O’Donnell: Cubs-Sox crosstown will be as close to free TV as it gets
IF THEY CAN DUST OFF SOME OLD Harry Caray/Falstaff Beer commercials from the bleachers at classic Comiskey Park and Danley Lumber “Hey! Hey!” spots featuring Jack Brickhouse, WCIU “The U” has an old home weekend straight ahead.
In a remarkable bat-around of good timing, the independent Chicago TV station will be presenting all three games of the Cubs-White Sox series beginning Friday night at Rate Field.
That means free MLB for those still not inclined to pay the extra Ultimate Tier cable charge for Marquee Sports Network and Chicago Sports Network (CHSN).
Even the budget-conscious antennae shufflers should welcome the respite from trying to get no-charge sports TV from a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man.
THE TELECASTS ARE THE RESULT OF A PARTNERSHIP between Weigel Broadcasting — owner of “The U” — and CHSN, the three-corner cable consortium of the Sox, the Bulls and the Blackhawks.
But when a 10-game deal was announced in March — with Cubs-Sox faceoffs filling four of the slots — no one had any idea what a hot property it would be by the ides of May.
CRAIG COUNSELL'S CUBS HAVE BEEN PROVIDING sparkling defense, gutty pitching and walk-off offensive heroics worthy of Caleb “Ice Too” Williams and the 2025 Bears.
On the South Side, Chris Getz and Will Venable have pushed the gold-or-dust big bat of Munetaka Murakami and a band of reloaded young grinders toward the once unthinkable — a .500 season.
THE WHOLE TRUTH IS THAT with the Sox and CHSN calling the primary TV shots, the three-game set is intended to serve as a weekend of refreshened introduction for their product to the Chicago market.
That offering took a brutal hit during the debut season of CHSN, which went live on Oct. 1, 2024.
Because of a long delay in striking a deal with Comcast — the big Magilla of carriage in northeast Illinois — the entire 2024-25 seasons of the Bulls and Blackhawks weren't shown on the outlet and a significant chunk of '25 White Sox games was also blacked out.
Considering the levels of performance by the three teams — including the third straight season of more than 100 losses by the Slouch Siders — Caray, Brickhouse and Cap Anson might have called that “divine intervention.”
NOW, FACTORING IN THAT NICO HOERNER, SHOTA IMANAGA and fellow raisers of the new Wrigley “W” flags have been juicing ivy-tingling sizzle for the past three weeks, the Sox-”U” combine is preparing to go “jackpot” starting at 6:40 p.m. Friday.
Who woulda thunk it back on April Fools' Day?
LAST YEAR, “THE U” simulcast seven White Sox games and few cared.
Next weekend, the sweet is on.
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EVERY GLOWING WORD SAID OR WRITTEN ABOUT TED TURNER — the broadcast visionary who died this week at age 87 — resonates with the most sacred along Peachtree Street.
By his own admission, he was “a little bit crazy,” declining to stay within the confines of conventional thought and with some of his other life pursuits.
But that tightrope walking, primarily in an era when the Federal Communications Commission was loosening regulations regarding interstate cable TV, only accentuated his genius.
HE WAS AN INSTINCTIVE MAVERICK who saw openings and synergies and moved quickly to take his shots.
In terms of his impact on Chicago, his amazing startup of the nation's first “superstation” — the second-tier Atlanta station WPCH-TV he rebranded as WTBS — made the crusty WGN Continental Broadcasting Co. grow up.
WGN always made money. But prior to Turner, the company's chieftains seldom thought beyond the predictable and the provincial.
The launch of WTBS in 1976 changed that. Two years later, WGN-TV became America's second superstation.
A CRITICAL COMPONENT OF WGN'S SUCCESSFUL EXPANSION was its sports inventory. That safe box then included the Cubs, the White Sox, the Bulls and a DePaul men's basketball team led by freshman Mark Aguirre that was headed for the 1979 Final Four of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
(Also of importance, tucked among its library of sitcom reruns and old movies, WGN also was the point of origination for the vastly popular “The Bozo Show.”)
TURNER LAID THE GROUNDWORK in Atlanta with MLB's Braves, the NBA's Hawks — both of which he wound up owning — and regional major-college football and basketball.
(Turner's maneuverings were of note when the Wrigley family sold the Cubs to the Tribune Co. in 1981. WGN Continental would morph into Tribune Broadcasting and the baseball team would be a reliable source of both profit and programming for close to three decades.)
A KNUCKLEBALL THAT ELUDED Turner during his major ascent was a freestanding all-sports national network.
He realized that after the embryonic ESPN got up and crawling on Labor Day weekend 1979.
Four years later, when Texaco was selling ESPN, Turner drove the price up when he lost a spirited bidding war for the web to ABC and its wholly-owned subsidiary ABC Video Enterprises.
The life and times of Ted Turner were breathtaking in scope.
If his epitaph is nothing more than, “Robert Edward Turner III (1938-2026) … He lived,” most who attempted to dissect his methods would find that summary properly encompassing.
Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.