Latest news with #ChicagoSports
New York Times
4 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
CHSN inks deal with Comcast, ending long saga for Bulls, Blackhawks, White Sox
Eight-plus months after launching, Chicago Sports Network will finally reach a wider Chicago-area audience. Chicago Sports Network (CHSN), a TV channel that is a partnership between the Chicago Blackhawks, Bulls and White Sox, announced a carriage contract on Friday after a deal was finalized late Thursday night, according to a Comcast spokesperson. CHSN will be available within Comcast's Ultimate TV package, its highest tier, on Channel 200 in the Chicago area. The channel went live on Friday morning. Advertisement 'On behalf of the entire CHSN team, we're proud to welcome Comcast's Xfinity TV customers to a network built exclusively for Chicago sports fans,' CHSN president Jason Coyle said in a statement. 'With more than 300 live Bulls, Blackhawks, and White Sox games each year, along with original programming that highlights Chicago's pro, college, and high school sports, CHSN delivers the most comprehensive and locally focused coverage available. This deal allows us to reach even more fans across the city and suburbs, deepen connections, and reinforce CHSN as the home for Chicago sports all day, every day.' When CHSN launched in October 2024, Chicago's big three pro teams hoped Comcast could continue to feature them just as it had for NBC Sports Chicago, the network the teams left to launch CHSN in October 2024. The teams hoped CHSN would be able to remain on Comcast's more readily available middle tier, just as NBC Sports Chicago had been. Instead, Comcast didn't carry CHSN at all. CHSN is available to watch for free over the air via antenna in the Chicago area. The network has also been available on DirecTV and Fubo and through a direct-to-consumer streaming app. But without carriage on Comcast, the teams' overall viewership plummeted from previous years. Sports Business Journal reported in February that the Bulls lost 63 percent of their viewership from the previous year. Blackhawks chairman and CEO Danny Wirtz confirmed a report in April that the Blackhawks were down 78 percent, or 40,000 homes, from the previous year. 'At the end of the day, the availability of our games on TV this past season was unacceptable — and our fans deserve better,' Wirtz told The Athletic in April. 'I am focused on finding potential solutions for next season with our partners at CHSN. We are about to celebrate 100 years of hockey as well as usher in the next generation on the ice. I am committed to ensuring our fans can see that.' The most obvious solution was always Comcast, but it was unclear whether there was an actual path to a deal. There had been whispers of a possible agreement in late December, which Bulls president Michael Reinsdorf acknowledged in April, but that fell apart. Wirtz remained hopeful in March, but he was uncertain about the timing. Advertisement 'I wish I could (have a timeline), and I've been hopeful before,' Wirtz said. 'But we hope that we have the right pieces to put something together. Unfortunately, as you know in the media world, we are Chicago, and our teams are not the only piece to the puzzle of national media relationships and markets and things. We are, unfortunately, caught in the timing of all those other things that are less about our specific deal and more about how these deals come online across markets across the U.S.' Comcast carriage, especially on its highest tier, won't return all of the teams' viewership from the past, but it should significantly help. Comcast has been moving a majority of its regional sports networks to its highest tier over the past year. (Photo by Jon Greenberg / The Athletic)
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Paul Sullivan: George Wendt's ‘Super Fans' character endures in a long tradition of on-screen Chicago sports nuts
CHICAGO — George Wendt didn't just play a rabid Chicago sports fan on TV. He was one, albeit not nearly as deluded as his 'Saturday Night Live' character, Bob Swerski, of the 'Super Fans' sketches. Wendt, who died Tuesday at age 76, gained fame for the iconic role of Norm Peterson on the 1982-93 sitcom 'Cheers,' before his popular caricature of Swerski, a Chicago sports fan who enjoyed beer and sausages with his friends while lauding 'Da Coach' Mike Ditka and the Bears and Bulls franchises. Advertisement But Wendt also was an old-school Chicago fan from Beverly who grew up watching the Bears, White Sox and Notre Dame football, the sports pyramid of almost every kid on the South Side or in the south suburbs. When I was the Sox beat writer back in 1996, I met Wendt at a game at what then was called new Comiskey Park and interviewed him for a story on the team's attendance woes. 'I wish I could come up with some cute little sound bite that could explain it, but it's sort of inexplicable,' he said. 'Has it ever been a hot ticket, really? … Maybe you could put it on the free TV versus cable TV thing a few years back (when the Sox moved to pay channel SportsVision in 1982), but now they're on WGN, so I don't know. 