rights. This has raised questions about the impartiality of the networks' coverage of games and whether they can criticize the NFL without fear of losing the rights and their income.
In broadcasting, the term blackout refers to the non-airing of television or radio programming in a certain media market.
In the United States and Canada, a regional sports network (RSN) is a cable television channel that presents sports programming to a local market or geographical region.
In North America, an out-of-market sports package is a form of subscription television that broadcasts sporting events to areas where the events were unable to be seen by viewers on other broadcast and cable television networks due to the games not being broadcast in their local market.
MLB Extra Innings is an out-of-market sports package distributed in North America by satellite provider DirecTV since 1996 and by most cable providers since 2001. The package allowed its subscribers to see up to 80 out-of-market Major League Baseball games a week using local over the air stations and regional sports networks.
This article refers to Sports broadcasting contracts in Canada. For broadcasting rights lists of other countries, see Sports television broadcast contracts.
As of the 2017 NFL season, CTV and TSN broadcast Sunday games. Monday Night Football airs exclusively on TSN. TSN and CTV Two own rights to Sunday Night Football and Thursday Night Football. RDS carries games in the French language from all timeslots. U.S. network television feeds may also be available, often from multiple markets, on cable and satellite ; all games are subject to simultaneous substitution.
NFL RedZone is an American sports television channel owned and operated by NFL Network since 2009. As a "special" game-day exclusive, it broadcasts on Sundays during the NFL regular season from 1:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern, or when the last afternoon window game ends. RedZone provides "whip around" simulcast coverage of all Sunday afternoon games airing in-progress on CBS and Fox.
The history of the National Football League on television documents the long history of the National Football League on television. The NFL, along with boxing and professional wrestling, was a pioneer of sports broadcasting during a time when baseball and college football were more popular than professional football. Due to the NFL understanding television at an earlier time, they were able to surpass Major League Baseball in the 1960s as the most popular sport in the United States. Today, NFL broadcasting contracts are among the most valuable in the world.
The National Hockey League (NHL) is shown on national television in the United States and Canada. With 24 teams in the U.S. and 7 in Canada, the NHL is the only one of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada that maintains separate national broadcasters in each country, each producing separate telecasts of a slate of regular season games, playoff games, and all seven games of the Stanley Cup Finals.
After Wayne Gretzky was traded to the Los Angeles Kings in 1988, CBC began showing occasional double-headers when Canadian teams visited Los Angeles to showcase the sport's most popular player. These games were often joined in progress, as the regular start time for Hockey Night in Canada was still 8 p.m. Eastern Time and the Kings home games began at 7:30 p.m. Pacific Time. Beginning in the 1995 season, weekly double-headers became the norm, with games starting at 7:30 Eastern and 7:30 Pacific, respectively. In 1998, the start times were moved ahead to 7 p.m. ET and PT.
CBC's deal with the NHL ran through the 2013–14 season, and was replaced in 2014–15 by a sublicensing deal with Rogers Communications. The deal includes airings of games on the conventional over-the-air CBC Television network as well as carriage of those broadcasts through digital media, including CBCSports.ca. The deal came after controversy and discussion before and during the 2006-07 NHL season, when private broadcaster CTVglobemedia attempted to acquire exclusive Canadian distribution rights to the NHL for its own networks, including broadcast network CTV and cable channels TSN and RDS. Such a package, which would have left CBC without NHL hockey, would have increased TSN's previously existing coverage of NHL games; the attempt also came at a time when CTVglobemedia had outbid the CBC for Canadian television rights to the 2010 and 2012 Olympics, as well as the major television package for curling. Despite the rumours, it always seemed that CTV was unlikely to be interested in the nightly playoff coverage currently provided by the CBC, since weeknight games in April and May would conflict with new episodes of CTV's slate of American programming. As well, the title Hockey Night in Canada could not be used as the name is owned by CBC, unless CTVglobemedia were to pay royalties to CBC for use of the name. The current deal with CBC and Rogers maintains the 65-plus-year tradition of Hockey Night in Canada on CBC, but also allows Rogers to expand its coverage. A caveat of the deal limits CBC to the number of games per Canadian team it can show so that the seven Canadian-based teams, particularly the Toronto Maple Leafs, can distribute more games to regional carriers, thereby increasing the value of their local packages.
