SportsChannel America
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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SportsChannel of America, the official American television rights holder of the National Hockey League from 1988-1992 |
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. 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).
Sportswriters on TV - A sports talk show produced by the Chicago-based SportsChannel and
syndicated to most of the other ones.
