Television
The Sabres Hockey Network airs on MSG Network throughout Upstate New York; the team and network are contracted for 70 games, with the play-by-play and commentary simulcasted over video. The other 12 air only on the radio half of the network, including all games broadcast on the league's national outlets. Games against the New York Rangers, New York Islanders or New Jersey Devils (other hockey teams to which MSG owns TV rights) will carry the Sabres Hockey Network feed on the SAP of MSG or MSG Plus in New York City and the surrounding areas. MSG and the Sabres have an agreement to carry Sabres games through 2016. The Sabres also have the capabilities to broadcast preseason home games on the team's Web site.
On DirecTV, channel 638 (and 638-1 for HD games) is used exclusively for Sabres games. Due to a dispute between MSG and Dish Network, Sabres games are not available on that medium. The games are available on Verizon FiOS, with high-definition feeds only arriving in late 2011 after a protracted legal dispute in which MSG refused to provide Verizon with an HD feed. The network is also available on Time Warner Cable, the predominant cable provider in New York State; the two sides had an approximately 1½-month contract dispute that left games unavailable on cable for most of the state.
In the past, single games were sold to one of the Buffalo broadcast stations (WGRZ-TV, WIVB-TV and WKBW-TV), usually games played on Saturdays. This has happened only once since MSG took over the broadcast contract: WGRZ and WHEC-TV were given rights to simulcast MSG's coverage of the February 11, 2012 game between the Sabres and the Tampa Bay Lightning, as a one-time goodwill gesture in the ongoing dispute between Time Warner Cable and MSG.
Games carried by NBC Sports Network, NBC, and CBC Television are not produced by the Sabres, and these television broadcasts are not considered to be part of the Sabres Hockey Network. The network produces "radio only" broadcasts for its terrestrial affiliates when an NBC game airs.
Read more about this topic: Sabres Hockey Network
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.”
—Salvador Dali (1904–1989)
“In full view of his television audience, he preached a new religion—or a new form of Christianity—based on faith in financial miracles and in a Heaven here on earth with a water slide and luxury hotels. It was a religion of celebrity and showmanship and fun, which made a mockery of all puritanical standards and all canons of good taste. Its standard was excess, and its doctrines were tolerance and freedom from accountability.”
—New Yorker (April 23, 1990)
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)