Sports Time

Sports Time was a regional sports network in the United States. It was owned by Anheuser-Busch and was launched on April 2, 1984. Sports Time was available in 15 states from Colorado to West Virginia.

History

Coverage

The new network was a way for Anheuser-Busch to show additional games of the St. Louis Cardinals, the Major League Baseball team it owned at the time. Games of the Cincinnati Reds and Kansas City Royals baseball teams, the St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League, and various college sports teams also aired on the network.

Sports Time showed Reggie Jackson's 500th career home run on September 17, 1984. The Royals were playing the California Angels in Anaheim, California that night.

Other notable programming

Sports Time shared the same satellite feed with the Financial News Network. At the end of FNN's broadcast day, eagle-eyed viewers were able to see Sports Time's listings before FNN cut away to its own feed, which ironically was, for a time, a sports news service called Score.

FNN simulcast Sports Time's coverage of the exhibition game between the United States Olympic basketball team versus a group of National Basketball Association players, which was played at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis, Indiana on July 9, 1984. The game grew a crowd of 67,678, which was the largest to see a basketball game in the U.S. at the time.

Demise

Although a promising concept, Sports Time was hampered by several problems. First, the reach of cable television was not as prevalent as it would be even a decade later; some metropolitan areas still did not have cable service at all. Second, due to the large territory, many games were blacked out in all but a fraction of the territory. Finally, the service was sold as a premium channel, like HBO or Showtime, frustrating dedicated sports fans, who were used to getting ESPN included with their monthly service.

After twelve months of obvious frustration, Anheuser-Busch pulled the plug on Sports Time on March 31, 1985.

Aftermath

Today, the Cardinals and Reds are shown on Fox Sports Net in their respective regions, Midwest and Ohio. The Royals have been shown on its own network, RSTN; FSN; Metro Sports, or a combination of them over the years; it is FSN-exclusive as of 2008. The Blues are also shown on FSN Midwest.