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Fox Sports Southwest
CountryUnited States
NetworkFox Sports Networks
HeadquartersDallas, Texas
Programming
Language(s)English
Ownership
OwnerFox Entertainment Group
(21st Century Fox)

Fox Sports Southwest is an American regional sports network that is owned by Fox Cable Networks, a unit of the Fox Entertainment Group division of 21st Century Fox, and operates as an affiliate of Fox Sports Networks. The channel broadcasts regional coverage of professional, collegiate and high school sports events throughout the South Central United States. The network is headquartered in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Irving, Texas, with master control hubbed at Fox Sports Networks' operations center in Houston, which houses master control operations for its regional networks in the central United States.

Fox Sports Southwest is available on cable providers throughout much of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, eastern New Mexico and Arkansas; it is also available nationwide on satellite via DirecTV and Dish Network.

History

Fox Sports Southwest logo, used from 2008 to 2012.

Fox Sports Southwest originally launched on January 4, 1983 as Home Sports Entertainment (HSE), a unit of Warner-Amex Cable.[1] As one of the first regional sports networks in North America, it served as the cable television home of professional and collegiate sports teams throughout Texas and surrounding states. In 1988, HSE became an affiliate of Prime Sports Networks.

Like many Prime Sports-affiliated networks, it shared channel space with other networks on several cable providers in its service area (most often resulting in its programming being restricted to nighttime periods) until the early 1990s, when cable systems began upgrading their headend infrastructures to increase channel capacity, reassigning most of the cable channels that shared time with HSE to other channel slots once these upgrades were complete. In 1994, Liberty Media acquired HSE, converting it into an owned-and-operated affiliate of Prime Sports and changing its name to Prime Sports Southwest.

In 1996, News Corporation, which formed its own sports division for the Fox network two years earlier, acquired a 50% interest in the Prime Network from Liberty Media;[2] the network was officially rebranded as Fox Sports Southwest on November 1 of that year, as part of a relaunch of the Prime Network affiliates as the cornerstones of the new Fox Sports Net.[3] The channel was then rebranded as Fox Sports Net Southwest in late 1999, as part of a collective brand modification of the FSN networks under the "Fox Sports Net" banner.

In 2004, the channel shortened its name to FSN Southwest, through the networks' de-emphasis of the brand, before reverting to the Fox Sports Southwest moniker in 2008. In July 2013, News Corporation spun off the Fox Sports Networks and most of its other U.S. entertainment properties into 21st Century Fox.

Programming

Fox Sports Southwest holds the exclusive regional cable television rights to the Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs of the NBA; the San Antonio Stars of the WNBA; the Dallas Stars of the NHL; and the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball. In addition, the channel also provides regional coverage of collegiate sporting events from the Big 12 Conference and Conference USA, as well as the cable rights to the University Interscholastic League, carrying its Class 6A high school state championship games for football, boys' and girls' basketball, baseball and softball, and the 2A-5A high school football championships.

Coverage areas

Fox Sports Southwest has the second-largest market area and total viewer reach of any network in the FSN group (behind Fox Sports South). Its expansive footprint extends from eastern New Mexico to Panama City, Florida. The network is divided into five broadcasting zones, each representing the five largest television markets in its designated broadcast region:

The separation of broadcast zones for the channel is mostly due to the defined broadcast territories set by the National Basketball Association for four of the region's five NBA franchises – the Dallas Mavericks, Oklahoma City Thunder, San Antonio Spurs and New Orleans Pelicans (the Houston Rockets are carried on Root Sports Southwest). In the event of a scheduling conflict between either of the teams (such as Mavericks/Thunder, Mavericks/Spurs, Thunder/Spurs, and sometimes Mavericks/Spurs/Thunder), the games will be shown on their own subfeeds (Thunder on Fox Sports Oklahoma, Spurs or Mavericks on Fox Sports Southwest). In certain circumstances, games involving the Dallas Stars (the only National Hockey League team based in Texas) air on Fox Sports Southwest beyond the Dallas-Fort Worth designated market area, including the Houston market, which no longer receives any NBA broadcasts over Fox Sports Southwest. This is also true with the San Antonio Stars, the only WNBA team in Texas, many of whose games are shown beyond the San Antonio designated market area.

Programming seen in each broadcasting zone is common in most areas, and includes a mix of programs supplied by Fox Sports Networks and some original programming exclusive to Fox Sports Southwest (such as High School Spotlight, ″High School Scoreboard Live″ and the Dallas Morning News-co-produced SportsdayOnAir). Other than Fox Sports New Orleans and Fox Sports Oklahoma, which are both treated by Fox Sports Networks as separate channels from Fox Sports Southwest, each feed disambiguated in some electronic program guides and online television listings services as "Fox Sports Dallas", "Fox Sports Houston" and "Fox Sports San Antonio".

Other services

Fox Sports Southwest HD

Fox Sports Southwest HD is a high definition simulcast feed of Fox Sports Southwest, which broadcasts in the 720p format. The channel does not provide a 24-hour simulcast, however it broadcasts various Mavericks, Rangers, Spurs and Stars games, as well as several NCAA football and basketball games shown nationally on FSN and other programming distributed nationally by Fox Sports Networks in high definition.

Fox Sports Southwest Plus

Fox Sports Southwest Plus (also branded as "FOX Sports Southwest +" or FS SOUTHWEST +") is an alternate channel feed of Fox Sports Southwest used to broadcast select events from teams to which Fox Sports Southwest holds the broadcast rights within the designated market in the event that two or more games scheduled to be broadcast on the channel are held simultaneously, requiring the overflow feed to carry games that cannot air on the main feed.[4]

References

  1. ^ David Barron (January 5, 2003). "Regional TV venture grew into Fox Sports Southwest". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved July 6, 2016.
  2. ^ R. Thomas Umstead (July 8, 1996). "Liberty Sports regionals will become Fox Sports net". Multichannel News. The Walt Disney Company. Retrieved April 7, 2015 – via HighBeam Research.
  3. ^ "FOX SPORTS NET DEBUTS ON NOV. 1". The Columbian. Columbian Publishing Company. Associated Press. September 13, 1996. Retrieved April 7, 2015 – via HighBeam Research.
  4. ^ "What is FOX Sports Southwest Plus?". Fox Sports Local.
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