It’s not a surprise considering that NBC Sports Group has taken the Comcast sports networks (Versus, Golf Channel and Comcast SportsNet affiliates) under its umbrella. We’ve known for quite some time that Versus will be rebranded to reflect NBC’s operation of the network, but we didn’t know that the NBC Sports brand would also take over the Comcast SportsNet regional networks.
According to a story from David Goetzl from MediaPost publications (and a h/t to Twitter follower Ryan Anthony for the link), all of the Comcast SportsNet channels from New England all the way to Portland, OR will be rebranded under NBC Sports.
So let’s say Versus gets rebranded to “NBC SportsNet”, then I would expect the local CSN channels to be known as NBC SportsNet New England or NBC SportsNet Philadelphia. Here are the Comcast SportsNet affiliates that would most likely undergo the name change:
New England
Philadelphia
Mid-Atlantic
CSS
Houston (coming in 2012)
Chicago
Bay Area/California
Northwest
Comcast and Time Warner jointly own SNY in New York, but I’m not sure if that will be rebranded to NBC.
The idea according to Ebersol in Goetzl’s story is to “give viewers everywhere a much better sense of just who we are, wherever they go.” This means more of a tie-in to NBC among the Comcast SportsNet affiliates. We’re already seeing in San Francisco that Comcast SportsNet Bay Area will produce nightly sportscasts for NBC’s owned-and-operated KNTV in San Jose/San Francisco. We could see more down the line.