'It seems emigres to Chicago, the postgraduates who settled here in the suburbs, north or south, become Cubs fans. It seems like to be a Sox fan, you have to be born and raised on the South Side.' Advertisement Wendt starred in a commercial for the Sox in which he huffed and puffed his way to first base, slid headfirst and was handed a beer. He also narrated a documentary on the old ballpark in 1991 called 'Eighty Years of Celebration — Old Comiskey Park.' The Sox honored Wendt with a tribute on the video board Tuesday night at Rate Field, and team executives acknowledge he was perhaps their third-most famous celebrity fan behind former President Barack Obama and the new leader, Pope Leo XIV, aka 'Da Pope.' Wendt never really spoke like his character on 'Da Bears' sketches, but his succinct delivery of an exaggerated Chicago accent, along with the funny scripts written by fellow 'Super Fan' Robert Smigel, who played Carl Wollarski, have endured for more than three decades. Many forget that the image of the meatball Chicago sports fan was panned by some cultural elitists at the time. Former Chicago Tribune critic Blair Kamin wrote in 1992 that 'the low-brow repartee is bugging Chicago's high-brow temples of culture, perhaps because they feel it indirectly associates them with the blue-collar argot of Mayor Richard Daley's Bridgeport.' Advertisement 'People are going from Al Capone … to 'Da Bears' and 'Da Bulls,' ' Susan Lock, deputy director of the Mayor's Office of Special Events, told Kamin. Lock complained that the success of the Michael Jordan-led Bulls was 'eclipsing all these other wonderful programs that are going on in the city.' Another spokesperson for an organization that promoted Chicago architecture and design complained that 'Da Bears and Da Bulls' skits showed 'Chicagoans to be really dumb. … Our point is that there really are a lot of smart people in Chicago.' Some people clearly lacked a sense of humor in the '90s. Few fan bases from other cities have been portrayed on screen as much as Chicago's, including cameos during director John Hughes' movies, such as Ferris Bueller taking in a few innings of a Cubs game with friends Cameron and Sloane in 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' or Hughes adorning the bedroom of John Candy's 'Uncle Buck' with a framed Chicago Sun-Times front page from the Cubs' loss in the 1984 National League Championship Series. The headline simply read: 'OUCH!' Advertisement An episode of 'The Conners' featured actor John Goodman and the Conner family trying to explain their loyalty to the Bears to a smug Green Bay Packers fan. Local sports themes are an occasional topic in 'The Bear,' the most Chicago show of them all. In one episode Oliver Platt's Uncle Jimmy character explains to Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) the scapegoating of Steve Bartman during the Cubs' Game 6 loss to the Florida Marlins in the 2003 NLCS. Bartman was widely ridiculed, but Uncle Jimmy fingered the true culprit: former Cubs shortstop Alex Gonzalez. Another episode of 'The Bear' featured Richie, a White Sox fan, ripping Carmy's brother-in-law Pete (played by St. Charles' Chris Witaske) for 'probably' being a Cubs fan. The age-old narrative of Sox fans accusing Cubs fans of being poseurs who don't know baseball was explored when Richie challenged Pete to name the Cubs first baseman. 'Alfonso Rivas,' he correctly replies, to Richie's chagrin. Maybe no one outside of Chicago got the joke, but we did. The all-time Chicago sports fan character on TV was Bob Newhart's Dr. Bob Hartley in the 1972-78 sitcom 'The Bob Newhart Show.' Hartley and his buddy, Jerry the orthodontist, always were trekking to Bulls, Cubs or Loyola basketball games, or driving to Peoria to watch a closed-circuit telecast of a blacked-out Bears-Packers game. I once referred to Newhart in a 2021 column as 'the indisputable godfather of celebrity Chicago sports fans,' a title he did not take lightly. Advertisement 'I will wear it proudly, until of course it is eclipsed by someone else,' he wrote in a letter. Wendt followed in Newhart's footsteps, popularizing the stereotypical loud, opinionated Chicago sports fan who always seemed assured of victory while ignoring the team's storied failures of the past. Wendt's Bob Swerski had nothing in common with Newhart's brainy psychologist, other than their passion for Chicago's teams. But you can picture them watching a game together, cocktails in hand, while voicing optimism that things eventually will get better, despite evidence to the contrary. It's a Chicago story that never grows old.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Paul Sullivan: George Wendt's ‘Super Fans' character endures in a long tradition of on-screen Chicago sports nuts
