SportsChannel America
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SportsChannel America was a cable television network that existed in the 1980s and early 1990s. 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. FSN actually replaced or bought out most of the SportsChannel America stations in their markets.
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[edit] National Hockey League
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 much 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 and went back to ESPN, leaving SportsChannel America with little more than outdoors shows and Canadian Football League games.
[edit] PRISM
In 1989, PRISM was sold to Rainbow Media. Rainbow launched a companion basic cable channel, SportsChannel Philadelphia, an affiliate of Rainbow's SportsChannel America network. The channels, however, had separate graphic and music packages and announcing teams until 1995, when all sports presentation was made uniform.
In 1996, Comcast merged with PRISM's former owner, Spectacor, to form Comcast-Spectacor, which immediately bought the 76ers. It then announced plans for a new all-sports network centered around those teams, effectively driving a stake through the heart of PRISM and SportsChannel Philadelphia. After a year of uncertainty that included plans for PRISM and SportsChannel to affiliate with Fox Sports Net, Comcast, Liberty Media, and Rainbow came to an agreement. PRISM and SportsChannel closed for good on October 1, 1997, but with designated successors: PRISM would give way to Liberty's Starz! movie channel, and the new Comcast SportsNet replaced SportsChannel Philadelphia on the area's cable systems.
[edit] Fox Sports buyout
Most of the SportsChannel America network of local cable stations were bought up by Fox Sports to create the FSN network of stations in late 1997, although SportsChannel Florida was the last of the SportsChannel America stations to remain on the air. It continued to operate until March 2000, when it became Fox Sports Florida (now FSN Florida).
[edit] Notable SportsChannel America shows
- NewsSport Talk - A sports talk show produced by the Chicago-based SportsChannel and syndicated to most of the other ones.
