• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, November 8, 2021

Sports TV isn’t the savior for all things going wrong in scripted, nonscripted and news linear TV programming. Two veteran cable TV networks are closing down at the end of the year: NBCSN and ESPN Classic.

The reasons are understandable. The former, while airing lots of live sports in recent year -- the NHL, Premier League soccer, NASCAR and IndyCar races, horse racing, and the Tour de France -- didn’t get the stellar sports properties to make it a go -- think Major League Baseball, NBA basketball, college football, and the NFL.

MInd you, parent company NBCUniversal continues to air the biggest regularly viewed show on linear TV: “Sunday Night Football.” But in the new NFL deal with many TV network groups, NBC didn’t -- or couldn’t, or declined to -- extend any NFL content to its NBCSN sports network.

ESPN Classic was in a different category. Sports content that wasn’t live, with just library programming, and reruns of classic games. While some of this might have ticked the interest of hardcore sports fans, that group was small.

Viewing has been low on these networks. NBCSN was at 93,000 average viewers in prime time for October, in 73rd place among all cable TV networks. ESPN Classic did not even register among the top 123 cable networks.

This isn’t to say NBCU is abandoning these sports entirely. Soccer, Nascar, the Tour de France and other events will be shifted to USA Network and/or on Peacock. (The NHL has shifted back to ESPN.)

Now, all of this might be surprising to some. A decade or so ago, a major TV network/media company would sell its network to another party that could revamp the channel or move into another direction.

Having 70 million or 80 million ongoing subscribers had some value. In February 2020, NBCSN was in 79.9 million TV homes.

But these days, with growth of cord-cutting, alongside pay TV distributors paying to keep high-priced sports networks, value is more problematic.

Just one saving grace for any marginal sports TV network: Sports betting/gambling is on the rise.

Of course, getting a bet on a 2015 NCAA college football playoff game may be hard to place.