CHICAGO — George Wendt didn't just play a rabid Chicago sports fan on TV. He was one, albeit not nearly as deluded as his 'Saturday Night Live' character, Bob Swerski, of the 'Super Fans' sketches. Wendt, who died Tuesday at age 76, gained fame for the iconic role of Norm Peterson on the 1982-93 sitcom 'Cheers,' before his popular caricature of Swerski, a Chicago sports fan who enjoyed beer and sausages with his friends while lauding 'Da Coach' Mike Ditka and the Bears and Bulls franchises. Advertisement But Wendt also was an old-school Chicago fan from Beverly who grew up watching the Bears, White Sox and Notre Dame football, the sports pyramid of almost every kid on the South Side or in the south suburbs. When I was the Sox beat writer back in 1996, I met Wendt at a game at what then was called new Comiskey Park and interviewed him for a story on the team's attendance woes. 'I wish I could come up with some cute little sound bite that could explain it, but it's sort of inexplicable,' he said. 'Has it ever been a hot ticket, really? … Maybe you could put it on the free TV versus cable TV thing a few years back (when the Sox moved to pay channel SportsVision in 1982), but now they're on WGN, so I don't know. 'It seems emigres to Chicago, the postgraduates who settled here in the suburbs, north or south, become Cubs fans. It seems like to be a Sox fan, you have to be born and raised on the South Side.' Advertisement Wendt starred in a commercial for the Sox in which he huffed and puffed his way to first base, slid headfirst and was handed a beer. He also narrated a documentary on the old ballpark in 1991 called 'Eighty Years of Celebration — Old Comiskey Park.' The Sox honored Wendt with a tribute on the video board Tuesday night at Rate Field, and team executives acknowledge he was perhaps their third-most famous celebrity fan behind former President Barack Obama and the new leader, Pope Leo XIV, aka 'Da Pope.' Wendt never really spoke like his character on 'Da Bears' sketches, but his succinct delivery of an exaggerated Chicago accent, along with the funny scripts written by fellow 'Super Fan' Robert Smigel, who played Carl Wollarski, have endured for more than three decades. Many forget that the image of the meatball Chicago sports fan was panned by some cultural elitists at the time. Former Chicago Tribune critic Blair Kamin wrote in 1992 that 'the low-brow repartee is bugging Chicago's high-brow temples of culture, perhaps because they feel it indirectly associates them with the blue-collar argot of Mayor Richard Daley's Bridgeport.' Advertisement 'People are going from Al Capone … to 'Da Bears' and 'Da Bulls,' ' Susan Lock, deputy director of the Mayor's Office of Special Events, told Kamin. Lock complained that the success of the Michael Jordan-led Bulls was 'eclipsing all these other wonderful programs that are going on in the city.' Another spokesperson for an organization that promoted Chicago architecture and design complained that 'Da Bears and Da Bulls' skits showed 'Chicagoans to be really dumb. … Our point is that there really are a lot of smart people in Chicago.' Some people clearly lacked a sense of humor in the '90s. Few fan bases from other cities have been portrayed on screen as much as Chicago's, including cameos during director John Hughes' movies, such as Ferris Bueller taking in a few innings of a Cubs game with friends Cameron and Sloane in 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' or Hughes adorning the bedroom of John Candy's 'Uncle Buck' with a framed Chicago Sun-Times front page from the Cubs' loss in the 1984 National League Championship Series. The headline simply read: 'OUCH!' Advertisement An episode of 'The Conners' featured actor John Goodman and the Conner family trying to explain their loyalty to the Bears to a smug Green Bay Packers fan. Local sports themes are an occasional topic in 'The Bear,' the most Chicago show of them all. In one episode Oliver Platt's Uncle Jimmy character explains to Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) the scapegoating of Steve Bartman during the Cubs' Game 6 loss to the Florida Marlins in the 2003 NLCS. Bartman was widely ridiculed, but Uncle Jimmy fingered the true culprit: former Cubs shortstop Alex Gonzalez. Another episode of 'The Bear' featured Richie, a White Sox fan, ripping Carmy's brother-in-law Pete (played by St. Charles' Chris Witaske) for 'probably' being a Cubs fan. The age-old narrative of Sox fans accusing Cubs fans of being poseurs who don't know baseball was explored when Richie challenged Pete to name the Cubs first baseman. 'Alfonso Rivas,' he correctly replies, to Richie's chagrin. Maybe no one outside of Chicago got the joke, but we did. The all-time Chicago sports fan character on TV was Bob Newhart's Dr. Bob Hartley in the 1972-78 sitcom 'The Bob Newhart Show.' Hartley and his buddy, Jerry the orthodontist, always were trekking to Bulls, Cubs or Loyola basketball games, or driving to Peoria to watch a closed-circuit telecast of a blacked-out Bears-Packers game. I once referred to Newhart in a 2021 column as 'the indisputable godfather of celebrity Chicago sports fans,' a title he did not take lightly. Advertisement 'I will wear it proudly, until of course it is eclipsed by someone else,' he wrote in a letter. Wendt followed in Newhart's footsteps, popularizing the stereotypical loud, opinionated Chicago sports fan who always seemed assured of victory while ignoring the team's storied failures of the past. Wendt's Bob Swerski had nothing in common with Newhart's brainy psychologist, other than their passion for Chicago's teams. But you can picture them watching a game together, cocktails in hand, while voicing optimism that things eventually will get better, despite evidence to the contrary. It's a Chicago story that never grows old.
