NBC Sports Chicago is an American regional sports network that is owned by the NBC Sports Group unit of NBCUniversal (which owns 20%, and is itself owned by Comcast, the primary cable provider in the Chicago market), the family of Chicago Cubs owner J. Joseph Ricketts (who own 20%), Chicago Bulls and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf (who owns a 40% majority interest), and Chicago Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz (who owns 20%).
The channel broadcasts regional coverage of professional sports teams in the Chicago metropolitan area, as well as college sports events and original sports-related news, discussion and entertainment programming. NBC Sports Chicago is available on cable and fiber optic television providers in most of Illinois, and throughout northern Indiana, Iowa, Kenosha County, Wisconsin and southwest Michigan and nationwide on satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network. The network maintains main studios and offices located at 350 North Orleans Street, inside the River North Point Center in the Near North Side area.
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History
In November 2003, Jerry Reinsdorf, Bill Wirtz and the Tribune Company decided to end their cable television agreements for their respective teams, the Bulls, White Sox, Cubs and Blackhawks with FSN Chicago, stripping that network of broadcast rights to all of the professional sports teams in the Chicago area. All three team owners decided to enter into a partnership with Comcast to form a new regional sports network, to be named Comcast SportsNet Chicago, whose launch was formally announced on December 2. CSN Chicago was created in order for the four teams to have editorial control over their broadcasts, although the network continued to share the rights to the Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks and Bulls with WGN-TV (channel 9; which is owned by Tribune) and (until 2014) WCIU-TV (channel 26).
Comcast SportsNet Chicago launched on October 1, 2004. At that time, with the loss of all four teams from its lineup, FSN Chicago was effectively left with only events from some minor local and semi-professional teams, national programming from Fox Sports Net, and Midwestern outdoors programs on its schedule; many cable and satellite providers in northeastern Illinois and northwest Indiana also chose to replace FSN Chicago with CSN Chicago upon its launch.
After Rainbow Media shut down FSN Chicago on June 23, 2006, Comcast SportsNet Chicago acquired the regional cable television rights to broadcast sports events, discussion and entertainment programs intended for national distribution to the Fox Sports regional networks. The network subsequently relocated its operations into FSN Chicago's former studio facilities on Orleans Street (which NBC Sports Chicago now also shares with the offices of the Chicago Sun-Times).
On April 2, 2007, the Tribune Company announced its intent to sell its shares in both Comcast SportsNet Chicago and the Chicago Cubs as part of the company's $8.2 billion purchase by real estate magnate Sam Zell.
After inheriting the team from father Bill Wirtz upon his death in September 2007, new Chicago Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz decided to lift a longstanding ban on televised coverage of the team's home games (which the elder Wirtz imposed as a means to sustain ticket sales). On March 30, 2008, the Blackhawks announced a broadcasting agreement, which renewed CSN Chicago's broadcast rights (with the network carrying the bulk of the games), while also splitting a share of the local broadcasts with WGN-TV effective with the 2008-09 season; all of the team's games (both home and away) would be televised in high definition (due to the NHL's broadcast contracts, including ironically one with eventual Comcast division NBCUniversal, WGN-TV was barred from carrying its share of Blackhawks telecasts on its former national superstation feed WGN America, although its game telecasts were available in Canada through the station's carriage as a superstation on domestic cable and satellite providers).
Comcast SportsNet Chicago, along with the other Comcast SportsNet-branded networks, implemented a new network logo style (utilizing Comcast's then-universal corporate logo) and graphics package on October 1, 2008, coinciding with the fourth anniversary of the network's launch.
On January 5, 2009, the network premiered Monsters in the Morning, a weekday morning talk show hosted by former WSCR radio host Mike North and Comcast SportsNet Chicago reporter and former Chicago Bear Dan Jiggetts. The program was cancelled in January 2010, due to problems involving the show, including the program's main sponsor, the now-defunct online sports channel ChicagoSportsWebio.com, being implicated in defrauding North, Jiggetts and others in a money laundering scheme in June 2009; North subsequently became the host of Monsters and Money in the Morning, a short-lived program for CBS owned-and-operated station WBBM-TV (channel 2), which briefly replaced that station's morning newscast.
