Substandard Media: Chicago Sports Network's broadcast partner isn't doing channel, fans any favors

The decision by the White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks to partner with Standard Media for their new regional sports network was perplexing from the start.

Here was a small media company based in Nashville, Tennessee, carrying the teams’ hopes and dreams. Its job would be to get the network distributed as widely as possible.

For that to happen, Standard would need to agree to a carriage deal with Comcast, the largest TV provider in the Chicago market. More than three weeks into Chicago Sports Network’s existence, no deal is in sight, validating concerns that Standard was not equipped for the job.

Standard Media owns only four stations. It’s a subsidiary of Standard General, a hedge fund that failed last year in its bid to merge with TV station operator Tegna, which owns 64. Standard General also controls Bally’s casinos, which until recently had branded Diamond Sports Group’s bankrupt RSNs.

How’s that for a resume?

Standard Media did not reply to requests for comment.

With four stations, and just one in a Comcast territory, Standard Media has no leverage in carriage talks. When Comcast didn’t carry the Yankees’ YES Network for a full season in 2016, it took Fox, which owned the network at the time, threatening to pull Fox News when its deal was up to get YES back on the air. Standard Media has no such card to play.

The Sox, Bulls and Hawks are learning how good they had it with NBC Sports Chicago. For 20 years, they partnered with Comcast to air their games. They didn’t have to worry about carriage because NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast, handled all of the negotiations on behalf of NBCSCH.

Standard Media does have deals with 12 distributors, including DirecTV, Astound/RCN and six smaller Illinois providers, in addition to making CHSN’s signal available over the air. Standard also is closing in on a deal with streaming service Fubo, which would be its second streamer after DirecTV Stream.

But Standard Media, whose negotiating team is led by Standard General founder Soohyung Kim and Standard Media chief operating officer Stan Knott, hasn’t come to grips with the fact that CHSN will appear on a higher programming tier when (if?) it appears on Comcast’s Xfinity systems.

Comcast has been clear about its plan to move RSNs to its Ultimate TV tier when their contracts expire. Comcast has no reason to negotiate until Standard agrees to be tiered. That already has happened at MASN in Baltimore-Washington, Root Sports in Seattle and SportsNet Pittsburgh.

And it will happen to the Cubs’ Marquee Sports Network, whose deal with Comcast expired Sept. 30 but has remained on the air through several short-term extensions. When the current one expires, Marquee will be moved up from the middle tier, Popular TV.

At that point, Standard Media won’t have a leg to stand on. But it’s a shame that might be what it takes to settle the dispute.

Carriage disputes with Comcast continue in Denver, where Altitude has been off for five years, and New York, where MSG has been off for three. Those stations also lack leverage while refusing to be tiered. It hasn’t mattered that the Avalanche and Nuggets have won championships and that the Knicks and Rangers are on the upswing.

As is always the case in these situations, fans pay the price. For now, Comcast customers are either missing Bulls and Hawks games or having to adjust their antenna on a window frame to get a clear picture. Soon, they’ll have to fork over about another $20 a month to watch the games they’ve been watching for years.

Such is life as cord-cutting slashes cable subscriptions and sports programming skyrockets in price. But the least that teams can do is give all fans the option of whether to pay. By stubbornly sticking to a fruitless stance, Substandard Media is denying fans that.