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Old Robert Prevost Photo Confirms Pope Leo XIV's White Sox Fandom
When white smoke billowed from the chimneys of the Sistine Chapel on Thursday, the habemus papam announcement revealed Robert Francis Prevost would become Pope Leo XIV and was elected the first-ever American pope. News that he was a Chicago native and Villanova University graduate thrilled Americans, many of whom immediately wondered his Chicago sports fandom. Advertisement Prevost's brother John told NBC Chicago that the new pope was a White Sox fan, despite the Cubs jokingly announcing the pope to be a Northside allegiant. "Whoever said Cubs on the radio got it wrong," John said. "He was never, ever a Cubs fan." John clarified that their mother was a Cubs fan, having been raised on the North Side of Chicago, but their father was a rival St. Louis Cardinals fan. The discourse around Pope Leo's fandom reached even greater heights when a photo obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times showed that the new pope's fandom goes back over two decades. In the photo, Prevost (top left) was seen cheering on the White Sox in the 2005 World Series, where they would sweep the Houston Astros for their first title in 88 years. Advertisement Of course, Pope Leo's Chicago roots have inspired many promotions, including a new Portillo's Italian Beef sandwich inspired by the pope. Fans on social media had a field day with the new announcement. One X user wrote: "I think it's rather fitting and beautiful that Pope Leo XIV is confirmed as a White Sox fan. A true advocate for the downtrodden." Another X user chimed in: "Pope Leo XIV grew up a White Sox fan, so basically has already endured martyrdom a few times." For now, the city of Chicago will continue to rally around the new Pope, who becomes the first American, and certainly the first Chicagoan, to lead the 1.4 billion Roman Catholics around the world. Advertisement Related: White Sox Make Roster Announcement on Former Yankees Outfielder Related: Braves Must Make Risky $15 Million Trade to Save Season Related: Aaron Boone Sends Clear Devin Williams Message After Latest Blown Lead
Fox News
09-05-2025
- Sport
- Fox News
Bears star Caleb Williams issues two-word reaction to Pope Leo XIV's election
Where exactly Pope Leo XIV's sports loyalties reside has quickly evolved into a topic of conversation. A photo of the new pontiff wearing a pinstripe Chicago White Sox jersey at the 2005 World Series surfaced in the Chicago Sun-Times, which seemed to add more fuel to the debate. Elected on Thursday, Cardinal Robert Prevost is the first pope from the U.S. in the history of the Catholic Church. The Chicago-born missionary, who took the name Leo XIV, also attended Villanova University near Philadelphia, where he received a Bachelor of Science in 1977. Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams is one of the latest figures in the sports world to weigh in on the new pope. Williams needed just two words to express his apparent excitement: "Daaaaaa Pope," he wrote Thursday on X. Williams experienced several highs and lows during his rookie season as the Bears stumbled to a 5-12 record. While it remains unclear whether the new pope is an avid Bears supporter, Chicago certainly has plenty of reasons to be hopeful in 2025. The Bears hired Ben Johnson as their new head coach in January. The team then made a flurry of additions to its roster once the NFL free agency period opened last month. Chicago bolstered its offensive line by acquiring center Drew Dalman and guards Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson. The election of the new pope also coincides with a trio of former Villanova players leading the New York Knicks on their NBA playoff run. It didn't take long for a photoshopped picture of the four of them together to show up on social media. The Knicks erased 20-point deficits in winning Games 1 and 2 against the defending champion Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinals, with Game 3 set for Saturday in New York. The Knicks have not won an NBA title since 1973. Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
