SportsTime Ohio


SportsTime Ohio is an American regional sports network that is owned by Diamond Sports Group, and operates as an affiliate of Fox Sports Networks. The channel, which is a sister network to Fox Sports Ohio, broadcasts statewide coverage of professional, collegiate and high school sports events throughout northern Ohio, including the Cleveland area.
Fox SportsTime Ohio is available from most cable providers in Northeast Ohio and select providers in other portions of Ohio, Northwest Pennsylvania, and extreme Western New York. It is also available nationwide on satellite via DirecTV, as well as outside Ohio on AT&T U-verse.

History

SportsTime Ohio was launched on March 12, 2006; it was founded by the family of Cleveland Indians owner Larry Dolan, becoming the second regional sports network in the Cleveland area, after Fox Sports Ohio. SportsTime Ohio assumed the regional cable television rights to Major League Baseball games involving the Indians from Fox Sports Ohio, which had served as the exclusive local broadcaster of the Indians from 2002 to 2005, when it was majority-owned by Cablevision Systems Corporation until an asset trade with then-Fox Sports Net parent News Corporation who also owned 20th Century Fox and Fox News. Jim Liberatore, former President of Fox Sports owned Speed Channel helped start the network and served as its first President. His knowledge of the cable industry served a vital role in the success the network enjoyed while so many other team facilitated network launches failed across the country.
Starting off as rivals with Gannett-owned WKYC providing studio operations for the cable channel, the two networks would soon become corporate sisters, when on December 3, 2012, the Indians announced that it would sell SportsTime Ohio to Fox Sports Ohio parent Fox Entertainment Group. The deal was finalized four weeks later on December 28. Fox retained SportsTime Ohio's existing staff despite coming under common ownership with Fox Sports Ohio, with Katie Witham becoming a traveling reporter with the team.
In April 2013, at the beginning of the 2013 Major League Baseball season, SportsTime Ohio transitioned to the Fox Sports branding and imagery, but maintained the SportsTime Ohio branding.
On December 14, 2017, as part of a merger between both companies, The Walt Disney Company announced plans to acquire all 22 regional Fox Sports networks from 21st Century Fox, including SportsTime Ohio, sister network Fox Sports Ohio, and Fox's 50% stake in the network's Cincinnati sub-feed. However, on June 27, 2018, the Justice Department ordered their divestment under antitrust grounds, citing Disney's ownership of ESPN. On May 3, 2019, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Entertainment Studios bought Fox Sports Networks from The Walt Disney Company for $10.6 billion. The deal closed on August 22, 2019, thus putting SportsTime Ohio and Fox Sports Ohio under common ownership with several Sinclair stations in Ohio, which include WSYX/WTTE/WWHO in Columbus, WKRC-TV/WSTR-TV in Cincinnati, WNWO-TV in Toledo, WKEF/WRGT-TV in Dayton, and WTOV-TV in Steubenville, Ohio. The deal will also mark Sinclair's entry into Northeast Ohio, where its nearest existing broadcasting properties are WSYX/WTTE/WWHO, WNWO-TV, WTOV-TV, and WPGH-TV/WPNT in Pittsburgh.

Programming

Professional sports

SportsTime Ohio holds the exclusive regional cable television rights to the Cleveland Indians of Major League Baseball and is the cable outlet of the Cleveland Browns. The channel produces Indians Live, a pre-game and post-game show bookending the channel's Indians telecasts or any national games airing on another network. The network also is the primary TV outlet for Cleveland Monsters hockey, and secondary broadcaster of Columbus Crew SC.

Original programming

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