Sabres cable affiliate goes belly up

[YellHockey*]

Empire Sports Network, the tv broadcaster of the Buffalo Sabres, is going out of business. When the NHL resumes, Sabres games will be broadcast on MSG. The full story is available here:

http://buffalo.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2005/01/17/daily27.html

This has to be a significant blow financially to the Sabres. They lose the bargaining power of being the premiere property of a regional network.

Click to read more...

 

[Marc the Habs Fan]

So what's gonna happen? will there be sort of a ''Buffalo affiliate'' of MSG? I know the Sabres usually had pretty much everyone of their games on TV in the past, will this still be the case?

 

[GKJ]

MSG is broadcasted in Buffalo?

 

[fan mao rong]

Yeah, that's right. I saw on one of the Buffalo online things that MSG was preparing to enter that field. It is not surprising that Empire Sports went under as it is one of the remaining assets of Adelphia Cable. I do not think this means much. People will have to look for a negative slant to propagandize over in other places.

 

[Rhett4]

Empire started to die a slow death right after John Rigas was arrested and the Sabres future went up in smoke. Adelphia, the previous company of Rigas, has been looking to dump Empire for the last few years. Now, with no Sabres to get them any sort of revenue, they've finally shut it down. I used to love Empire, but it's not as if it was unexpected.

 

[Hire Sather]

I better still get the Ranger Feed down here in CT.

 

[ColinM]

I don't think this will be such a bad thing for the Sabres since they no longer fall under the same umbrella as Empire Sports. If MSG is going to pick up the games and broadcast them in upstate New York then business should be no different then how it was last season. I'm sure MSG probably needs the content anyway in light of the fact they lost some of their content to the YES network.

 

[Rhett4]

I better still get the Ranger Feed down here in CT.

I would imagine they would only play the Sabres game in the Sabres market: namely Buffalo, Rochester, and possibly Syracuse. I can't imagine anyone else will have to worry.