Posted by ABRockNJock on December 1, 2025, 10:00 pm
In the wake of the changing sports TV landscape plus the city's top cable system in Comcast/Xfinity moving it to its most expensive tier for its customers, there's news of changes at Marquee Sports Network, per the Sun-Times' Jeff Agrest.
The Cubs' powered regional sports network announced Monday night that Diane Penny is out as General Manager of the 5 year old outlet. Penny, a Villa Park native, became Marquee's General Manager in April last year. She was brought in hoping to accelerate the network's digital transformation. It didn't work out that way.
Also sent packing in Marquee's cutbacks were Tony Andracki, Marquee's Director of Content & reporter Andy Martinez. The network will utilize the Cubs' Chief Commercial Officer Colin Faulkner to oversee game production & coverage. Faulkner will also be in charge of marketing & talent. What will happen to Marquee's Web site has yet to be decided.
If you can get through the paywall, Agrest's full story about Marquee's cutbacks along with comments from Cubs' V.P. of Business Operations Crane Kenney can be found here:
Sports teams are starting to price themselves out of consumers’ pocketbooks. When Marquee started my Comcast bill increased, even though I never watched that channel. After awhile I just cancelled the entire cable. Much too expensive.
I think it started when the San Diego Padres & Arizona Diamondbacks decided to no longer pay a rights' fee for what's now called FanDuel Sports Network to carry the local broadcast rights for their teams via what used to be called Bally Sports. These were the regional sports networks that were branded as FOX Sports, yet owned by ESPN's parent company The Walt Disney Company as part of a very complicated deal that's very hard even for me to explain.
The Padres & Diamondbacks were 2 of 42 MLB, NBA & NHL teams that aired their games on these regional sports network until Bally's parent company Diamond Sports filed for bankruptcy in 2023. From what I read, the Padres & Diamondbacks had rights' fees that were due and decided not to pay these fees. As a result, they ended up dropping their respective deals with Bally Sports.
Other teams such as the NBA's Phoenix Suns, the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury, NHL's Vegas Golden Knights & Seattle Kraken followed. They also decided to cut their ties with their own regional sports networks and decided to go over the air.
Warner Bros. Discovery, which is the parent company of CNN, TBS, TNT, HLN, Cartoon Network & Discovery Channel to name a few, decided to get out of the regional sports network business themselves. At the end of the 2023 MLB season, WBD decided to pull the plug on AT&T SportsNet regionals in Pittsburgh, Houston & Denver.
You mentioned Comcast. They were in a 5 year tug of war with Altitude Sports, the RSN that airs the Denver Nuggets & Colorado Avalanche, over rights' fees.
I think the issue has to do with the changing TV landscape. Many Americans aren't watching cable & satellite like they used to. Streaming services such as Roku, Fubo TV, Sling & Hulu appear to be the future...And for some, the future is now.
I think it was Diamond Sports that didn't pay the rights fee to the Diamondbacks and Padres, not the other way around.
Diamond Sports went bankrupt because they had overbid on the rights fees at the same time that the Regional Sports Network business model was crumbling. They weren't bringing in enough money from the shrinking pool of subscribers to pay the huge rights fees they'd agreed to. Diamond Sports skipped their payments to the teams and hoped they could renogotiate the deals in bankruptcy court. Instead, the teams were able to get out of their deals with Diamond.
But yeah, to your point, the entire media landscape has shifted dramatically as folks drop traditional cable TV packages for online services. It wasn't that long ago that channels like Marquee and CHSN would have pulled their content from Comcast rather than accept placement on the most expensive programming tier. RSNs made tons of money by demanding placement on the base lineup that all cable subscribers to pay for. And conversely, cable companies like Comcast could expect exclusivity -- sports fans had to have a cable TV package to watch RSNs like CHSN and Marquee. There was no direct-to-consumer option that bypassed the cable companies.
We're in a whole new sports media world and the change is just beginning.
