ACE - Professor
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911 Messages
First Year Of No Cubs Or White Sox
First of all, I know that none of this is AT&T's fault. The fault lies with the Tribune Company, the owner of local Chicago WGN and WGN America.
According to Wikipedia: As a side effect of Tribune's conversion of WGN America into a general entertainment cable channel, the network phased out its carriage of WGN-TV's sports telecasts, with Tribune president/CEO Peter Liguori citing limited viewership and advertising revenue generated from the sports broadcasts relative to its expense (the Cubs package cost five times as much for rights fees alone as the revenue it brought in).
I am a St. Louis Cardinals fan. I am not a Cubs fan, and never will be. However, I am very unhappy, as I am sure a lot of people are, that as of this season, I can no longer watch Chicago Cubs or Chicago White Sox baseball. I am not a basketball fan, but for those who are, I am sure that there are plenty of people who miss seeing the few Chicago Bulls games that were on WGN America.
In the last three years, WGN America has gone from telecasting a good number of Chicago Cubs games with the main feed and the multi-view feeds that were included and Chicago White Sox games to no Cubs or White Sox at all.
I remember when I first got cable in 1981 on the long gone Continental Cablevision, I was very happy to be able to watch, if I wanted to, almost the entire Cubs schedule and a lot of White Sox games. Now I am down to no Cubs or White Sox games. When the Cardinals and the Cubs played, I liked going back and forth between the two feeds.
Of course, it is not just WGN Amercia who has cut out baseball. TBS no longer has the Braves games. All they have is a half of season of Sunday afternoon baseball. Continental Cablevision even carried Superstation WOR (it was not WWOR at the time) from New York, and I was able to see some Mets games on that channel.
To be fair there was not an MLB Network back then, and ESPN was not carrying Major League baseball. In those days, USA Network had a contract with Major League baeball carrying games several times a week. I would guess that the total number of games that I can see now is probably the same or even more than what I could see back in 1981. Back in 1981, not all of the Cardinal games were on television as they are now.
I just wanted to vent. Now back to my favorite channel, the 24 Hour Dart Channel and Darts on Demand.
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*I am not a DIRECTV employee, and the views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.
baseballisback
ACE - Professor
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8.2K Messages
10 years ago
Yeah... I'd imagine that as you watched the Cardinals @ Cubs games on your local channel, as that channel went to commercial, it'd be fun to flip over to the "Extra" channels and watch those feeds instead of the endless commercials.
Likewise, those channels were cool to watch as they would sometimes focus on certain players. The "Upper level first base" channel, for example, would focus on first base. It was kind of like sitting in the stands in that part of the stadium.
But yeah, as ESPN and MLB network got stronger over the past several years, those "Superstations" were gradually converted into regular national TV channels.
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dhascall
ACE - Master
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1.4K Messages
10 years ago
All is good, in Indianapolis, however. 😉
Speaking of Tribune, they wrankled some feathers, locally. They wrestled the CBS affiliation away from WISH TV, who had CBS for overr 50 years(!). It looked like WISH TV would be a lowly independent on 1/1/2015 as most syndicated shows were already under contract. 1) At the last second, they picked up The CW, which might have been from some guilt from CBS over the switch but more importantly, in the Spring, WISH TV picked up the rights to 75 Sox and Cubs home games. So, I would contact one of your local independents and say "hey, can you get some of the Sox and Cubs games, like WISH TV in Indy did?" 🙂
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dwinth
ACE - Professor
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911 Messages
10 years ago
An excellent idea, but you have to know St. Louis. The Cardinals are a religion here, and there would not be enough viewers to make it worthwhile for an independent to pick up 75 White Sox and Cubs games.
KPLR Channel 11 is our CW affiliate so it is not totally independent. KNLC Channel 24 is Christian oriented and carries a lot of old grainey telelvsion shows. They are not candidates.
WRBU CHANNEL 46 is our Ion Television channel. They have a very poor signal. There are some shopping channel type channels plus the subchannels which we cannot get on U-verse.
The bottom line is here in St. Louis we don't need no stinkin' Cubs. It would just be nice to have the Cubs and White Sox back on WGN.
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dhascall
ACE - Master
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1.4K Messages
10 years ago
Yeah but there are lots of Cubs (especially) fans living in Eastern MO and Western Ill. Maybe some Sox fans too.
In fact, lots of Chicagoans have moved down I-55 to your area. It could happen, even though you have the Cards are there.
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