The Media Notepad: All City announces cutbacks, including five on-air layoffs at CHGO Sports
Also: NBC’s RSN to be made available on Peacock; Braves baseball return to TBS. Well, somewhat.
The podcast network and website CHGO Sports was hit with layoffs on Wednesday with five employees let go as part of cutbacks by parent company All City Sports, which eliminated seven percent of its workforce across its portals in Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Denver.
All City CEO Brandon Spanpo acknowledged the company needs to be more efficient. “As ALLCITY Network continues to mature and scale we must make strategic changes in order to continue growing efficiently, Spano said in a statement. Unfortunately, that means that there were important creators who were let go today and each one of them was very important to us. Each of these impacted employees have been offered severance, health care coverage, and other benefits as part of the restructuring.
“As much as we would like to cover all sports in the exact same manner, the reality is that certain sports command a different scale of audience and advertiser interest at the local level and we’re moving our resources to better align with that. These decisions were made using the large pool of data that has been accumulated over the last few years.”
Chicago’s operation was the hardest hit, with five layoffs, including White Sox beatman Herb Lawerence and Blackhawks beat writer Greg Boysen. CHGO Sports launched in March 2022 and recently added a 24/7 streaming FAST channel, mainly video versions of their audio podcasts.
In an interview with Awful Announcing, Spano said the cuts focused on hockey, soccer, and baseball, the three sports with fewer followers than basketball and football. Lawrence focused on the White Sox, while Boysen’s assignment was on the Blackhawks. Other names cut from the Chicago cluster were Vinnie Duber, Ryan Herrera, and Nicholas Moreno.
The layoffs illustrate how sports journalism is struggling to survive in the Internet era, especially in Chicago where fan interest is tampered down by the teams’ poor performances. The White Sox finished with the worst record in MLB history in September while the Blackhawks are spending their second straight season with the NHL’s worst record.
The Sun-Times reported that coverage on the baseball beat is changing, from daily shows during the season to just two or three a week.
For those wondering what would happen to NBC Sports’ regional sports networks after NBC Sports Chicago threw in the towel after its principal teams left, we got our answer – they’re going nowhere as according to sources, parent company Comcast is likely to add the four RSNs to its Peacock streamer in the first or second quarter of 2025.
To avoid undercutting them on cable and satellite providers, Comcast plans to set a price point of $10 to $15 per month for Peacock subscribers, and the channels will only be available to viewers in the RSN region. Peacock is also looking at distributing RSNs not owned by Comcast.
This could be problematic for CHSN, which is involved in a carriage dispute over financial issues and tier space with Comcast. CHSN hasn’t been available to nearly one million households since the network launched on October 1, a day after NBC Sports Chicago shut down.
NBCUniversal operates NBC Sports Boston, NBC Sports Philadelphia, NBC Sports Bay Area, and NBC Sports California covering teams such as the Boston Celtics, Golden State Warriors, San Francisco Giants, the A’s, San Jose Sharks, and the Philadelphia Phillies, who own a stake in NBC Sports Philadelphia. Comcast executives spoke about putting the RSNs on Peacock as early as 2022., but nothing has ever materialized – until now.
Adding the RSNs to its portfolio continues Comcast’s plans to make Peacock a top-tier sports destination. The streamer carried numerous Summer Olympic events, including well-received Gold Zone whiparound coverage, and has rights to Big Ten collegiate sports, Notre Dame football, NFL’s Sunday Night Football, NASCAR, and as of next year, the NBA. The hope is that adding sports would reduce churn, i.e., viewers repeatedly canceling and re-subscribing to the service. Comcast announced last month a plan to spin off their fledgling cable networks into a separate company tentatively called SpinCo but decided to keep Bravo and the NBC Sports RSNs, ending any speculation they would be shuttered or sold.
Had the Bulls, Blackhawks, and White Sox stayed with Comcast and NBC Sports Chicago, the network would have been added to Peacock. With the teams dumping Comcast for Standard Media as a partner, they’re unlikely to appear on the streamer. It’s yet another loss for Chicago sports fans – something we’ve grown accustomed to this year. Talk about a missed opportunity.
The Braves are back on TBS! Well, somewhat.
Atlanta-based Gray Media announced Wednesday a deal with the Atlanta Braves to air 25 games on Gray’s CW affiliate WPCH-TV, branded as Peachtree TV. The games include fifteen regular-season games produced and simulcasted on FanDuel Sports Network South, and ten spring training games Gray is producing. Gray also owns CBS affiliate WANX-TV (formerly WGNX and WGCL) in Atlanta and Peachtree TV in a duopoly.
All 25 games will also air on a vast network of Gray’s local stations in Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and Georgia, stretching from Memphis to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, reaching fifteen million viewers in the South.
“We are thrilled to partner with Gray Media to offer our fans more opportunities to watch a simulcast of certain games and access our content all across the Southeast,” said Atlanta Braves President-CEO Derek Schiller. “This partnership makes Braves baseball even more accessible, allowing fans throughout Braves Country the ability to watch in a way that best suits them, whether that is on cable, local TV, or streaming.”
Owned by Ted Turner, the Braves were a longtime fixture on the old WTBS, originally known as WTCG Channel 17 in Atlanta, which Turner bought in 1969. Their popularity expanded in the late 1970s when WTCG, which became WTBS in 1979, was transmitted via satellite and made accessible to cable TV homes nationwide. This transformation turned WTBS into a “Superstation,” allowing Braves games to reach audiences nationally and developing a following in the South. A year later, Chicago’s WGN followed suit by uploading its signal via satellite, also becoming a Superstation, with Cubs games as the main attraction as did WOR in New York with the Mets.
The Braves’ Superstation run ended after the 2007 season when then-owners Time Warner split TBS’ national and local Atlanta feeds in October 2007, the latter becoming WPCH and Peachtree TV and striking a new five-year deal to carry 45 Braves games a season starting in 2008. But after the 2012 season, those games left Peachtree as Fox Sports South (now FanDuel) gained exclusive rights. WPCH was sold to Meredith Corp. in 2017 after running the station in a local marketing agreement for Time Warner for a few years; Gray bought Meredith in 2021.
Peachtree and Gray also air a small package of Atlanta Hawks games throughout the South; Like the Braves, the Hawks were also a WTBS staple for years.
A map of where to watch those 25 games is below:
