InTheDriversSeat Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 (edited) Coming up on Tuesday this week will be the first Sox telecast this season on Channel 50 WPWR-TV Gary/Chicago. The game at Cleveland starts at 6PM Central. The broadcast will be produced by WGN Sports under the name 'WGN Sports On my50'. Channel 9 WGN-TV is unable to carry some White Sox / Cubs / Bulls games due to scheduling conflicts with 'The CW' network which is also carried on WGN-TV. Starting in 2015, WGN Sports made the decision to move White Sox / Cubs / Bulls overflow games from Channel 26 WCIU-TV ('WGN Sports On The U') to Channel 50 instead. This will be the first time Sox games have ever been shown on Channel 50, but not the first time the Sox were aired on WPWR-TV. In the early 80's, WPWR-TV was on Channel 60, licensed to Aurora and transmitting from Sears Tower. WPWR-TV moved from Channel 60 to Channel 50 in 1987. When WPWR-TV was on Channel 60, the station shared time with another TV station, Spanish-language WBBS-TV West Chicago. WPWR-TV was on the air from 2:30 AM - 7:00 PM, while WBBS-TV broadcasted from 7:00 PM - 2:30 AM, however programing from both stations was often replaced with SportsVision. SportsVision was a pay-tv service owned by the White Sox that carried Sox, Blackhawks, Bulls, Sting, college sports, and some out-of-market MLB games. When Channel 60 became SportsVision, TV transmissions were scrambled. A converter box and a $20 monthly bill were required to receive the service, but sometimes SportsVision would provide unscrambled free previews for a couple of weeks. Does anybody remember watching SportsVision? I know that many Sox fans were not about to pay to watch games on TV that they previously could watch for free. Adjusted for inflation, $20 is now $48.65 per month. A lot of money at the time for a service offering sports on 1 channel for only a part of the day. We did not have SportsVision at my house because I was attending college out-of-state, and I was busy working a summer job during the 3 months that I was home. Plus, I had not gotten over the 1981 MLB players strike. But I do remember the free previews, with Don Drysdale alongside Hawk wearing his cowboy hat in the booth. Edited April 12, 2015 by InTheDriversSeat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LittleHurt05 Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 I didn't realize Channel 50 still existed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyyle23 Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Apr 12, 2015 -> 09:17 AM) I didn't realize Channel 50 still existed The only reason I know about it is because there have been a few Bulls games on it this season. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LittleHurt05 Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 QUOTE (raBBit @ Apr 12, 2015 -> 02:03 PM) Ugh, so I have Comcast is this actually channel 50? It was always channel 8 on cable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sammy esposito Posted April 13, 2015 Share Posted April 13, 2015 QUOTE (raBBit @ Apr 12, 2015 -> 02:33 PM) Oh, so this is MyTV or whatever. Thanks LH. I'll have to DVR because I am going to Cubbies game. I live 65 miles south on 55. Channel 50 comes in pretty consistently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChiliIrishHammock24 Posted April 13, 2015 Share Posted April 13, 2015 As long as its not as bad as games on WCIU. Their audio was always garbage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InTheDriversSeat Posted April 14, 2015 Author Share Posted April 14, 2015 As long as its not as bad as games on WCIU. Their audio was always garbage. I agree. The audio mix was terrible last season on WCIU-TV. Way too much crowd noise, and we could not hear Hawk & Stoney speak. Let's hope that WPWR-TV / WGN Sports has the audio problems corrected Tuesday night. I live 65 miles south on 55. Channel 50 comes in pretty consistently. Yes, Channel 50 has a good signal, as do the other major full-power TV stations transmitting from downtown Chicago (with the exception of Channel 2 WBBM-TV for some viewers because that station could not convert to UHF, and still transmits on VHF). Channel 50 reception area: http://www.bing.com/maps/?mapurl=http://tr...26state=IN.kml# It was always channel 8 on cable. That's correct, WPWR-TV is shown on Channel 8 on most cable systems. With Comcast, Channel 8 is the channel for Standard Definition. High Definition is Channel 184, unless your remote automatically bounces to the High Def channel when pressing 8. With AT&T U-verse, Channel 8 is Standard Definition and Channel 1008 is High Definition. By the way, here is a complete list of the 6 TV stations in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana that will carry the Sox game Tuesday night from Cleveland: Chicago WPWR-TV Gary/Chicago, Channel 50 (my network TV) Rockford WREX, Channel 13-3 (Me TV) Quad Cities WQAD-TV Moline, Channel 8-3 (my network TV) Cedar Rapids / Waterloo / Iowa City KCRG-TV Cedar Rapids, Channel 9-2 (my network TV) Peoria / Bloomington, IL WAOE Peoria, Channel 59 (my network TV) South Bend WSJV Elkhart, IN Channel 28-2 (H&I Heroes & Icons) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InTheDriversSeat Posted April 14, 2015 Author Share Posted April 14, 2015 Before leaving for work today I attempted to set our Xfinity DVR to record tonite's game on WPWR-TV. But the Comcast programming guide mistakenly indicates the normal weeknight programming, LOL (2 episodes of Family Feud at 6 PM, 2 episodes of Law & Order at 7 PM, The Big Bang Theory at 9 PM, etc.) Kind of surprised that Comcast hasn't figured out the correct TV schedule for WPWR-TV. The 2015 White Sox broadcast schedule was announced in February... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thad Bosley Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 (edited) QUOTE (InTheDriversSeat @ Apr 12, 2015 -> 04:45 AM) Does anybody remember watching SportsVision? Surprised by the lack of responses to this question? You shouldn't be. "SportsVision" was one of the best kept secrets of the early '80s, and that's because hardly anybody watched it. They didn't watch it because they didn't have it. It was just way too expensive to sign up for, and therefore it never took off to become the money maker that the current ownership group "thought" it would be. They "thought" they'd have 50,000 households signed up after just the first year in 1982. Meanwhile, even after the success of the '83 season, they still only had a measly 17,000 households signed up. Needless to say, this get-rich quick scheme didn't work, and SportsVision would go the way of the do-do bird shortly thereafter. Of greater consequence to the franchise with this display of strategic genius to go the SportsVision route by the current ownership was that they also surrendered both Harry Caray AND the exposure in 28,000,000 households at the time on WGN solely to the Cubs (note: 28M households vs. 17K). (This after Caray helped deliver record TV ratings for the Sox in '81 when the Sox were still on WGN, btw.). But this decision to essentially hide the Sox in the obscurity of pay TV while the Cubs enjoyed unchallenged access to games free of charge dispensed the Sox to the bin of irrelevance during this crucial period. Caray actually mentioned at one time that if the Sox had been on WGN during that '83 season, they would have "owned the city". Maybe he was right, and maybe he was wrong. We'll never know. What we do know is the current ownership group thought it wise to go the SportsVision route at the time, but they couldn't have been more wrong as it turned out. They would suffer the lack of exposure on SportsVision and the missed opportunity of exposure on WGN (with Caray at the helm) for many years. Hindsight, of course, is 20/20, but boy oh boy. What a strategic blunder of immense proportion the whole SportsVision idea turned out to be. Edited April 15, 2015 by Thad Bosley Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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