Future rivals MSG Network and SportsNet New York have some similar ideas.
Each is taking a page from the Canadian Broadcasting Co.’s “Hockey Night in Canada” to create a “Night in New York” franchise around a sport.
MSG debuted “Hockey Night in New York” last Thursday, with a basketball version to follow in November. SNY will have “Baseball Night in New York” in the spring.
The MSG themed nights will feature an entire night of programming built around a live game, with basketball on Wednesdays and hockey on Thursdays. The New York Knicks will always be the centerpiece on Wednesdays, while Thursdays will usually feature a New York Rangers game but sometimes the Islanders or New Jersey Devils. MSG Network and its sister station FSN New York have rights to all four teams.
For MSG, the “Night in New York” approach represents a major step up in terms of shoulder programming devoted to the home teams, an area where the network has been notably thin in recent years.
Hockey Night begins in the early evening with “Rangers 101,” a classic game with “pop-up” features and wrap-arounds. It follows with “BlueShirts Inside/Out,” a weekly half-hour magazine show devoted to the Rangers that previously only ran as a preseason special. Following that is another new entry, “Rangers Tailgate,” a live, lighthearted pregame talk show filmed by the entrance of Madison Square Garden.
 |
| SportsNet New York, like several national networks, will have an on-street Manhattan studio. |
The traditional “Game Night” pregame comes next, followed by the game and then the nightly news show “SportsDesk.” Then comes another new show, “Hockey Night in NY Live,” a roundtable talk show hosted by Al Trautwig. The night ends with a one-hour replay of the game.
Panasonic will sponsor “Hockey Night in New York,” with at least two 30-second commercials in each show.
The format for the basketball night and the Knicks will be almost exactly the same, minus the magazine show. The basketball talk shows before and after the game will be simulcast live on ESPN Radio. The network has not yet decided what exactly to call it (“Knicks Night …” or “NBA Night …” or “Basketball Night …”) and is still shopping for a sponsor.
SNY’s “Night” will be every night it carries a New York Mets game. The branding will be wrapped around the pre- and postgame shows as well as the live game.
SNY, owned by Time Warner, Comcast and the Mets, launches next spring, becoming the fourth regional sports network in New York City.
The space is so crowded that the RSNs are sharing more than just branding ideas like “Night in New York.”
SNY also picked up a syndicated college football and basketball package for the Big East and Big 10, from ESPN Regional Television. But MSG Network has a deal with ERT through 2008, giving it first pick of Big East games, a network spokesman said.
Even the names of the networks are strangely similar. Before Fox shortened the name of its RSNs to just initials, FSN was “Fox Sports Net New York,” just one word away from “SportsNet New York.”
THE SCOOP ON DISH NUMBERS: Sometimes you hear about cable networks exaggerating their distribution. But with CSTV and Dish Network, there’s an interesting example of an operator trying to do the opposite — telling the public that a network is on a narrowly distributed premium tier when, in fact, it’s on a platform that reaches most of its customers.
Dish Network, owned by the publicly traded EchoStar, announced last month that it was adding CSTV and putting the service on its top-priced “America’s Top 180” programming tier, which industry sources say reaches about 3.2 million out of Dish’s 11.4 million total customers. The company Web site still lists CSTV as being on AT 180.
But immediately after its Dish deal was announced, CSTV was telling people it was in about 15 million homes, and had added 7 million through Dish. That’s the same number that subscribe to the mid-priced “America’s Top 120” tier.
The explanation was that CSTV was on AT 120 all along. A Dish spokesperson said the network was put on 120 as a free preview, but plans now call for it to remain there “for the foreseeable future.”
It’s a great pickup for CSTV, which now has considerably more homes than any of its college sports rivals. ESPNU just doubled its distribution when it landed on Dish, but it remains on the AT 180 tier, a Dish spokeswoman said.
But why would Dish, the lowest-priced pay television service and often the stingiest, just throw another 4 million homes at CSTV?
It might have something to do with Dish’s distribution agreement with CSTV, which neither side would comment on. The industry scuttlebutt is that EchoStar picked up equity in CSTV as part of the deal.
Andy Bernstein can be reached at abernstein@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
