For as much as it feels like sports media is living in a “Jetsons” world, parts of it are returning to a “Flintstones” world.
While streaming continues to make inroads in the industry, broadcast television is showing it still has value. You remember broadcast TV, don’t you? Those channels we used to watch regularly by the tens of millions and required only a TV set and an antenna? For local sports, that mostly meant watching WGN, which carried Blackhawks, Bulls, Cubs and White Sox games until the teams migrated solely to cable.
Cable and satellite bundled those broadcast channels with a hundred others, many of which you never watched. Customers complained about the cost and yearned for an a la carte option. Years later, streaming came along to solve that problem, and customers cut the cord. But that, too, became costly and fragmented the audience so much that streamers now are bundling themselves.
All the while, broadcast TV was sitting off to the side, saying, “I still got it.”
Broadcast TV is coming in handy for teams and leagues looking for new homes and wider distribution amid the upheaval pervading regional sports networks, particularly the dozens of Bally Sports-branded channels whose owner, Diamond Sports Group, is in bankruptcy court.
The CW is airing ACC football and basketball games and will begin airing the NASCAR Xfinity Series in 2025. Those ACC games appear locally on fellow Nexstar property WGN, which makes for an odd pairing given the station’s history airing Chicago sports.
Nationally, the partnership already has benefitted The CW, which said it drew 1.3 million viewers for the North Alabama-Florida State game Nov. 18, its largest prime-time audience in over six years. Locally, it’s fair to wonder whether people know – or care – that the games are on WGN.
Scripps Sports, a new division of the 145-year-old E.W. Scripps Company, entered the fray this year, airing WNBA games on over-the-air Ion. It recently added the NWSL to its portfolio, which also includes the NHL’s Coyotes, whose RSN (Bally) shut down, and Golden Knights, who left theirs (AT&T) before it did.
Gray Television, the second-largest local broadcaster behind Nexstar, is airing the NBA’s Suns and WNBA’s Mercury on over-the-air stations in Phoenix. The Suns were even kind enough to offer free antennas to fans. And the NBA’s Jazz put their games on a local Sinclair-owned station for free.
So if you’re a Coyotes and Suns fan in Arizona, you can watch your teams for free. How great is that?
It got me thinking: Would Chicago teams ever return to their roots on broadcast TV?
The possibility became real when NBC Chicago announced last month that it would simulcast two Blackhawks and two Bulls games on NBC Sports Chicago and NBC 5. Though scheduling conflicts took one simulcast away from each team, it still marked the first time either appeared on local over-the-air TV since bailing on good ol’ WGN in 2019.
If NBC Sports Chicago remains the exclusive home of Hawks, Bulls and Sox games next year (the teams’ contract with the broadcaster expires in October), might NBC 5 air a handful of simulcasts to appease fans subject to rising rates and regional-sports fees, not to mention increase distribution?
And what about Marquee Sports Network, which isn’t distributed as widely on streaming services as NBC Sports Chicago (though it did launch a direct-to-consumer app this year)? It’d be nice if Marquee aired a package of games on WGN, which helped make the Cubs big enough to have their own RSN.
Such arrangements exist in other markets. The NBA’s Clippers put 11 regular-season games on over-the-air KTLA. MLB’s Mets put 24 regular-season games on WPIX last season. But neither is because of the failing RSN model. Those teams made a choice. Just as the Yankees chose to remove their games from WPIX and put them behind a paywall on Amazon’s Prime Video.
This is a market-specific issue that depends on each RSN’s situation. The RSNs in Chicago aren’t nearly as distressed as they are elsewhere. So the chances of them putting games on broadcast TV are slim. It would be bad business to hand over coveted inventory out of the goodness of their hearts. Expect to keep paying those fees hand over fist for the foreseeable future.
Or move to Phoenix.
Remote patrol
Congratulations to Chicago-area native Tom Fletcher, who will be inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame on Tuesday in New York. Fletcher helped innovate sports TV production by creating now-prevalent remote-controlled cameras, such as those above the rim and behind the backboard in basketball, on the goal post in football and inside the net in hockey.
Fletcher’s favorite sport is hockey, and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman credited him with revolutionizing the production of games. “Tom Fletcher and his group gave us an opportunity to show views of the game that nobody had ever seen before” Bettman said.
Congratulations to Bulls TV voice Adam Amin, who was named The Big Lead’s best play-by-play announcer for 2023. Amin and analyst Mark Schlereth will call the Lions-Bears game Sunday on Fox.
