As expected, the Chicago Sports Network and DirecTV formally announced an agreement Wednesday to carry the new TV home of the White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks when it launches Oct. 1.
The first pay-TV partner for the nascent 24/7 regional sports network will air 300-plus games and additional sports programming for DirecTV subscribers across a five-state footprint, including Illinois, Iowa and portions of Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan, filling in a part of the viewing puzzle for fans of the three teams.
“We have always prided ourselves on being a sports leader and intend to remain at the forefront,” Rob Thun, chief content officer for DirecTV, said in a news release.
The Chicago Sports Network will replace NBC Sports Chicago in the DirecTV channel lineup on Oct. 1, and will be included in the 125-plus channel Choice Package, which costs $74.99 per month.
DirecTV has about 300,000 subscribers in the Chicago area.
“This agreement establishes an immediate foundation for CHSN and aligns us with one of the foremost innovators in sports media,” Jason Coyle, president of Chicago Sports Network, said in the release.
A major hole in the broadcast market remains, however.
The Chicago Sports Network has yet to secure a carriage deal with Comcast, the teams’ former partner with NBC Sports Chicago and the largest pay-TV platform in the market with nearly 1 million subscribers.
While the network continues to work on signing up Comcast and other pay-TV providers, it is looking to fill the void with an old school solution — free broadcast TV.
CHSN struck a deal with WJYS-Ch. 62, a full-powered UHF TV station licensed to Hammond that broadcasts from Willis Tower. The main channel is 24/7 religious programming, while its two digital subchannels air shopping networks.
Come Oct. 1, those two digital subchannels, 62.2 and 62.3, will carry the Chicago Sports Network in high-definition to anyone who can capture the signal with a TV antenna.
About 15% of the 3.46 million homes in the Chicago market watch TV using an antenna, according to Nielsen.
Sources said CHSN is expected to announce several additional over-the-air partners beyond the Chicago market in the coming days.
Coyle is a digital media sports veteran with longtime ties to Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the White Sox and Bulls.
Reinsdorf helped pioneer pay-TV sports with the 1982 launch of SportsVision, which employed a scrambled broadcast signal over WPWR-Ch. 60 (now Ch. 50). At its height, about 10,000 subscribers paid $19.95 per month to watch the Sox, Blackhawks, Bulls and the now-defunct Sting using a decoder box.
The White Sox also kept a chunk of games on free TV during the inaugural seasons of the pay-to-watch-play experiment.
SportsVision migrated to cable two years later, becoming one of the first regional sports networks on pay-TV.
“There was a time Jerry Reinsdorf was ahead of the game by about a half dozen years when he tried to do SportsVision,” said Marc Ganis, a Chicago-based sports marketing consultant. “It was the right concept but the wrong time.”
With regional sports networks struggling amid cord cutting, the pendulum for pro teams is beginning to swing back toward free over-the-air games, along with a mix of digital streaming, national TV broadcasts and RSNs, Ganis said.
CHSN is starting to put those pieces together, but for Bulls, Hawks and Sox fans, hooking up an antenna or signing up with DirecTV will be the only way to watch the games, for now.
rchannick@chicagotribune.com
