If Fox ends up accepting Disney's offer, the FCC has required Disney to sell off the Fox RSNs. AT&T has been suggested as one potential interested party. AT&T would become a big player in RSNs if they took over those 22 RSNs (maybe only 21 since apparently the Yankees have a clause that allows them to buy out YES) to add to their current small collection of the former Root Sports networks.
Are there any other providers that offer the regional sports networks? Searching via Google has been a disaster. I am specifically interested in Fox Sports Oklahoma. I am considering leaving DirecTv.
Dish, but they don't have FS Oklahoma 24/7 so you won't get anything Oklahoma specific if you're outside of Thunder territory.
Some cable providers do have out of market FSN stations using national gameless edits, but those are rare except for a few providers like U-Verse, Google Fiber and Frontier, and none of them have FS Oklahoma out of market since most of the out of market schedule matches FS Southwest. Instead most cable providers rely on the Fox College Sports channels to bring college and some high school sports that can be cleared nationally from the various FSN regions. (Fox College Sports was also sent to the spinoff holding company with the FSN stations)
The Spurs game that night was a NBA TV game, so like I said, it was NBA TV distributing those games in 4K using coverage produced by FSN.
Fox Sports doesn't have any national NBA rights, so they can't distribute those games directly. Which is why we only got the games NBA TV picked for their telecasts in 4K.
And, apparently, the winner is Sinclair. This will be interesting, as Sinclair is very focused on small market TV. Things are different in the big city.
If I have it right, it only owns stations affiliated with a major network in 2 MLB cities covered by this sale (Fox in Cincinnati, ABC in St. Louis). Baltimore, Washington, and Pittsburgh have different RSNs. It owns some CWs and other such in some other bigger markets.
Maybe they feel there is more than one way to play in "big market TV", since their ability to buy locals into those big markets will be limited by FCC rules. i.e. owning RSNs in those big markets instead of network affiliates.
When MVPDs like Directv or Comcast negotiate with them, they'll have locals in a lot of smaller markets and RSNs in a lot of bigger markets, so they will have more leverage than they had before. Look for outages of locals and RSNs in the future, since Sinclair likes hardball tactics.
I have read nothing on it, but I would assume the rights to use the word "Fox" are only for a short transition period. The most logical times to switch are just at the end of or just before the beginning of baseball season, so October or March.
Marquee is the name of their (separate from this deal) Cubs channel, launching next spring. They could expand that.
The still have the trademark to American Sports Network, which is now called Stadium, a "netlet" .2 channel showing, more or less, stuff nobody else wants.
I saw somebody post that if you go back far enough the previous names of parts of this network included "Sports Channel" and "Prime Network", no idea about the rights or copyrights to either. Prime Sports Network - geography sounds pretty good.
Of course our friends in the GWN have the totally original "The Sports Network" which everybody just calls "TSN" and "Sports Net" which most everybody calls "SN". So creativity is not the biggest thing.
One thing. Please drop "Ohio" from the name of whatever Fox Sports Ohio becomes. It is shown in four states on the main feed and in three others with modified commercials. The stadium of one of the main teams is literally on the state like, AKA the Ohio River. Call it "Ohio Valley".
I’m not so sure Sinclair will win. I kind of expect Liberty to. For a multitude of reasons. Big 3 would be the most interesting winner, they have some big time sports people behind their group I believe.
FS - Ohio is the most generic of all the Fox Sports - Wherevers. First is it run out of Cleveland, there is no content, other than the Reds or Blue Jackets, from anywhere else, Ohio or not. There is almost nothing on the channel in other local content at all. Some few college and HS games, all NE Ohio, and locally produced golf show. I think they have some Ohio State talk, or at least they used to. Mostly it is games and filler, nothing else.
They do carry the Cavaliers who are from Cleveland. Don't forget MLS! lol Maybe the new owner will figure something out the get it HD on Directv full time. (Kyl doesn't need to explain why it isn't again! Unless he really wants to...)
And I wouldn't bet either way on this allowing them to force the Cubs channel on people. Spectrum got the Lakers channels on Directv but not he Dodgers... Just sayin...
So does this mean Sinclair is going to insert their "must run" segments during ad breaks featuring Boris Epshteyn shoving their right wing agenda down people's throats?
It has now become a total nightmare. Sinclair is truly the most evil company on the face of this planet. Goodbye to the best announcers for cheap inept announcers who know nothing about baseball. Good bye Dick Bremer. Good bye Bert Blylevin. Good bye Brian Anderson. Good bye, insert name here. The ones who will be watching their replacements will of course be the totally clueless inept morons.
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