PRISM (TV channel)

PRISM launched at 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time on September 1, 1976; it debuted with a message by announcer Hugh Gannon: "Good evening, everyone. PRISM, the pay-television network, is on the air."[1] Following this was the first movie to be broadcast on PRISM, the 1975 film The Wind and the Lion. Ten days later on September 10, the channel aired its first sports telecast: a Major League Baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs. At its launch, PRISM only had six subscribers, all located in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania.[1]

The network was founded by Edward M. Snider, the owner of the Philadelphia Flyers NHL team and Spectacor, co-owner of PRISM as well as the owner of the Flyers and The Spectrum; 20th Century Fox initially held a 50% ownership interest in the channel. PRISM's administrative offices were located on City Avenue in the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd, while its studios, production and master control facilities were all situated at the event level of The Spectrum at Broad Street and Pattison Avenue in South Philadelphia.

Snider convinced the Philadelphia 76ers and Philadelphia Phillies to allow the channel to televise their home games, after the two teams expressed concern that broadcasting games would hurt attendance; the teams' concerns subsided when they discovered PRISM broadcasts had no effect on the number of spectators who attended their respective games at The Spectrum and Veterans Stadium and helped them earn additional revenue from carrying the home game telecasts.[2]

What differentiated PRISM from other subscription television services – some of which included ONTV, SelecTV and Z Channel, and to some extent, national services such as HBO and Showtime – was that it broadcast exclusive and extensive sports coverage, which included Flyers, Phillies and 76ers games, Big 5 college basketball and live boxing and live World Wrestling Federation events held at The Spectrum (the venue itself lending to the channel's tongue-in-cheek naming as viewing a "prism" allowed one to see "the spectrum"). Its sports coverage extended to sports-based original programming, such as Broad & Pattison (named after the South Philadelphia intersection where the Spectrum complex was located), The Great Sports Debate and the monthly sports anthology series Sports Scrapbook (the latter of which debuted on April 2, 1981 and was hosted by the channel's sports director Jim Barniak, once a sports writer for the Philadelphia Bulletin, who served as a play-by-play announcer for PRISM's 76ers and Phillies game telecasts from 1979 until his death from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage at age 50 in December 1991.[1][3] Programming from Rainbow's national sports news channel NewSport was aired as filler in the channel's later years.

PRISM also broadcast a selection of other programs outside of sports, the most prominent being theatrical feature film releases from Warner Bros., Columbia Pictures and 20th Century Fox, along with specialized programs such as the music series Live At Rafters (which debuted in October 1993, and was recorded at the Rafters nightclub at West Chester)[4] and the children's program block "PRISM Kids". 76ers telecasts on PRISM during the run of the channel featured several professional basketball coaches as analysts including Chuck Daly, Gene Shue, Hubie Brown, Matt Guokas and Jack Ramsay.[1]

The network acted as a loss leader in its early years of existence, consistently losing money throughout its first five years in operation, before finally turning its first profits in 1981.[1] On November 6, 1981, Spectacor launched PRISM New England (now NBC Sports Boston), a Boston-based cable channel which maintained a similar programming format as PRISM, and carried games from the Hartford Whalers, Boston Celtics, Boston Breakers and various New England college sports teams. In 1982, Snider bought out Fox's 50% stake in PRISM and PRISM New England.[1]

In 1983, PRISM and PRISM New England were sold to a joint venture between Rainbow Media (now AMC Networks) and The Washington Post Company; only the flagship Philadelphia service retained the PRISM name and format, with PRISM New England being revamped as an all-sports service as SportsChannel New England, an affiliate of the Rainbow-owned regional sports network SportsChannel. That year, PRISM began to be transmitted over-the-air on WWSG-TV (channel 57; now CW owned-and-operated station WPSG); the station scrambled its signal during hours when it transmitted the network's programming, requiring the use of decoding equipment in order to view PRISM content over WWSG.[5] This only lasted for two years, ending when WWSG was sold to the Grant Broadcasting System in 1985 and was converted into a general entertainment independent station as WGBS-TV.

Although PRISM was a premium service, it eventually took on the unconventional model of operating as a part advertiser-supported/part commercial-free service. The channel was forced to incorporate commercials within its sports telecasts in 1984 during a tough year for the cable television industry that saw several cable channels (such as ESPN, USA Network, Lifetime and The Weather Channel) endure major profit losses; the channel opted to include commercials in its sports events because management did not believe it could be able to raise subscription rates at that time without potentially alienating its subscriber base. Movies airing on the channel continued to be broadcast without any commercial interruption whatsoever, and breaks between films also did not feature any traditional advertising, showing only promotions for programs that were being broadcast on the channel and behind-the-scenes featurettes.[1]

In 1985, CBS (which owned present-day NBC owned-and-operated station WCAU, channel 10, at the time) acquired a minority stake in PRISM. Both CBS and The Washington Post Company sold their interests in the channel to Rainbow Media in 1987, giving the latter company full control of the channel.[1] By the late 1980s, the channel's full name, Philadelphia Regional In-Home Sports and Movies, was fully deemphasized in favor of branding solely by its acronym. In 1989, Rainbow's parent company Cablevision announced a partnership with NBC in which the latter would acquire a 50% stake in PRISM, as part of a later aborted deal that was part of their then-joint ownership of upstart business news channel CNBC (which NBC would ultimately launch on its own). PRISM was priced at $12 a month on average, 70¢ of the revenue it accrued from each subscriber of the channel was used to acquire film and sports programming rights; the rest of the revenue was divided as compensation between film distributors and local sports teams.[1]

By 1986, PRISM had about 370,000 subscribers, most of whom received the network through a cable provider (Philadelphia proper had not been fully wired for cable television service at the time). By that time, Cablevision began to sell PRISM to cable providers as part of a package with American Movie Classics, then a premium channel focusing on classic films from the 1930s through the 1970s.[6]

On January 1, 1990, Rainbow Media launched a companion basic cable channel to PRISM: SportsChannel Philadelphia, which also served as an affiliate of the company's SportsChannel network.[1] Both channels maintained separate graphics, music packages and announcing teams until 1995, when all sports presentations on PRISM and SportsChannel Philadelphia adopted a uniform on-air appearance and began using the same announcers.

