WTSN (TV channel)

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WTSN

Type	Digital cable specialty channel
Country	Canada
Availability	National
Slogan	Women's Sports Television
Owner	CTV Speciality Television Inc. (CTVglobemedia 80%/ESPN 20%)
Launch date	September 7, 2001
Closure date	September 30, 2003
Website	tsn.ca/wtsn (now defunct)

WTSN is a now defunct Canadian category 1 digital cable specialty channel dedicated to presenting women in sports. It was believed to be the world's first television service dedicated solely to women's sports.

The network was headed by pioneering Canadian sports broadcaster Sue Prestedge.

Owned by Bell Globemedia and ESPN as a spinoff of TSN (The Sports Network), WTSN first began broadcasting on September 7, 2001 but ceased operations on September 30, 2003, due to lack of expected growth and revenue.

However, TSN did not immediately surrender the channel's license, and as recently as January of 2005, filed an intervention with the CRTC against a proposed license amendment for Fox Sports World Canada that may have impacted on WTSN's mandate. It was therefore considered possible that the channel might have relaunched if economic conditions were found to be more favourable. However, the licence was eventually revoked, at the company's request, on December 19, 2006.

WTSN presumably stood for "Women's TSN", and hence "Women's The Sports Network". Due to the inherent grammatical problems in this, some have suggested that it was an acronym for "Women's Television Sports Network". The slogan actually used by WTSN in promotions was different yet again, and could only loosely fit the acronym: "Women's Sports Television".