Quote:Last month rumors started spreading that the American Sports Network had met its demise, giving fans of Group of Five programs serious concerns about the availability of sports broadcasts moving forward. The former turned out to be true but not the latter.

This afternoon Sinclair Broadcast Group, Silver Chalice, and 120 Sports announced a gigantic merger of the three companies’ broadcasting forces into a yet-to-be-named conglomerate. The new venture will leverage Sinclair’s linear distribution through their American Sports Network assets while also providing industry-leading online streaming options through the resources of Campus Insiders. 120 Sports enters the picture by bringing “a broad array of post-game highlights, up-to-the-moment news, and original, long-form programming as well as full game archives provided by various partners.”

The merger combines the three companies and aims to create a platform that could eventually outreach that of ESPN. While WatchESPN is currently the industry leader in sports streaming it does require a cable subscription to view. Campus Insiders was completely free to view and it’s safe to assume that trend will continue with their new merger venture. As less and less consumers opt to pay for monthly cable subscriptions the appeal of subscription-less entertainment options such as this new merger increases exponentially.

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It'll be interesting to see what this means for the WAC. Although exposure is nice, ASN has only carried a very small fraction of MBB games.

I hope this means way more WAC games. I only recall a few that were actually on ASN. At least it will still be free which is cool. Sounds like this could be a pretty nice thing for mid-majors.

This will only work if ppl who live outside the markets that are playing can watch. As well has having all WAC games on this tv network with free streaming would be nice as well.

(04-14-2017 03:10 PM)Lopes87 Wrote:  This will only work if ppl who live outside the markets that are playing can watch. As well has having all WAC games on this tv network with free streaming would be nice as well.

Id be happy even if most WAC games were on the online streaming part of this, nationally like WatchESPN without a cable subscription. Production cant be as bad as the WACDN

I have DirecTV and had absolutely no clue this was a channel lol. Has anybody actually seen this on TV?

I'd like a Roku App!

WAC DN killed its.

If this actually is like an ESPN for mid-majors that would be phenomenal and sounds awesome. I hope it will actually be a full channel.

(04-14-2017 02:34 PM)joshadam84 Wrote:  It'll be interesting to see what this means for the WAC. Although exposure is nice, ASN has only carried a very small fraction of MBB games.

Yup! I could never find the games. I finally just gave up and watched the online content with WAC DN or RSN (Roadrunner Sports Net).

(04-14-2017 05:46 PM)Clarity Wrote:  I have DirecTV and had absolutely no clue this was a channel lol. Has anybody actually seen this on TV?

I don't get any local affiliates, but nearly all were picked up by Comcast Chicago (665 on DIRECTV) and watched the games on there.

I have one of the highest tiered comcast subscriptions and do have ASN as part of it. They do FCS and mid major GO5 sports

(04-14-2017 05:46 PM)Clarity Wrote:  I have DirecTV and had absolutely no clue this was a channel lol. Has anybody actually seen this on TV?

There was never an actual channel. Games would be on My 50 and the CW. But were not available on all affiliates. Also would get picked up on channels like Altitude, but on there dash one channels. Production quality was crap. The play by play guys would call games from Florida. They were ill informed about the teams they called games for. In some cases ASN wanted schools to provide the cameras and personnel to cover the games, with no cost to ASN. NMSU and GCU did not allow them to cover games in their arenas this lat year.

They need to up there quality or the will not last long in this new conglomerate.

When Seattle U played on ASN this year it was broadcast by ComcastSportsNetNW, which carries Portland Trail Blazers games but is available in Seattle

(04-15-2017 12:50 PM)CrimsonPhantom Wrote:  

(04-14-2017 05:46 PM)Clarity Wrote:  I have DirecTV and had absolutely no clue this was a channel lol. Has anybody actually seen this on TV?

There was never an actual channel. Games would be on My 50 and the CW. But were not available on all affiliates. Also would get picked up on channels like Altitude, but on there dash one channels. Production quality was crap. The play by play guys would call games from Florida. They were ill informed about the teams they called games for. In some cases ASN wanted schools to provide the cameras and personnel to cover the games, with no cost to ASN. NMSU and GCU did not allow them to cover games in their arenas this lat year.

They need to up there quality or the will not last long in this new conglomerate.

The article has me optimistic there will be more quality. Looks like 120 Sports does some high quality looking stuff. This could be really good. I would love to see WAC games with truly unbiased announcing and high quality cameras like on ESPN3. I hope this new project will be comporable to that.