I am one of the life-long Cub Fans who called it quits for watching games each week when they left OTA TV for Marquee. Could I afford it? Yes. But, willfully pay to watch games on a channel that *still* includes commercials? Eat my shorts. I’ll either listen on 670 WSCR or just read the daily game recaps.
The less most people see their team playing, the less they talk about it. The less they talk about it, the less they’ll want to go to the games. People stop thinking about the team. Revenue eventually goes down from every source. 📉
Put the Cubs back on a freely-accessible channel and the graph starts going up and to the right again. 📈
I’m with you, PhilJSmith. I’m a lifelong Sox fan. When CHSN came along, I got rid of my big cable TV package. All I ever watched on it was regional sports—and those were now available OTA via my antenna. Imagine that: free regional sports! But then something odd happened. “Antenna?” the people said. “What is this, the ’70s?” They couldn’t be bothered with that. So they demanded it be put back on big cable. They demanded to pay for it! Well, the people got what they wanted—CHSN made a deal with big cable and sunsetted the OTA signal. Now the options are:
Go back to big cable and get the highest-tier package for $150 a month (which I will never do), or Pay $30 a month to stream it—with commercials (which I refuse to do).
So, as Phil so eloquently put it: “EAT MY SHORTS!” We all need to band together and tell them to eat our shorts! Stop paying and stop watching. It’s the only way, folks.
Thanks for correcting me, Bilbo. I was trying to remember exactly what happened with the Padres & Diamondbacks back in 2023.
Diamond Sports, parent company of Bally Sports, missed a payment in March that year and entered a grace period. Diamond Sports eventually paid a rights fee to the Padres March 29, but the end for what was called Bally Sports San Diego came May 30 that year. MLB Advanced Media, parent company of MLB Network, took over the Padres' broadcast & distribution rights there following the Padres/Marlins' game in Miami.
The Diamondbacks, along with the Phoenix Suns & Phoenix Mercury, bolted what was called Bally Sports Arizona in April 2023, about 3 months after Diamond Sports filed for bankruptcy in February that year. The RSN there lost a lot of money for their pro sports teams there.
While the Suns & Mercury signed OTA deals with Gray Television, the Diamondbacks followed the Padres and signed on with MLBAM to handle production & distribution there.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred ultimately wants to centralize local broadcast rights, but as the Sun-Times' Jeff Agrest is quick to point out at the end of this Marquee story, the Cubs' own deal with Marquee and Sinclair Broadcast Group will make such a plan difficult.
If I could, and I'm an outsider here, I'll quote my late father. "The day I pay to see a guy hit a ball with a stick and run around in a circle...."
Just got tired of it all. Baseball was fun when I was a child, went to games, but Bleachers disappeared, the prices of the games, players who seemed to be aloof, I was done. $18 for a popcorn?
Every inning was "the xyz fifth inning" or the "longshot" sponsored by Longshot beer, or whatever.
I've wasted time with baseball, listening or watching. Screwed up calls. Like "wresting Entertainment."
Haven't watched, nor listened in years, and I miss Ed Farmer!!!!!!
Ed Farmer lost his battle with kidney disease on April Fool's Day 2020 during the early stages of the pandemic at age 70. Seems hard to believe that Farmer's final White Sox Radio broadcast came in February before everything was interrupted by the early stages of COVID.
I understand your angst for the game as well as all the related in-game sponsorships associated with not just Major League Baseball, but sports as a whole on TV & radio. Times have changed...And not just in the wake of corporate cutbacks at Marquee this week.
I think with so many games now available in HD as well as the average price for a family of 4 now paying around $200 when including transportation, parking as well as concessions, the average fan seems to be better off watching or listening to a ballgame in the comfort of their own home rather than going to the ballpark, stadium, arena or track.
It's very likely the average fan won't notice the changes to the presentation of Cubs' baseball next spring & summer on Marquee Sports Network in the wake of corporate cutbacks. I think the real notice will be whether Joe Cubs Fan will continue to see it online much longer.
on December 1, 2025, 10:00 pm