Empire Sports Network - Aftermath

Aftermath

Adelphia itself was acquired by Time Warner Cable and Comcast which completed the asset transfer on August 1, 2006. CEO William Schleyer received a bonus of $15 million and COO Ron Cooper received $9 million as part of their compensation package from the re-structured Adelphia Board of Directors.

MSG Network currently holds Buffalo Sabres rights, though the broadcasts are still produced by the Sabres organization as they were during the days of Empire.

Syracuse University has an agreement with Time Warner Cable for extensive local coverage of its teams, the result of which was the creation of the sports channel Time Warner Cable SportsNet, which now covers most of Empire's old territory and operates out of Empire's old studios in West Seneca. Some of Empire's sports rights, such as the handful of Bisons games aired on the station, ended up on WNGS, before ending up back in Time Warner's hands after WNGS briefly ended up in the hands of a religious organization; WNGS, now rechristened as WBBZ-TV, has indicated it will make a greater push for sports rights now that it has been revived as a commercial, locally-owned station. (Indeed, WBBZ hired Koshinski as an executive producer in 2012.)

Rumors of Empire's revival had been spread in 2006 as the window for an "out clause" in the Sabres-MSG contract opened, combined with Time Warner Cable's acquisition of the Buffalo market, thereby uniting all of upstate New York under one cable provider. Those rumors, however, were squashed when a 10-year contract extension between the Sabres and MSG was announced. However, Time Warner's Time Warner Sports channel did eventually expand into the Buffalo market in November 2007.

Bob Koshinski has made some of Empire's highlights available on YouTube. In addition, many hours of WNSA's audio is owned by WNSA producer Steve Cichon and is available for purchase.