While the Chicago Blackhawks made it to the NHL's Western Conference Finals, only to lose to the Detroit Red Wings, SHARK has learned that the network that carried a number of Hawk playoff games may soon disappear from DIRECTV. According to ChicagoBusiness.com, it appears as if DIRECTV is playing hardball with VERSUS, the Comcast-owned sports channel that aired a number of Blackhawk games during the team's NHL Stanley Cup playoff run this past spring may soon be taken off the nation's #1 satellite provider due to rights' fees. VERSUS could soon disappear completely from DIRECTV systems if the dispute over rights' fees isn't squared away as soon as Monday. In the meantime, VERSUS can still be found on DIRECTV 603, but not much longer.

Spanky "learned" this also. By watching the channel for 5 minutes. There was a HUGE-ly annoying crawl at the bottom that kept repeating this.

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that sucks, there are going to be 9 blackhawk games this season on versus, hey SHARK, how many more years is the contract between the NHL and versus?

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team Mully & Hanley
team Meatpants

I think it's another 2 years between the NHL & VERSUS, Crosscheck. The NHL did have a contract with ESPN, but they were expendable in the eyes of network bosses when the players & owners had a very bitter lockout. That was about 3 or 4 years ago when the lockout occurred. It's the second really bad deal the NHL has made in my opinion. The league over 15 years ago cut a national TV deal with SportsChannel America, which didn't have that big an audience either. Think it's hard now to find VERSUS? Imagine how difficult it was REALLY like to find an NHL game on SportsChannel besides the Blackhawks away from home...

Speaking of sports on versus, who else is going to the IRL race at Chicagoland tomorrow night?

I'll sit back and keep a list of all of the positive responses.....




BTW SHARK - how come the race is starting at damn near midnight local time tomorrow night? According to the Chicagoland website, green flag drops at 9 pm?????

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Spanky, I didn't even know IRL was in town, although I did hear a little bit of Danica Patrick on with "B & B" last week. Actually, that start time isn't right. For some reason, they always use Eastern time and rarely mention Central & Mountain times anymore. Tomorrow night's IRL race at ChicagoLand gets going at 8p, not 9p, on VERSUS. This is their first season broadcasting the IRL, even though ABC Sports (ESPN on ABC) continues to air exclusive coverage of the annual Indianapolis 500, plus the subsequent races at tracks in Milwaukee & in Iowa. I'm not sure the terms of the IRL/VERSUS deal, let alone its length. The channel has raised plenty of eyebrows in recent years televising the NHL, College Football & Basketball, mixed martial arts, the Professional Bull Riders' Association, and the annual Tour de France. Plus, they've got original shows such as "Sports Soup" based on Joel McHale's wildly popular E! series dealing with pop culture simply called "The Soup". Comic Matt Iseman hosts "Sports Soup", and they've also introduced a show called "Fanatic", where I believe you can download video of the biggest sports fans around...

Versus went dark at exactly midnight eastern time so I guess no one was bluffing.

For NHL fans like me this is a huge fucking deal.

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