Keep Your Eyes On The Puck
With the RSN business model collapsing, more US teams are headed back to over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts
Updated: 2024 September 22
Note: There is still quite a bit of unknown in terms of local stations for the upcoming 2024-2025 NHL season, so I will update the article and the coverage maps in this post as needed. Substack only emails out notifications on the first published version, so check back for updates: https://overtheair.substack.com/p/eyes-on-the-puck.
17 September 2024 updates: Added the Blackhawks OTA coverage. Added KAPP/KVEW Yakima/Tri-Cities and KLSR/KEVU Eugene as Kraken stations. 15 September 2024 updates: Updated the Scripps-owned stations in Arizona to show they will carry Utah games (formally the Arizona franchise) as well as the Vegas games. 14 September 2024 updates: Added WFTX 36.3 Fort Myers to the Florida Panthers' OTA station list. Updated KIVI-TV 6.2 Boise and KSAW-LD 6.2 Twin Falls ID to show they will move from carrying Vegas games to carrying Utah games this season. Added KASW 61 Phoenix and KWBA 58 Tucson as new VGK stations. 28 August 2024 updates: Updated to add the Anaheim Ducks, which announced a deal with Fox to put their regional games on Fox-owned KCOP-TV 13 "Fox 11 Plus." 21 July 2024 updates: Updated to show KREM 2 Spokane will split games with co-owned KSKN 22 12 July 2024 updates: Added Kraken's new over the air Alaska stations. 7 July 2024 updates: Added additional info on Standard Media's parent's media holdings that include a small station in Chicago.
It’s been a long time since I put up a OTA TV post, but there is a lot of interesting stories going on with over the air TV and sports programming.
About a decade ago, regional sports networks were able to offer MLB, NBA, and NHL teams very lucrative deals to move all their non-national games to the local regional sports network (RSN). The model was based on RSNs having two revenue streams — selling commercial ad time like broadcasters and carriage fees from cable companies based on a fee per subscriber subscriber.
Then, along came cord-cutting. The number of homes subscribing to cable or satellite providers DirecTV or Dish Network has fallen off a cliff. In the process, the revenue from carriage fees has also plummeted. To add insult to injury, numerous cable companies, unhappy with the escalating costs the RSNs want to charge per subscriber in order to pay for the escalating rights to local teams, have either dropped the channels altogether in order to stem passing on large bill increases to their customers or have pushed them off basic tiers for more premium bundles that have fewer subscribers.
Now, the combination of expensive rights and dwindling revenue has made the RSN business a difficult model to sustain. AT&T has shut down or sold off the few RSNs it owned. Diamond Sports Group (DSG), which bought the Fox Sports RSNs and rebranded them to Bally Sports after signing a marketing deal with Bally, went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023.
The DSG proceedings are still on-going with DSG working on trying to emerge from Chapter 11 in part by seeking to terminate contracts that are no longer profitable. On the other end, some teams have looked to forge their own path with the sense there is no sustainable RSN model that will work.
The results have been MLB’s San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks have ended up going to streaming as their solution. The NBA’s Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz have gone the route of local OTA broadcasts for all non-national TV games. In August, the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans and Dallas Mavericks also separated from DSG. The Pelicans announced they will go to Gray’s WVUE 8.2 New Orleans as well as a network of co-owned TV stations across Louisiana and Mississippi. The loss of Padres and the Phoenix teams led to the shuttering of Bally Sports San Diego and Bally Sports Arizona.
OTA broadcasts cannot pay the same fees that DSG and others used to be able to. The tradeoff is eyeballs … by a large margin, with over the air signals and higher carriage rates on cable than the RSNs, broadcast stations far outreach the number of homes in most markets than what the RSN was reaching.
With six teams splitting up with their former RSN, the NHL leads the leagues in returning to OTA broadcasts.
In most cases, NHL teams have moved off the RSNs via a local broadcast station to air the non-national games and a streaming solution to cover those who do not have an antenna or who do not subscribe to some kind of cable or vMVPD (Sling TV, YouTubeTV, etc.) service that includes local channels.
With the caveat that some things are up in the air, let’s have a look at the NHL’s local broadcasts.
First, this map shows all continental US stations that have been carrying NHL games over the air and those who will be starting with the 2024-2025 season. The map shows each station’s primary OTA signal contour. They stations contour’s colors indicate which team they carry as noted in the key at the bottom of the map. Team-specific maps follow further down, including the stations in Alaska that will carry the Kraken.
Anaheim Ducks
On 27 August, the Ducks and Fox announced that starting with the 2024-2025 season, the Ducks’ regional games will be broadcast on Fox-owned KCOP-TV 13, which is branded as “Fox 11 Plus” (sister to Fox O&O KTTV 11 “Fox 11”). The Stars’ forthcoming Victory+ app will be the streaming option.
Las Vegas Golden Knights
AT&T’s planning to shutdown the local RSN made the Golden Knights the first to move to over the air broadcasts when they struck a deal with EW Scripps in May 2023. Nationally, Scripps owns the Ion TV network and also owns many of its OTA local stations in markets across the country. In Vegas, Scripps owns ABC affiliate KTNV 13 and Ion outlet KMCC 34. They opted to convert KMCC to an independent, branded as “Vegas 34,” in time to carry the Golden Knights games starting with the 2023-2024 season. Scripps moved Ion to subchannel 34.2. Not surprisingly, Scripps was able to issue a press release soon after the start of the season showing a huge jump in viewership versus what the Golden Knights had the previous year on the RSN.
The Golden Knights ended up with a large footprint of other Scripps TV stations last season. Scripps also converted its Salt Lake City Ion station, KUPX 16, to independent “Utah 16,” with Ion shifted to 16.4. With the change, KUPX became the Utah outlet for Golden Knights games as well as some non-conflicting Arizona Coyotes NHL games (see Utah Hockey Club below).
