Stadium has evolved into an interactive platform, but it hasn’t lived up to initial expectations.
Stadium
There are staff members at NBC Sports Chicago who have been with the network through all of its rebrandings, from SportsChannel to Fox Sports Net to Comcast SportsNet to its current form. That pattern is expected to continue when the White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks make their anticipated move to multiplatform sports network Stadium, the Sun-Times has learned.
Maintaining continuity and institutional knowledge with the personnel who have helped produce game and shoulder programming for years would be important to the new regional sports network. Behind-the-scenes folks at NBCSCH, such as producers, directors and production technicians, would help ease the transition. Teams already have informed some current staffers that they would be making the move.
Kevin Cross, president and general manager of NBC 5, Telemundo Chicago and NBC Sports Chicago, held a video town hall meeting Tuesday morning to assuage concerned employees who asked whether they should reach out to Stadium or look for new jobs. Cross told them it was a personal choice but he didn’t think the situation called for it, downplaying the news.
But signs have been pointing in this direction for a long time. Sox and Bulls chairman Jerry Reinsdorf bought majority control of Stadium from Sinclair Broadcast Group last May with a larger-scale operation in mind. Stadium, which Reinsdorf helped launch in 2017 as a melding of 120 Sports, Campus Insiders and American Sports Network, has evolved into an interactive platform, but it hasn’t lived up to initial expectations.
Stadium’s biggest challenge in its efforts to convert to a regional sports network will be gaining carriage on providers such as Comcast and DirecTV. Stadium will know what it’s up against when Diamond Sports Group, which owns the Bally Sports-branded RSNs and is working through bankruptcy court, settles on distribution deals with those carriers. Talks are ongoing.
Comcast and DirecTV could place Diamond’s costly channels on a higher programming tier, which Comcast recently did with Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), home of MLB’s Orioles and Nationals. Such placement would limit Stadium’s penetration in the market.
To guarantee wide distribution, Stadium also is seeking over-the-air partners. The NBA’s Jazz and Suns and the NHL’s Golden Knights are off cable and on OTA channels in their markets, an ironic trend in sports television that’s bringing it full circle after its migration to cable.