Regional sports network

In the United States of America and Canada, a regional sports network, or RSN, is a cable television station that presents sports programming to a local market. The most important programming on an RSN consists of live broadcasts of professional and college sporting events, as those games generate an overwhelming percentage of an RSN's advertising income. During the rest of the day, these stations show other sports and recreation programming. These channels are often the source content for out-of-market packages.

Most regional sports networks in the United States are either affiliated with Fox Sports Net or Comcast SportsNet, with supplemental programming from networks such as America One, AMGTV or ESPNEWS.

In Canada, Rogers Sportsnet operates four regional sports networks.

Contents

Fox Sports Net

For years, the default RSN for many markets was owned by Fox Sports Net, but an increasing trend is for the teams whose games make up the lucrative programming to own the RSN themselves. This serves two purposes: First, the teams make more money operating an RSN than they would collecting a licensing fee from, for example, Fox Sports Net.

Second, by owning their own RSN, teams that must share revenues with other members of their league can mask its broadcast-related profits. Under the old model, a team collects a large fee for licensing its games to the RSN. That fee would then be disclosed and shared with the other teams in the league. Under the new, team-owned RSN model, the team demands only a nominal fee, so the profits for local broadcasting stay with the team. The name of the networks was shortened to Fox Sports (Region/City) with the start of the 2008 college football season as part of a rebranding effort. The Pittsburgh, Rocky Mountain, Utah and Northwest affiliates, owned by DirecTV Sports Networks, were rebranded as Root Sports on April 1, 2011. They still carry the same local teams and national FSN programs.

Current Fox Sports Net affiliates

The current Fox Sports Net affiliates and the major teams they carry are:

Former Fox Sports affiliates

Some current networks were once owned and operated by Fox Sports Net, and they all still show national Fox Sports Net programs and games, since the markets they serve have no FSN affiliate. They are:

Alternate feeds and channels

Fox Sports Ohio

Fox Sports Ohio is unique among the FSN affiliates because it actually has two full time 24-hour feeds, one for Cleveland and one for Cincinnati (some television systems improperly call the latter 'Fox Sports Cincinnati' to avoid confusion among viewers). National programming is exactly the same. However, only the Cleveland feed carries the Cleveland Cavaliers while only the Cincinnati feed carries the Columbus Blue Jackets and Cincinnati Reds.

Fox Sports Net subfeeds and alternate / overflow feeds

Some Fox Sports affiliates have subfeeds to eliminate conflicts when two teams that they have rights to are playing at the same time, so they can air both games at once. They are:

Some Fox Sports affiliates have alternate (or overflow) feeds for the same purpose, named after the host network with "Plus" after it (i.e. Fox Sports Detroit Plus).

Subfeeds and alternate (overflow) feeds are only used during live games, and are turned off the rest of the time.

Some affiliates were once subfeeds but are now full channels. Fox Sports Houston was once a subfeed of Fox Sports Southwest, Fox Sports Kansas City and Fox Sports Indiana were once subfeeds of Fox Sports Midwest, and Fox Sports Wisconsin was once a subfeed of Fox Sports North.

Comcast SportsNet

Seeing an opportunity to serve sports fans on a more local level and generate profits, cable giant Comcast began creating their own RSN – Comcast SportsNet – in the 1990s. WIth the January 2011 merger with NBCUniversal, the NBC Sports division of NBC has taken operational control of these networks and is expected to rebrand them under the NBC Sports banner in the next few months.

Future

Alternate feeds on Comcast SportsNet

Just like FSN, most Comcast SportsNet affiliates have alternate (or overflow) feeds to avoid conflicts when 2 teams they have rights to are playing at the same time, so they can show both games at once. They are named after the host network with "Plus" after it (i.e. Comcast SportsNet Chicago Plus). The alternate (or overflow) feeds are only used during live games and are turned off the rest of the time. Comcast SportsNet Chicago also has a 2nd alternate called Comcast SportsNet Chicago alternate or Plus 2.

The CSN alternate channels are also used to show FSN college football and basketball games.

Comcast SportsNet in the San Francisco Bay Area & Sacramento Valley

Since the San Francisco Bay Area and the rest of Northern California have so many sports teams, it has two Comcast SportsNet affiliates which split coverage of local sports: Comcast SportsNet California and Comcast SportsNet Bay Area. It is the only market that has two 24 hour, full time Comcast SportsNet affiliates. Due to the territorial rules set by the National Basketball Association, Golden State Warriors games do not air in the Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto television market on CSN Bay Area, while for the same reason, CSN California can not air Sacramento Kings telecasts in the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose market.

Sportsnet

Main article: Rogers Sportsnet

Sportsnet, formerly known as CTV Sportsnet and Rogers Sportsnet, is owned by Rogers Communications, and is an RSN network serving Canada. It consists of four regional networks all available in HD.

Independent regional sports networks

The following is a list of regional sports channels which are not part of a larger national network:

Future

College networks

The Southeastern Conference explored starting its own 24-hour cable network [1], but a recent content deal by the University of Florida with Fox's Sun Sports, [2] and a long term deal between the SEC and the ESPN family of networks [3] have ended its likelihood. ESPN Plus later reached a deal with the SEC for the syndicated SEC Network for football and basketball games, which is basically under the same arrangement as past SEC rights holders Raycom/Lincoln Financial/Jefferson-Pilot Sports.

Defunct networks

High Definition

Many RSNs broadcast select content in High Definition. Fox Sports Net and Comcast SportsNet affiliates have dedicated HD channels, which are used for both local and national HD programming, mainly games. All FSN affiliates use 720p and all CSN affiliates and independent channels use 1080i.

See also

References

  1. ^ SEC explores launching its own TV Network
  2. ^ Florida rights deal may rule out SEC channel
  3. ^ ESPN scores 15 year SEC rights deal

External links