In addition to the Salt Lake City market, last season, Scripps broadcast the Golden Knights over the air via subchannels on stations it owns in Montana and Idaho. In Montana, Scripps operates an independent statewide network called MTN (Montana Television Network) that Scripps carries on the x.2’s of its stations in the state – CBS affiliates KTVQ 2 “Q2” Billings, KRTV 3 Great Falls, KXLF 4 Butte and its satellite KBZK 7 Bozeman, KPAX 8 Missoula and its satellite KAJJ-CD 18 Kalispell, and NBC affiliate KTVH 12. In Idaho, the Golden Knights games appeared on the “Boise 6” independent channel that broadcasts over the 6.2 subchannel of Scripps’ ABC affiliate KIVI 6 Boise and its semi-satellite KSAW-LD 6 Twin Falls (branded as “Twin Falls 6” on KSAW-LD 6.2).
As a result, the Golden Knights had games broadcast over a large swath in the West. For the upcoming season, KUPX becomes the Utah HC flagship and Scripps will shift the Idaho stations from carrying Vegas games to Utah games. However, with the loss of the franchise in Arizona, the Golden Knights pick up the former Coyotes flagship, KASW 61 “Arizona 61,” this season (with a few games on sister KNXV 15.2) as well as co-owned KWBA 58 “Arizona 58” in Tucson. Both those stations will carry games from both Vegas and Utah.
Utah Hockey Club
The rights to the OTA broadcasts come from last season when the team was in Phoenix. The Coyotes lost their RSN when it was winding down after losing the rights to the MLB and NBA franchises. Like in Vegas, Scripps made a deal. Scripps owns ABC affiliate KNXV 15 and CW affiliate KASW 61 in Phoenix. The initial plan was to put them on KNXV’s 15.2 subchannel. The problem is x.2’s don’t often have much cable coverage and seldom any coverage on Dish or DirecTV’s satellite services. The plan quickly changed with Scripps converting KASW from the CW to independent “Arizona 61” and putting the Coyotes games there. The CW network programming got relegated to 15.2; CW owner Nexstar soon then struck a deal to get it back to a main .1 slot via moving the affiliation to KAZT 7.
With the Coyotes sale and relocation to Salt Lake City, Scripps maintains the local rights. This fall, KUPX will switch from the Golden Knights games to being the local flagship for the new Utah Hockey Club. Scripps will also air them on their stations in Boise and Twin Falls that previously aired Golden Knights games last season. The former Coyotes Arizona markets will see both Vegas and Utah games.
Seattle Kraken
In April, the Kraken announced it would shift its locally telecast games from the local Root Sports RSN to Tegna’s duopoly of NBC affiliate KING-TV 5 and independent KONG 16. Yes, I always still chuckle the pair are called KING and KONG… KONG will get the bulk of the games starting with the 2024-2025 season, with KING-TV getting 15 of them due to limits on how much NBC prime time it can pre-empt. Tegna will broadcast the games on stations it owns in Spokane (CBS affiliate KREM 2 and CW affiliate KSKN 22) and Portland (NBC affiliate KGW 8). Like with KING-TV, the bulk of the games will go on the secondary channels to avoid network prime time pre-emptions. In KGW’s case, the games will go to its 8.2 subchannel.
Before the season, Tegna reached an agreement to air the games on stations in the Yakima (KAPP 35), Tri Cities (KVEW 42, satellite of KAPP), and Eugene (KLSR-TV 34 and its LPTV sister KEVU-CA 23) markets. Following the same pattern, select games will air on the main .1 channel with the bulk of the games on the .2 subchannels to limit pre-empting network (ABC and Fox, in these markets) prime time.
On 12 July, Tegna reached an agreement with Gray to distribute the games on its MyNetworkTV affiliates KAUU 5.4 Anchorage and its low power satellite KYEX-LD in Juneau. KAUU is co-owned with KTUU 2 and they also serve as the CBS and NBC affiliates for most of the state.
The Chicago Blackhawks
In a 3 June 2024 press release, the Blackhawks, MLB’s Chicago White Sox, and the NBA’s Chicago Bulls announced they would take their games from the local NBC RSN and create The Chicago Sports Network (CHSN) to launch in October “across all platforms” as part of a partnership with the three teams and TV station owner Standard Media. The press release states “The network will launch with agreements in place with traditional cable providers, streaming services and be available via free, over-the-air broadcast.” However, no stations were listed. Standard Media only owns four TV stations around the country – none of them in Chicago – ABC affiliates WLNE 6 “ABC6” Providence and KLKN 8 “ABC8” Lincoln and the Cape Girardeau/Paducah market duopoly of Fox affiliate KBSI “Fox 23” and MNTV affiliate WDKA 49 “My 49.” So, the local OTA outlet was not clear.
On 16 September, the teams finally revealed the local games will be broadcast on the 62.2 and 62.3 subchannels of WJYS. WJYS’s main channel is largely paid programming — infomercials and religious blocks. The sports programming will displace home shopping channels on 62.2 and 62.3.
The Florida Panthers
The new Stanley Cup champions Florida Panthers announced at the beginning of July they will move their games from another Bally Sports RSN to OTA for the next season. Again, Scripps is the TV partner. The Panthers will air on their WSFL 39 Miami, currently a CW affiliate that will part ways with the network in September, and their news/independent WHDT 9 “South Florida’s 9” in the West Palm Beach market. As well, Scripps owns Fox affiliate WFTX 36 “Fox 4” (branded after its dial position on area cable systems) in the Fort Myers/Naples market and will air the games on its Laff subchannel, 36.3.
As always, the logos and other intellectual property belong to the logo owners or stations.