On August 21, 2009, the Tribune Company sold its interests in the Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field and 25% of Comcast SportsNet to the family of TD Ameritrade founder J. Joseph Ricketts for $845 million.
With Comcast's acquisition of NBC Universal in February 2011, Comcast SportsNet was also integrated into the new NBC Sports Group unit, culminating with the addition of the peacock logo in September 2012 and an updated graphics package based on that introduced by NBC Sports for its NBC and national cable broadcasts in January 2013. The updated graphics were implemented on CSN's live game coverage and all studio shows, with the exception of SportsNet Central.
In September 2012, Comcast SportsNet Chicago and its sister Comcast SportsNet outlets ceased carrying Fox Sports Networks-supplied programming, after failing to reach an agreement to continue carrying FSN's nationally distributed programs. SportsNet Central would ultimately implement a new on-air look of its own and on April 14, 2014, in conjunction with that change, the program switched to the updated graphics package introduced three years earlier.
On October 2, 2017, the network was rebranded as NBC Sports Chicago, as part of a larger rebranding of the Comcast SportsNet networks under the NBC Sports brand.
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Programming
Sports coverage
Through its majority ownership by the owners of each of the four teams, NBC Sports Chicago holds the regional cable television rights to air a majority of games involving the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox Major League Baseball clubs, the NBA's Chicago Bulls and the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks. However, as Chicago is one of the scant few remaining U.S. markets whose baseball and basketball teams broadcast their games both over-the-air and on local cable, the network shares the broadcast rights to all four teams with WGN-TV, while both share the rights to the Cubs with ABC owned-and-operated station WLS-TV (channel 7). The network also holds the broadcast rights to games involving the Chicago Fire S.C. of Major League Soccer. The channel had held the broadcast rights to games of the now-defunct Chicago Rush of the Arena Football League.
On April 13, 2010, CSN Chicago announced that it had signed a contract with Chicago Fire S.C. to broadcast at least eight of the franchise's matches for the 2010 season; on January 26, 2015, Comcast SportsNet Chicago signed a three-year contract with the Chicago Fire to become the team's exclusive local television broadcaster, after having carried its games the previous two years on WPWR-TV.
The network also carries collegiate sports events including football games involving the Northern Illinois University Huskies and basketball games from the Illinois State University Redbirds. Prior to the termination of Comcast SportsNet's groupwide programming agreement with Fox Sports Networks, CSN Chicago additionally broadcast FSN's national programming following the shutdown of FSN Chicago, notably including the network's college sports coverage, such as Atlantic Coast Conference men's and women's basketball games (on Sundays), men's basketball games from the Pac-12 Conference (on various nights) and college football games from the Big 12 Conference and Pac-12 Conference (on Saturdays during the fall).
Beginning in 2016, CSN Chicago obtained the exclusive rights to championship games for the Iowa High School Athletic Association in football, basketball and wrestling, replacing the previous model of a statewide broadcast network in Iowa of stations in each market.
Other programming
NBC Sports Chicago's flagship program is SportsNet Central, a nightly sports news program featuring live reports and coverage on the Chicago area's major sports teams as well as game highlights from local and national teams; the program also features special regular segments such as "Luke-A-Likes" (a popular segment hosted by Luke Stuckmeyer on nights when he hosts the program, a viewer-voting segment featuring photos submitted by viewers claiming to resemble a particular sports figure) and the "Chicago Sports Trivia Question" (a bumper segment shown before and after a commercial break featuring trivia questions related to Chicago sports).
The network also carries team magazine and coaches shows focusing on the Bulls, Blackhawks, Cubs and White Sox, as well as the Northern Illinois University and Illinois State University football and basketball teams.
CSN Chicago Sports Awards
Since the network launched in 2004, NBC Sports Chicago has hosted the CSN Chicago Sports Awards, an annual award show to raise money for the March of Dimes (this program dates back to 1987, when the children's charity started the benefit in partnership with SportsChannel Chicago, the later FSN Chicago). The honorees included top athletes from Chicago's professional sports teams, who were chosen based on their contributions to their teams and the Chicago community. To date, the "CSN Chicago Sports Awards" has raised over $6 million for the March of Dimes.
