The story
The channel launched on April 13, 1986, as Pirates Cable Network, exclusively serving the Pittsburgh metropolitan area; its first sports event telecast on that date was a Major League Baseball game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs from Three Rivers Stadium, announced by Mike Lange, in which the Pirates shut out the Cubs, 8–0.
The network commenced full-time broadcasts on April 24, 1986, as the KBL Entertainment Network, in order to allow other sports besides the Pirates to be included on the network. Its first regular broadcast was a Pirates home game against the New York Mets. The network was initially owned by Tele-Communications Inc. (now part of Comcast), then the largest cable television provider in the Pittsburgh market. KBL quickly expanded its cable coverage. As early as May 9, 1986, its cable footprint roughly approximated its present six-state coverage area.
While it primarily carried sports-related programming, KBL also served as a general entertainment cable channel while under TCI ownership, essentially filling the void left after independent station WPGH-TV (channel 53) became a charter affiliate of the Fox Broadcasting Company seven months after KBL's debut. It aired children's programming for part of the day, including reruns of the John Candy animated series Camp Candy.
In 1994, TCI transferred the channel to its corporate parent Liberty Media; KBL then immediately dropped all entertainment programming and converted the renamed Prime Sports KBL into an affiliate of Prime SportsChannel America, a partnership between Liberty's Prime Network and the Cablevision/NBC-owned SportsChannel America regional sports network groups. In 1995, Prime Network's retail subsidiary, Prime Sports Merchandising, purchased some sports apparel stores located inside shopping malls and rebranded them as Prime Sports Shops, promoting them on its networks including KBL.
In 1996, News Corporation, which formed a sports division for the Fox network two years earlier after it obtained the broadcast rights to the National Football Conference and sought to create a group of regional sports networks, acquired a 50% interest in the Prime Network from TCI parent Liberty Media. Later that year on November 1, News Corporation and Liberty Media relaunched the Prime Network affiliates as part of the new Fox Sports Net group, with Prime Sports KBL officially rebranding as Fox Sports Pittsburgh. The deal temporarily ended the Prime SportsChannel partnership, although News Corporation subsequently acquired most of the SportsChannel networks the following year; the retail stores, meanwhile, retained the "Prime Sports" name for many years after the rebranding of the regional networks as part of Fox Sports Net. The channel was rebranded as Fox Sports Net Pittsburgh in 2000, as part of a collective brand modification of the FSN networks under the "Fox Sports Net" banner; subsequently in 2004, the channel shortened its name to FSN Pittsburgh, through the networks' de-emphasis of the "Fox Sports Net" brand.
On December 22, 2006, News Corporation sold its interest in FSN Pittsburgh and sister networks FSN Utah, FSN Northwest and FSN Rocky Mountain to Liberty Media, in an asset trade in which News Corporation also traded its 38.5% ownership stake in satellite provider DirecTV for $550 million in cash and stock, in exchange for Liberty Media's 16.3% stake in the company. On May 4, 2009, DirecTV Group Inc. announced it would become a part of Liberty's entertainment unit, part of which would then be spun off into the separate company under the DirecTV name, in a deal in which Liberty would increase its share in DirecTV from 48% to 54%, with Liberty owner John Malone and his family owning a 24% interest. DirecTV would operate its newly acquired FSN-affiliated networks through DirecTV Sports Networks, a new division formed when the split off from Liberty Media was completed on November 19, 2009.
On December 17, 2010, DirecTV Sports Networks announced that its four Fox Sports Networks-affiliated regional outlets would be relaunched under the "Root Sports" brand. The network officially rebranded as Root Sports Pittsburgh on April 1, 2011, coinciding with the start of the 2011 Major League Baseball season. For nominal purposes, the Root Sports networks continued to carry programming distributed mainly to the Fox Sports regional networks to provide supplementary sports and entertainment programming. On April 8, 2016, DirecTV Sports Networks rebranded under the AT&T name as AT&T Sports Networks.
On June 12, 2017, AT&T Sports Networks announced that the network, along with Root Sports Southwest, and Root Sports Rocky Mountain, would rebrand as AT&T SportsNet with the channel becoming AT&T SportsNet Pittsburgh. All network programming and on-air talent remained intact, with the exception of Paul Steigerwald, who was replaced in October 2017 by Steve Mears as the play-by-play announcer of the Penguins. The name change took effect on July 14, 2017.
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In July 2019, it was reported that AT&T was looking to sell its regional sports networks to reduce debt related to its acquisition of Time Warner, as well as rolling out 5G on its cell phone networks. Two potential suitors included Sinclair Broadcast Group, which had acquired Fox Sports Networks (with Entertainment Studios) amid the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney (and already had a decades-long presence in the Pittsburgh market as the owners of WPGH-TV/WPNT), as well as NBCUniversal, which owns regional networks via its NBC Sports division, and whose parent company Comcast is the cable provider in Pittsburgh.
On October 1, 2021, AT&T SportsNet Pittsburgh, along with sister networks AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain, and Root Sports Northwest, was removed from Dish Network satellite and Sling streaming TV services.
On February 24, 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery announced plans to exit the RSN business, informing the teams that AT&T Sports Networks would file for chapter 7 bankruptcy unless deals were made for them to exit or take over the channels. Root Sports Northwest was not affected, as it is majority-owned by the Seattle Mariners. While originally setting a deadline of March 31, it later reached an agreement to keep the networks operational through at least the end of the 2023 Major League Baseball season. As Fenway Sports Group had recently acquired the Penguins, it was speculated by sportswriters that the channel could be taken over by the company in conjunction with its Boston-area network NESN. On August 31, 2023, it was announced that AT&T Sportsnet Pittsburgh would be acquired by Fenway Sports Group via the Pittsburgh Penguins, and would be rebranded as SportsNet Pittsburgh on October 2. NESN would handle the day-to-day operations of the network.
It was initially uncertain whether the Pirates would continue to be televised by the channel, with sportswriters citing potential conflict of interest concerns with FSG being the parent company of a competing MLB team, the Boston Red Sox. On December 13, 2023, the Pirates announced that they had acquired a stake in SportsNet Pittsburgh, and confirmed that it would remain the team's home beginning in the 2024 season. Team president Travis Williams stated that Major League Baseball was not worried about any conflict of interest concerns.
On April 29, 2024, the network launched SNP 360 as its over-the-top streaming platform. Modelled after NESN 360, the service allows viewers to stream live and video on-demand content and event coverage. It is available at no additional charge to SportsNet Pittsburgh subscribers on television providers, and sold as a direct-to-consumer subscription service priced at $17.99 per-month.
From Wikipedia’s article on SportsNet Pittsburgh, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4