WGN TV is interested in carrying local sports again and believes there’s a path to air Chicago Sports Network broadcasts of the White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks that much of the area has missed, the Sun-Times has learned.
The sides would have to sort out a lot of details, such as how many games would be included and who would sell advertising for them. Though WGN isn’t positioned to pay a substantial rights fee — the teams would have to treat it as a marketing expense — it could deliver the teams their largest TV audience since they launched CHSN in October.
WGN is available essentially everywhere locally, including on Comcast’s Xfinity cable system, which has about 1 million subscribers in the market. Plus, with as much as 15 hours of live daily programming, WGN can promote the broadcasts all day.
By undercutting the primary cable provider in the area, CHSN would risk further damaging its relationship with Comcast. But perhaps that’s irrelevant at this point. At a Crain’s Chicago Business event April 3, Bulls president Michael Reinsdorf accused Comcast of acting in “bad faith” during carriage talks and called its behavior “discriminatory.”
CHSN is available over the air on WJYS subchannels 62.2 and 62.3, Astound and U-Verse cable and DirecTV satellite. It also can be streamed via DirecTV Stream, Fubo, CHSN’s direct-to-consumer service and other platforms.
WGN is confident it could cobble together a limited schedule of games for all three teams, despite commitments with CW Sports that include the NASCAR Xfinity Series and ACC football and basketball. A schedule might include 10 or 15 Bulls and Hawks games and 25 Sox games.
It wouldn’t be the first time WGN figured out a way to accommodate a team. In 2008, the late Hawks chairman Rocky Wirtz worked with WGN to air 20 games a year starting with the 2008-09 season, while the channel still was carrying Bulls, Cubs and Sox games.
If WGN were to carry those games, the broadcasts likely would be simulcasts of the CHSN feed. Since losing its share of the teams’ rights, as well as those of the Cubs, in the fall of 2019, WGN dismantled its game-production operation. WGN could produce its own pregame and postgame shows and sell advertising for them.
Since its inception in 1948, WGN has carried Chicago sports at all levels, making it a focus of its programming. That changed when the Cubs, who had appeared on the channel from the start, left to launch Marquee Sports Network and the Sox, Bulls and Hawks made NBC Sports Chicago their exclusive home. WGN briefly carried the Fire before they landed on Apple TV.
Though its audience has dwindled, like so many other channels in the streaming age, WGN remains a pillar in the market. It has kept its place on the local sports scene with the nightly half-hour “GN Sports” show, and it has five sports anchors/reporters on staff, which is more than the four local network affiliates have.
Frankly, the Sox, Bulls and Hawks owe it to their fans to make this work because it doesn’t appear Comcast will pick up CHSN anytime soon. They have a willing partner in WGN, whose new general manager, Ric Harris, is itching to bring sports back to Chicago’s Very Own. It just can’t happen the old way. If the teams are agreeable, there’s a deal to be made.