Hi there. I’ve been holding off on adding a new post until I had some good news to share, and that’s taken longer than I would hope. Aereo is trying to go down ivi.tv’s path, and we know how that ended even without the Copyright Office getting snitty about it. Several movie studios are pursuing criminal charges against some Koreans for the offense of adding subtitles to their soap operas. And my Fourth of July trip to Mount Rushmore found it hot and crowded with overtired children pleading, “Why are we going outside?”

We need some seriously good news, and this installment comes from a most unlikely source, the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Every for-profit broadcaster has two responsibilities: to its shareholders, and to the viewers it serves. I think I know which responsibility weighs most heavily on Sinclair’s mind, but I digress.

Sinclair announced (PDF) yesterday that it had launched the American Sports Network, which will include “an extensive slate of live, local sporting events, including football, basketball, soccer, and other sports with the opening of this year’s college football
season” including over 50 schools. Different regions may see different games simultaneously. Sinclair’s stations will carry the games either on their primary signal or on a digital sub-channel.

As much as I would like this to be a 24/7 digital sub-channel a la One World Sports or, especially, Universal Sports Network, I think ASN looks more like Raycom Sports, syndicating college games to mostly independent stations. Oh well. Anything that spreads more live sports over more over-the-air broadcast stations sounds like good news, and at this point, I’ll take it!