SportsChannel America
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 that let each local market get the rights to show its own local teams in its market) survives on in the form of Fox Sports Net (FSN) and Comcast SportsNet. SportsChannel New York was the first of these networks and was launched in 1976. Cablevision later partnered with Fox and Liberty Media to rebrand these networks as FSN in early 1998.

[edit] History

[edit] Former SportsChannel Networks

• SportsChannel New York (1976, now MSG+)
• SportsChannel New England (acquired as PRISM New England and rebranded in 1983, now CSN New England)
• SportsChannel Chicago (acquired as SportsVision in 1984 and rebranded in 1989, became the now defunct FSN Chicago and later, Comcast SportsNet Chicago)
• SportsChannel Florida (1987, now FSN Florida)
• SportsChannel Los Angeles (1989, now defunct)
• SportsChannel Ohio (1989, now FSN Ohio)
• SportsChannel Bay Area (1990, now CSN Bay Area)
• SportsChannel Philadelphia (1990, now defunct)

[edit] Notable SportsChannel America programming

• Canadian Football League
• Extreme Championship Wrestling
• National Hockey League
• NewSport Talk - A two hour sports talk show produced by the Chicago-based SportsChannel and syndicated to most of the other ones. It was an original show on NewSport.
• World Basketball League
• NASCAR Busch Grand National races

[edit] 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 obtained the National Hockey League rights from ESPN in 1988 by offering the NHL almost triple the amount of money that ESPN was offering (a move not unlike the 2005 NHL rights grab by Comcast/OLN over ESPN). SportsChannel America was only in a few major markets, and reached only one-third of the households that ESPN did. After 4 seasons, the NHL ended the deal and went back to ESPN, leaving SportsChannel America with little more than outdoors shows and Canadian Football League games. 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.^[1]

Although SportsChannel America wasn't showing NHL games, the NHL continued to show games on local SportsChannel stations (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).

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] References