NBC Sports Chicago staff
On-air talent and journalists
- Pat Boyle
- Kelly Crull
- Chuck Garfien
- David Kaplan
- Leila Rahimi
- Mark Schanowski
- Siera Santos
- Luke Stuckmeyer
Digital Insiders
- John (Moon) Mullin- Bears Insider
- Vincent Goodwill - Bulls Insider
- JJ Stankevitz - Bears Insider
- Danny Santaromita - Fire Insider
NBC Sports Chicago broadcasting
Chicago Bulls
- Neil Funk - play-by-play announcer
- Stacey King - game analyst
- Mark Schanowski - studio host
- Will Perdue - studio analyst
- Kendall Gill - studio analyst
Chicago Blackhawks
- Pat Foley - play-by-play announcer
- Eddie Olczyk - game analyst
- Pat Boyle - studio host
- Steve Konroyd - studio analyst, fill-in game analyst
- Jamal Mayers - studio analyst
- Denis Savard - fill-in studio analyst
Chicago Cubs
- Len Kasper - play-by-play announcer
- Jim Deshaies - game analyst
- David Kaplan - studio host
- David DeJesus - studio analyst
Chicago White Sox
- Jason Benetti - play-by-play announcer (home games)
- Ken Harrelson - play-by-play announcer (road games)
- Chuck Swirsky - play-by-play announcer (fill-in)
- Steve Stone - game analyst
- Chuck Garfien studio host
- Bill Melton - studio analyst
- Frank Thomas - studio analyst/fill-in game analyst
- Scott Podsednik - studio analyst
Chicago Bears
- Laurence Holmes - studio host
- Jim Miller - studio analyst
- Lance Briggs - studio analyst
- Alex Brown - studio analyst
Chicago Fire
- Dan Kelly - play-by-play announcer
- Frank Klopas - game analyst
- Paul Tenorio - field reporter
Related services
NBC Sports Chicago Plus
NBC Sports Chicago Plus is an overflow feed of NBC Sports Chicago, which is primarily used to alleviate scheduling conflicts that result when two sports events involving teams that the network holds the right to broadcast are scheduled to occur simultaneously. The network operates a secondary overflow, NBC Sports Chicago Plus 2, or in the past listed as Alternate, if three concurring sporting events are scheduled for the same time. Both networks have also sometimes been used to show locally produced and FSN-distributed college sports events.
NBC Sports Chicago Plus' HD simulcast feed was previously used as a help channel (an information channel providing instructional information on products offered by the provider) on Comcast systems when no sports events were being telecast (it had been the channel slot for MOJO HD before its 2008 shutdown); it now carries programming originally broadcast on the main NBC Sports Chicago network outside of sporting events.
Originally operating as a gametime-only service, cable providers mainly transmit NBC Sports Chicago Plus and NBC Sports Chicago Plus 2 on non-critical networks, with Comcast carrying the primary Plus feed over the channel slot occupied by regional news channel Chicagoland Television (CLTV) or on another slot (such as channel 101) on its Chicago systems; conversely, Dish Network carries the standard definition feed of the main Plus network on alternating channels assigned by the satellite provider. At times when NBC Sports Chicago Plus and NBC Sports Chicago Plus 2 are broadcasting at the same time, one of the overflows will be carried on the alternate channel, mostly on C-SPAN2, in the case of cable providers.
NBC Sports Chicago HD
NBC Sports Chicago HD is a 1080i high definition simulcast of NBC Sports Chicago. It carries all home and road games involving the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Chicago Blackhawks, Chicago Bulls and Chicago Fire as well as all studio shows in high definition. NBC Sports Chicago HD is carried on Comcast, RCN, WOW! Internet, Phone and Cable and AT&T U-verse within the Chicago market, and nationally on DirecTV and Dish Network.
The network's overflow feeds, NBC Sports Chicago Plus and NBC Sports Chicago Plus 2, also maintain HD simulcasts: NBC Sports Chicago Plus HD is available only part-time on Comcast systems within outer markets and full-time on Comcast systems in the Chicago metro area and on AT&T U-verse, while NBC Sports Chicago Plus 2 HD is available only through DishNetwork, AT&T U-verse and DirecTV (most cable providers carry the Plus 2 feed in standard definition).
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