This article needs additional citations for verification .(March 2022) |
Type | Pay television service (sports) |
---|---|
Availability | United States |
Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois |
Owner | Jerry Reinsdorf |
Key people | Jerry Reinsdorf, Eddie Einhorn, Fred Eychaner |
Launch date | 1982 |
Dissolved | 1989 (became SportsChannel Chicago) |
Sportsvision (SV [1] [2] ) was a subscription sports television service founded by Chicago White Sox owners Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn and media mogul Fred Eychaner. [3] The service broadcast live sporting events, and for much of its time of operation was the broadcast network for the Chicago White Sox, Chicago Bulls, Chicago Blackhawks, and Chicago Sting. [4]
In April 1982, WPWR-TV, then on Channel 60, dedicated a large percentage of its broadcast schedule to Sportsvision. To access the service, viewers had to buy a TV set-top converter and pay monthly subscription fees to watch a number of sports broadcasts. Ultimately, as cable television gained a foothold in the Chicago area, the pay-TV business model dissolved and, in January 1984, Sportsvision was sold to Cablevision and was moved to basic cable. In 1989, it was unscrambled and renamed SportsChannel. In 1997, SportsChannel was purchased by Fox Sports Net. Now starting in October 2004 through current day the games reside on Comcast Sports Network Chicago which is owned by Chicago sports owners and Comcast's NBC venture.
The Chicago White Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Chicago. The White Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central Division. The team is owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, and plays its home games at Guaranteed Rate Field, located on Chicago's South Side. The White Sox are one of two MLB teams based in Chicago, the other being the Chicago Cubs of the National League (NL) Central division.
WGN-TV is an independent television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, it is sister to the company's sole radio property, news/talk/sports station WGN. WGN-TV's studios are located on West Bradley Place in Chicago's North Center community; as such, it is the only major commercial television station in Chicago which bases its main studio outside the Loop. Its transmitter is located atop the Willis Tower in the Loop.
WFLD is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, serving as the market's Fox network outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside Gary, Indiana–licensed MyNetworkTV outlet WPWR-TV. The two stations share studios on North Michigan Avenue in the Chicago Loop, and transmitter facilities atop the Willis Tower.
Golf Channel is an American sports television network owned by the NBC Sports Group division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. Founded in Birmingham, Alabama, it is currently based out of NBC Sports' headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.
WPWR-TV is a television station licensed to Gary, Indiana, United States, broadcasting the MyNetworkTV programming service to the Chicago area. It is one of two commercial television stations in the Chicago market to be licensed in Indiana. WPWR-TV is owned and operated by Fox Television Stations alongside Fox outlet WFLD ; the stations share studios on North Michigan Avenue in the Chicago Loop and transmitter facilities atop the Willis Tower.
WXFT-DT is a television station licensed to Aurora, Illinois, United States, serving as the Chicago-area outlet for the Spanish-language network UniMás. It is owned and operated by TelevisaUnivision alongside Joliet-licensed Univision station WGBO-DT. The two stations share studios on Fairbanks Court in the Streeterville neighborhood. Through a channel sharing agreement with ABC owned-and-operated station WLS-TV, WXFT-DT transmits using WLS-TV's spectrum from an antenna atop the Willis Tower.
WGBO-DT is a television station licensed to Joliet, Illinois, United States, serving as the Chicago-area outlet for the Spanish-language network Univision. It is owned and operated by TelevisaUnivision alongside Aurora-licensed UniMás station WXFT-DT. The two stations share studios at 541 North Fairbanks Court in the Streeterville neighborhood; WGBO-DT's transmitter is located atop the John Hancock Center.
PRISM was an American regional premium cable television channel in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Launched in September 1976, PRISM was primarily distributed through area cable systems, although it was also available through a scrambled over-the-air signal on WWSG-TV from 1983 to 1985.
SportsChannel is the collective name for a former group of regional sports networks in the United States that was owned by Cablevision, which from 1988 until the group's demise, operated it as a joint venture with NBC.
ON TV was an American subscription television (STV) service that operated in eight markets between 1977 and 1985. Originally established by National Subscription Television, a joint venture of Oak Industries and Chartwell Communications, ON TV was part of a new breed of STV operations that broadcast premium programming—including movies, sporting events, and concerts—over an encrypted signal on a UHF television station and leased decoders to subscribing customers. At its peak in 1982, ON TV boasted more than 700,000 customers—more than half of them in Los Angeles, its most successful market. However, the rapidly expanding availability of cable television, coupled with a recession, caused the business to quickly lose subscribers at the same time that Oak Industries was experiencing severe financial difficulties. Between March 1983 and June 1985, all eight operations closed.
Eddie Einhorn was minority owner and vice chairman of the Chicago White Sox.
Fox Sports Net Chicago was an American regional sports network that was headquartered in Chicago, Illinois and was owned by Cablevision for most of its history. News Corporation acquired a minority ownership interest in the network in 1997, which Cablevision bought out in 2005. The network was affiliated with SportsChannel from 1987 to 1997, when it became an affiliate of Fox Sports Net.
Spectrum was an American subscription television channel that was owned and operated by United Cable. Existing during the early 1980s, the service was available in the Chicago and Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan areas. It was also available in some areas of Alaska, such as Fairbanks.
NBC Sports Chicago is an American regional sports network that broadcasts regional coverage of professional sports teams in the Chicago metropolitan area, as well as college sports events and original sports-related news, discussion and entertainment programming. It is branded as part of the NBC Sports Regional Networks.
Major League Baseball games not broadcast exclusively by its media partners are televised by regional sports networks, which present sports programming of interest to their respective region. Most MLB broadcasters are members of chains such as NBC Sports Regional Networks and Bally Sports, although several teams are broadcast by regional networks that are independent of these chains. Some teams own partial or majority stakes in their regional broadcaster.
Several Major League Baseball teams have historically carried their games on superstations, which are broadcast television stations that are distributed on a regional or national basis on cable and satellite television.
WSNS-TV is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, serving as the local outlet for the Spanish-language network Telemundo. It is owned and operated by NBCUniversal's Telemundo Station Group alongside NBC outlet WMAQ-TV ; it is also sister to regional sports network NBC Sports Chicago. WSNS-TV and WMAQ-TV share studios at the NBC Tower on North Columbus Drive in the city's Streeterville neighborhood; both stations are broadcast from the same transmitter atop the Willis Tower in the Chicago Loop.
WGN Sports was the programming division of WGN-TV, an independent television station located in Chicago, Illinois, United States—which is owned by the Nexstar Media Group—that was responsible for all sports broadcasts on the station, some of which were previously also broadcast on its former national superstation feed, WGN America.
Marquee Sports Network is a regional sports network operated by Sinclair Broadcast Group and the Chicago Cubs, launched on February 22, 2020. It is devoted exclusively to Cubs baseball, replacing a trio of channels as the exclusive broadcaster of Cubs games not shown on national TV.
The following refers to the history of Major League Baseball coverage on local Fox affiliated stations as opposed to the national broadcasts on the Fox Broadcasting Company beginning in 1996.