Midwest Sports Channel

and the Minnesota Sports Network Wars

By Dan Whenesota

Assist to Judd Zulgad (Who did much of the reporting for the Star Tribune) 

Note: Minnesota has been blessed to have great play by play voices, analysts and broadcast teams.  When I started writing this, I debated adding the specific names of those people.  That list of names is very long, and numerous.  If I listed them all, this story would be immensely longer than it already is.  In addition, there were some situations where competition for those jobs, the hirings and firings, got personal.  In the end, I decided not to go down that road and only included names where it was a necessary part of the story.

Introduction

Whether you're a cord cutter or still have a main cable provider, you’ve probably had to make choices at some point in your life about what TV/streaming services you’re willing to pay for.  Those choices are usually based on cost, but also on which channels you’ll be able to watch.  Wading through all the different providers, packages and price plans can be exhausting.

If you’re a Minnesota sports fan, it just got a bit more exhausting recently.

On Tuesday July 21, the Minnesota Wild announced that they would be broadcasting their games on their own (yet to be named) network/feed.  The Minnesota Twins have been doing the same on Twins.Tv since 2025.  The MNUFC Loons soccer games have been exclusively on Apple TV since 2023 and the Lynx are streaming their games on a free app called Victory Sports.  The men’s Gopher basketball games will be mostly on Big Ten Network and the women’s games will be a mixture of Big Ten Network and the plus channel (the plus channel is an extra fee).  If you're willing to pay that extra fee, you'll also get to watch Gopher women’s hockey games, which are also currently scheduled for Big Ten Plus.  The gopher Men’s hockey team will be mostly on Big Ten Network and some on Fox 9.  (At the time this was written, the Timberwolves and Frost have yet to announce where their games will be viewed for the upcoming seasons.) 

If you’re a die-hard fan of only one of our teams, maybe this isn’t such a big deal.  Your TV/streaming choices are easy.  You just pay for that one channel.  But if reading that paragraph above stressed you out, you're not alone.  For those of us who enjoy watching multiple Minnesota sports teams, it can be a challenge not only to have access to all the required channels, but being able to afford the cost of them as well. 

It brings up the inevitable question, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have all our teams on one channel?” 

Well, we did.  Kind of.  For a while. It was called Midwest Sports Channel. 

With all these Minnesota Sports Network wars playing out, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the history of Midwest Sports Channel (MSC) and see how we got where we are today. Maybe we’ll even learn some lessons from the past that will help us moving forward.

Note:  Because of the length of the story, I have decided to break it into a multi part story.  I will release future parts on this same page as they become available..  

PART I  - The Beginning

Satellite technology had been present in the Twin cities since the 1960s, but local stations were only able to receive satellite signals.  The ability to send video signals to satellites did not arrive until 1982 when the first earth to satellite transmitter arrived in the Twin Cities. That transmitter, which was located in Lino Lakes, was purchased by Midwest Communications for $800,000.  Midwest Communications was the parent company to WCCO-TV.  To manage and operate the transmitter, Midwest Communications created a subdivision of their company called Midwest Cable and Satellite.

In the Summer of 1983, with the assistance on Midwest Cable and Satellite, WCCO spearheaded an experimental service called Local Program Network (LPN).  That network included seven other TV stations around the country that would transmit, share and use each other’s video segments.  WCCO would send their video segments via microwaves to the Lino Lakes transmitter which would then send the signal to the orbiting satellite.  That satellite would then transmit those signals to the other stations in the network.  WCCO began selling the LPN service to other stations.   While experimenting with their new toy, Midwest Cable and Satellite also discovered they could send the video signal locally, up to 25 miles, to cable companies.  

While those appeals were being litigated however, TwinStar opted not to renew their contract with Spectrum in December 1985.  The income from the sports broadcasts fell short of what was projected.  Spectrum, and its scrambled late night programming (IYKYK), pulled up its tent stakes and moved on from Minnesota.  WCCO’s parent company, Midwest Communications, once again purchased the TV rights to Twins games. 

While all that was happening, WCCO-II kept growing and expanded their satellite programming.  When not showing news programs, they broadcast infomercials (You youngsters may need to look that one up) and music videos at night.  In the mid 1980’s WCCO-II began to dabble in sports, broadcasting high school all-star games, Canterbury Downs reports and Minnesota Strikers road games. 

With WCCO once again having the Twins TV rights, WCCO-II began broadcasting a small number of Twins games on a PPV basis.  The first was a home series with the Yankees in late July, 1987 ($7 per game or $19.95 for all three).  

