670 The Score’s Dan Bernstein and Laurence Holmes spent time on the Bernstein & Holmes Show trying to make heads or tails out of the future media rights for the Chicago White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks. In mid-April a report from the Chicago Sun-Times said the teams would be leaving NBC Sports Chicago at the end of their agreement in October. The report stated the teams would move to Stadium, a multiplatform sports network which has offices and studios inside the United Center and is largely owned by Bulls and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf.
As NBC has been moving away from the Regional Sports Network model, the report seemed to make sense and the move to Stadium made even more sense given Reinsdorf’s involvement. It was believed Stadium would convert into a regional sports network and look for distribution on pay-TV providers.
However, over the weekend, a new report surfaced from Scott Powers and Mark Lazerus of The Athletic which said the new home of those teams will not be Stadium, but instead will be Standard Media Group, a local broadcast and digital media company based out of Nashville.
Laurence Holmes happens to do work for both NBC Sports Chicago and Stadium, and he and partner Dan Bernstein weighed in on the topic.
The first thing Holmes talked about was the timing of the deal saying he has heard there might be six more months added to the current deal with NBC Sports Chicago with a new outlet taking over games when the White Sox begin play next April.
Several stories have been written about the move, however, nobody from one of the teams has said anything about what might happen, and the more Bernstein and Holmes discussed it there were a lot more questions than answers.
“It seems to me like the fact that none of the teams has said a thing, tells me until we hear it from a team…my guess is talks are ongoing,” Bernstein said.
Holmes responded saying, “Who knows where things stand, I just know that it’s a nervous time for a lot of really good and smart people at both places I work, and they are trying to figure out what their future is.”
Without many details or answers, it allows for a lot of speculation. Holmes even went as far as drawing a connection between Standard Media Group being based in Nashville and reports from December which said Jerry Reinsdorf had met with Nashville mayor Freddie O’Connell.
“I don’t know if this is connected at all, but the fact that it’s a Nashville station would allow anyone who is a White Sox fan to move your head like a dog trying to see you and be like ‘wait a minute, really like they are based in Nashville, like when Jerry met with the Mayor of Nashville and Nashville being the city supposedly every Major League Baseball team wants to move to.’ Yes, I think it’s fair to wonder that, but I personally don’t feel like those things are as connected as it looks on the surface, but I don’t know.”
Continuing the discussion, the hosts welcomed White Sox blogger and podcaster Jim Margalus of Sox Machine to the show as he has been covering the story from the baseball side of things. As he came on the air, he first mentioned he had gone looking for the Standard Media Group building they list as their address and said he didn’t find anything that remotely looked like a major broadcasting outlet was housed there.
About Standard Media Group, Margalus said, “In 2022 they tried to buy dozens of local news stations…and it broke down in the regulatory process and the merger ultimately fell through. They have tried to be a big player, along the lines of a Sinclair, but it didn’t happen with their first swing, and now it seems like this might be their regrouping to try and get into media. The guy behind it, Soo Kim is also behind Bally’s so there’s money there and there’s aspirations there, but they have not yet proven their ability to run a media company so that’s what makes it interesting.”
Margalus talked about the potential of Standard Media Group just selling off the games to another outlet that has coverage throughout the market, or a few different outlets to cover over-the-air and streaming of the games. Standard Media Group has ownership of four television stations which are located in Providence, Rhode Island, Lincoln, Nebraska, Cape Girardeau, Missouri and Paducah, Kentucky.
“Right now, it seems like a company that just kind of exists and is waiting for a reason to exist beyond the four [television stations] they have,” Margalus said.
“There’s so many questions that one can have about all of this,” replied Holmes.