The second and last logo for PRISM, used from the channel's rebrand in 1993 until the channel shut down in October 1997.

The original three-stripe rainbow-colored logo that PRISM had used since its 1976 launch was retired in the summer of 1993, in favor of a modernized logo and on-air identity as part of a rebranding effort that attempted to increase focus on the channel's programming outside of its sports coverage, particularly its feature film content (the new look utilized the Univers typeface for its entire revamped appearance, that was used for all aspects of its on-air look from the logo to text during sports coverage). Rainbow Media launched websites for all of its television channels, including PRISM, in 1996.[7]

On March 19, 1996, Comcast acquired PRISM's original (part-)owner Spectacor and a 66% interest in its primary assets – the Flyers, The Spectrum and the then-recently completed CoreStates Center – for $240 million and the assumption of a collective $170 million in debt; the new Comcast Spectacor (with Ed Snider appointed as its chairman) also immediately purchased a 66% interest in the 76ers.[8][9] Immediately after the purchase was announced, speculation arose as to whether Comcast would let at least some of Spectacor's broadcasting contracts with Rainbow Media lapse, and create a sports network of its own, displacing both PRISM and SportsChannel Philadelphia from area systems (Comcast, however, had struck a ten-year carriage agreement with Rainbow for the networks in the fall of 1995); buy the existing networks; or strike a complex deal with Rainbow to have both networks retain the sports broadcast rights.[10][11] Comcast indicated that a new sports network was the route it would take, as it approached the Phillies about entering into a broadcast deal.[8] PRISM/SportsChannel's deal with the Flyers was set to end that fall, while the Phillies' contract ended after the 1997 season, leaving them both open to enter negotiations.

On April 25, 1996, Comcast Spectacor formally announced plans to create a new all-sports network centered around the Flyers, and announced that the Phillies would also move their games to the new network upon its launch.[12] With uncertainty over its future, relations between PRISM/SportsChannel and Comcast Spectacor became somewhat strained. Negotiations to keep the Flyers television rights on the network nearly broke down, as Rainbow offered a lower bid for the rights than what the Flyers asked for. By late September, the team announced plans to produce its home game broadcasts themselves and sell the local rights to individual cable providers should a deal not come to fruition.[13]

In September 1996, PRISM and SportsChannel lost the rights to broadcast Big 5 City Series basketball games, as there was no assurance that the networks would be able to carry the full slate of games, and issues regarding whether Rainbow or the Big 5 would pay for the rights; this left the association to sell the local television rights to the City Series telecasts for the 1996–97 season (with some of the games ending up on The Comcast Network).[14][15] Then on October 4, 1996, the day before its season home opener, the Flyers reached a one-year contract extension with PRISM and SportsChannel, which would pay $5 million for the rights.[16]

On June 30, 1997, Fox/Liberty Networks (a joint venture between News Corporation and Liberty Media) purchased a 40% interest in Cablevision's sports properties for $850 million, with the primary intent of integrating the eight SportsChannel networks into its recently created Fox Sports Net group of regional sports networks.[17][18][19] While the creation of the new Comcast sports network seemingly effectively drove a stake through the heart of PRISM and SportsChannel Philadelphia, the Fox/Liberty deal with Cablevision created the possibility of PRISM and/or SportsChannel becoming affiliated with Fox Sports Net.[20]

Even though Comcast had already snagged the Phillies, Fox announced that SportsChannel and PRISM would "continue to receive a heavy slate of Phillies and Sixers games". It then announced plans for the renamed SportsChannel Philadelphia to add national programs from Fox Sports Net, while PRISM would remain a premium service focused on movies and sports; although, there was some speculation that Fox and Comcast would possibly partner to aggregate their respective team rights onto one channel.[21]

On July 21, 1997, Comcast acquired the local television rights to the 76ers from PRISM and SportsChannel, opting out of its contract with the two networks that was set to run until the 1999–2000 season.[22] Comcast then reached agreements with Liberty Media and Rainbow Media that resulted in a major change to Philadelphia's cable television landscape. Rainbow officially shut down PRISM and SportsChannel on October 1, 1997, but both channels were given designated successors: PRISM was replaced with the Liberty-owned premium movie channel Starz! (which at the time, was starting to expand its carriage outside of systems operated by its then co-owner Tele-Communications, Inc.); for the final two months of its existence beginning on August 1, PRISM also carried select first-run movies sourced from Starz!.[22][23] Rainbow also began airing programming from another of their channels, MuchMusic USA, in PRISM's final few months as filler. The new Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia (which would eventually become the flagship of its own slate of regional sports networks) also replaced SportsChannel Philadelphia on local cable systems within the Philadelphia metropolitan area.[24][25][26] The shutdowns of PRISM and SportsChannel Philadelphia resulted in the layoffs of 38 full-time employees.