Prime Network

The group's history traces back to the original Prime Ticket (now Fox Sports West), a Los Angeles-based sports network that launched on October 19, 1985. The channel was founded as a joint venture between Jerry Buss, majority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Kings, and cable television pioneer Bill Daniels, who held a minority ownership interest in both professional sports franchises, which carried most of their NBA and NHL games on the network. Prime Ticket was headquartered in a small office building across the street from the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, then the home stadium of the Kings and Lakers.

Prime Ticket caught on with cable subscribers in Southern California as it was founded at the height of the Lakers' 1980s championship run, and later got a boost from the trade of Wayne Gretzky to the Kings in 1988. It was also unique among regional sports networks, in that it operated as a basic cable channel, instead of a premium service as many of the RSNs operating at the time did.

Within a few years, Daniels bought out most of Buss's shares in Prime Ticket and became the channel's majority owner. In November 1988, Daniels partnered with cable television provider Tele-Communications Inc. to form a new group of regional sports networks. Prime Ticket served as the flagship charter network, joined by the Prime Sports Network (now Root Sports Rocky Mountain), an owned-and-operated outlet based in Denver, near TCI's corporate headquarters in the suburb of Englewood. Shortly afterward, Dallas-based Home Sports Entertainment and Orlando-based Sunshine Network signed affiliation agreements with Prime Ticket. HSE had been in operation since 1985, while Sunshine had debuted around the time of the Prime Ticket-Prime Sports alliance. These four networks formed the cornerstones of the Prime Network group.

In August 1994, Daniels sold his share in Prime Ticket and the Prime Network to TCI sister company Liberty Media. On November 16, 1994, Liberty Media announced that it would adopt a unified identity for its owned-and-operated regional sports networks under the "Prime Sports" brand. The move was part an alignment of the networks that would include a shift towards a common schedule of programming across the networks, outside each outlet's own regionally exclusive sports telecasts (including the incorporation of sports-related programs aimed at women and children, and the launch of a twice-nightly national sports news program, titled Press Box; the name originated from a local sports highlights show on Prime Ticket that began airing in 1990). Liberty also created a in-house sales service to sell national advertisements for the regional networks (replacing Group W Sports Marketing).[1] The rebrand took effect on January 1, 1995.

In 1995, Prime Network's retail subsidiary, Prime Sports Merchandising, purchased select sports apparel stores that maintained locations inside shopping malls throughout the United States, and rebranded them as Prime Sports Shops, using the regional networks to promote the stores.[2]

On October 31, 1995, News Corporation, which sought to create its own group of regional sports networks as a cable venture for Fox Sports, which was formed the year prior through the Fox Broadcasting Company's acquisition of the television rights to the NFL's National Football Conference, acquired a 50% ownership interest in Liberty's U.S.-based regional Prime Sports networks and its international networks Premier Sports (Australia), Prime Deportiva (Latin America) and Prime Sports Asia.[3] Liberty and News Corporation created Fox/Liberty Networks as a holding company for the co-owned regional sports properties. In exchange, News Corporation also sold a 7.5% interest in Star TV to Liberty Media.[4]

On July 3, 1996, News Corporation and Liberty Media announced that the Prime Sports networks would be relaunched as part of the new Fox Sports Net group, with the eight Prime Sports owned-and-operated networks adopting brands that combined the "Fox Sports" name with the state or region served by the respective network.[5] the Prime Sports-branded affiliates were officially relaunched as Fox Sports Net on November 1, 1996.[6][7][8]

On December 22, 2006, News Corporation sold its interests in FSN Pittsburgh (the former "Prime Sports KBL"), FSN Utah (the former "Prime Sports Intermountain West"), FSN Northwest (the former "Prime Sports Northwest") and FSN Rocky Mountain (the former "Prime Sports Rocky Mountain") to Liberty Media, in an asset trade in which News Corporation also traded its 38.5% ownership stake in satellite provider DirecTV for $550 million in cash and stock, in exchange for Liberty Media's 16.3% stake in the company.[9] Liberty later spun off the four networks in a partial asset spin-off of DirecTV into a separate company of the same name, while Liberty also increased its share in DirecTV from 48% to 54%, and Liberty owner John Malone and his family acquired an additional 24% interest.[10] DirecTV Sports Networks, which assumed responsibility for the four Prime-turned-FSN networks,[11] rebranded them under the Root Sports brand on April 1, 2011.[12]

Some of the Prime Network's affiliates were "time-share" networks, which shared channel space with other cable networks on certain cable systems, due to issues with channel capacity that would not be resolved until headend upgrades to allow additional networks to be carried on a 24-hour basis during the 1990s.

One such example was Home Sports Entertainment, which shared time with QVC (owned at the time by Comcast; and now, ironically, owned by former Prime parent Liberty Media) on some cable providers, mainly in Texas. QVC usually transmitted from about 3:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on a given day, with the regional Prime outlet taking over the channel slot after a brief sign-on/ID sequence and a rundown of the day's schedule (normally superimposed over a decorative sports-related background, such as a basketball court). Some providers that carried it as a premium channel (in a manner similar to the short-lived Sports Time in the 1980s) scrambled the HSE feed upon its sign-on over the designated channel slot.

In 1993, Liberty Media, NBC and Cablevision Systems Corporation formed Prime SportsChannels America, a venture in which the companies pooled programming and advertising sales between Prime and Cablevision/NBC's regional sports network group SportsChannel. Through this partnership, the two companies formed two national sports-related channels, the sports news service NewSport and American Sports Classics, a network focusing on replays of past sporting events and historical sports documentaries.