Sportsvision (SV) was a subscription sports television service founded by

Chicago White Sox The Chicago White Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Chicago. The White Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central division. The team is owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, and p ...

owners

Jerry Reinsdorf Jerry Michael Reinsdorf (born February 25, 1936) is the owner of the NBA's Chicago Bulls and MLB's Chicago White Sox. He started his professional life as a tax attorney with the Internal Revenue Service. He has been the owner of the White So ...

and

Eddie Einhorn Eddie Einhorn (January 3, 1936 – February 24, 2016) was minority owner and vice chairman of the Chicago White Sox. Biography Einhorn grew up in a Jewish family in Paterson, New Jersey, the son of Mae (née Lippman) and Harold B. Einhorn and resi ...

and media mogul

Fred Eychaner Fred Eychaner (born c. 1945) is an American businessman and philanthropist. Eychaner is the chairman of Newsweb Corporation. He was included in ''Chicago'' magazine's 2014 list of the 100 most powerful Chicagoans. In 2005, the ''Chicago Tribune' ...

.On-Tv & Spectrum
/ref> The service broadcast live sporting events, and for much of its time of operation was the broadcast network for the

Chicago Bulls The Chicago Bulls are an American professional basketball team based in Chicago. The Bulls compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Central Division. The team was founded on January 1 ...

Chicago Blackhawks The Chicago Blackhawks (spelled Black Hawks until 1986, and known colloquially as the Hawks) are a professional ice hockey team based in Chicago. The Blackhawks compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division i ...

, and

Chicago Sting The Chicago Sting (1974–1988) was an American professional soccer team representing Chicago. The Sting played in the North American Soccer League from 1975 to 1984 and in the Major Indoor Soccer League in the 1982–83 season and again from 1 ...

. In April 1982,

WPWR-TV WPWR-TV (channel 50) is a television station licensed to Gary, Indiana, United States, broadcasting the MyNetworkTV programming service to the Chicago area. It is one of two commercial television stations in the Chicago market to be licensed in I ...

, then on Channel 60, dedicated a large percentage of its broadcast schedule to Sportsvision. To access the service, viewers had to buy a TV set-top converter and pay monthly subscription fees to watch a number of sports broadcasts. Ultimately, as

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...

gained a foothold in the Chicago area, the pay-TV business model dissolved and, in January 1984, Sportsvision was sold to

Cablevision Cablevision Systems Corporation was an American cable television company with systems serving areas surrounding New York City. It was the fifth-largest cable provider and ninth-largest television provider in the United States. Throughout its ex ...

and was moved to basic cable. In 1989, it was unscrambled and renamed

SportsChannel SportsChannel is the collective name for a former group of regional sports networks in the United States that was owned by Cablevision, which from 1988 until the group's demise, operated it as a joint venture with NBC. Operating from March 1, 1 ...

. In 1997, SportsChannel was purchased by

Fox Sports Net Fox Sports Networks (FSN), formerly known as Fox Sports Net, was the collective name for a group of regional sports channels in the United States. Formed in 1996 by News Corporation, the networks were acquired by The Walt Disney Company on Mar ...

. Now starting in October 2004 through current day the games reside on Comcast Sports Network Chicago which is owned by Chicago sports owners and Comcast's NBC venture.

References

* Myslenski, Skip. "TV, Radio map out contingency plans" ''Chicago Tribune'' August 6, 1985 * Craig, Jack. "Einhorn bets on live cable TV" ''Boston Globe'' November 29, 1981 * Polzin, Elmer. "Arlington may try pay-TV" ''Chicago Tribune'' May 18, 1982 * Perricone, Mike. "Hawks Notes" ''Chicago Sun-Times'' April 7, 1986 American subscription television services Television channels and stations established in 1982 Television channels and stations disestablished in 1989 Defunct television stations in the United States Sports in Chicago SportsChannel Joint ventures Chicago White Sox {{Illinois-tv-station-stub