In October 1988, WCCO-II started toying with the idea of about changing from a news based channel to an all sports channel.  That change came on January 1, 1989 for most of the Twin Cities.  Out state cable subscribers were able to tune in on March 1st which was also when the official name change to Midwest Sports Channel took place. 

Side Note: The Twins and North Stars were still sharing TV revenues via their TwinStar partnership at that time.  But after the Twins won the World Series in 1987 and changed ownership, the Carl Pohlad owned Twins' organization decided they wanted out of that partnership.  They felt their broadcasts were more profitable than the North Stars and that the agreement had never been equitable.  Ironically, when the TwinStar agreement was formed the North Stars had recently been in the Stanley Cup Final and the Twins were the worst team in baseball.  Regardless, in December 1988, the North Stars filed a lawsuit against the Twins for trying to back out of the TwinStar agreement.  That lawsuit would eventually be settled out of court for an undisclosed amount in February, 1990 effectively severing the TwinStar partnership. 

The 1990’s - The Golden Age of MSC

In 1991, the North Stars went on an incredible playoff run and ended up in the Stanley Cup Final.  Most folks who were alive during that time will not only remember how exciting those games were, but they’ll also remember that’s when the term “pay-per-view” forced its way into the MN sports lexicon.  Its not like we had never heard of it before, but that year, 1991, the term “pay-per-view” became a sort of historical mile marker in Minnesota sports history. 

The North Stars away playoff games that season were broadcast on local TV by KMSP channel 9.   MSC was able to show the home playoff games to their outstate customers via their SportsChannel America rights but they were not allowed to show the games in the metro because they were considered “in market”.  North Stars owner Norm Green offered MSC the broadcast rights to home playoff games in the metro at a cost of $26K per game.  MSC passed, for whatever reason.  Don’t forget MSC was on very few cable providers in the Twin Cities at the time.  Green then made the decision to make the games available on pay-per-view at $10-13 per game (depending on the game and cable provider) 

With the fans, the pay-per-view situation went over about as well as Mario Lemiuex miraculously returning from a debilitating back injury.  They were outraged.  Legislators even weighed in suggesting there should be laws against it. 

For Green and the organization however, the pay-per-view situation during that playoff run was a huge success financially.  According to the Star Tribune’s Jon Roe, it reportedly cut the team’s regular season loss of $7 Million down to $1 million.  In other words, the North Stars made $6 million off pay-per-view during the 1991 NHL playoffs. 

As you can Imagine, Green saw dollar signs and carried the pay-per-view options into the next season.  In an advertisement announcing which games would be on pay-per-view, the North Stars declared themselves the “Leif Ericksons of pay-per-view”. (Link to that ad https://www.newspapers.com/article/star-tribune/129624406/ )

By 1993, almost all metro cable operators had MSC on their services.  The last remaining holdout was the east metro’s Continental Cablevision which finally signed a deal with MSC in March of 1993 – just in time for the North Stars to announce they were moving to Dallas.  The final North Stars game to air live on MSC was April 1, 1993, a 5-3 loss at Calgary.

In the summer following the North Stars Stanley Cup run, MSC got the cable rights to Gopher hockey games.  In 1993, MSC broadcast Gopher football games, albeit many of them on tape delay.  1994 brought Minnesota Moose broadcasts, and in 1995, MSC obtained the cable rights to Timberwolves games which had aired on a different cable channel during the team's first few seasons.

MSC’s relationship with Gopher sports got stronger in 1998, when the University signed a 10 year agreement with MSC which not only included the games themselves, but also the production of coaches shows. (The Don Lucia Show, The Glen Mason Show, etc).   The first televised Gopher Women’s hockey game was aired on MSC on November 5, 1998 – a 3-1 loss to Harvard at Mariucci Arena. 

In the late 90s, MSC added St. Paul Saints baseball games as well as Minnesota Thunder soccer games.  On June 19, 1999, the new WNBA expansion team, the Minnesota Lynx made their broadcast debut on MSC.  A 69-55 loss to the Houston Comets.  It was the first loss in Lynx franchise history.      

In addition to all the other sports and outdoor shows that were aired, the mid to late 1990’s were really the golden age of Midwest Sports Channel.  The Millenium however, would bring change to Minnesota sports broadcasting – by way of a new NHL team, and challenges from competitors taking aim at MSC.      

Coming soon: Part 2: The Wild, Fox Sports Net and Victory Sports One