 | |
| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Alabama Arkansas Florida Georgia Kentucky Louisiana Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina Tennessee Texas Virginia West Virginia |
| Programming | |
| Picture format | 1080i (HDTV) 480i (SDTV) |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | Comcast andCharter Communications |
| Parent | Cable Sports Southeast, LLC |
| Sister channels | Comcast SportsNet NBC Sports |
| History | |
| Launched | September 3, 1999; 26 years ago (1999-09-03)[1] |
| Closed | June 1, 2014; 11 years ago (2014-06-01) |
| Former names | Sun Belt Network |
Comcast Sports Southeast andCharter Sports Southeast (CSS) was an Americanregional sports network for theSouthern United States that was operated as ajoint venture between cable television providersComcast andCharter Communications. In contrast to its competitorFox Sports South, CSS had a heavier focus on college sports – with broadcasting partnerships with many of the area's colleges and universities.
The network was carried exclusively oncable television systems in the region, primarily those owned by Comcast and Charter. The initials stood forComcast Sports Southeast in Comcast markets andCharter Sports Southeast in Charter markets. However, the logo closely resembled the logo Comcast used until 2013, and it was operated as part of theNBC Sports Group unit ofNBCUniversal, along with theComcast SportsNet networks. The channel reached over six million homes inAlabama,Arkansas,Florida,Georgia,Kentucky,Louisiana,Mississippi,North Carolina,South Carolina,Tennessee,Texas,Virginia andWest Virginia.
CSS's main competitors wereFox Sports South andFox Sports Southeast (then known as "SportSouth"). All three networks shared some programming, including college coaches' shows. However, Fox Sports South and SportSouth had ties to most of the South's professional sports teams, and theSoutheastern andAtlantic Coast conferences as wholes. CSS, on the other hand, regularly broadcast live sporting events of some of the smaller and less heralded colleges of the region, as well as those of some of the large SEC and ACC schools (for example,college baseball coverage included SEC, ACC,Sun Belt,C-USA, andAtlantic Sun conference games[2]). During football season, CSS produced its own feeds of many of the region's major college games exclusively fortape-delayed broadcasts, even though the games may have aired live on other networks.
CSS also broadcast theGwinnett Braves,WNBA'sAtlanta Dream,Major League Lacrosse,Southern League andSouth Atlantic LeagueMinor League baseball, and previously broadcast theArena Football League's Georgia Force, Orlando Predators and Tampa Bay Storm, and someCFL contests.
Local cable systems were able to pre-empt normal CSS programming in favor of local sporting events, such ashigh schoolfootball andbasketball games and local collegiate sporting events.
CSS aired a nightly sports talk show titledSportsNite. On mostComcast SportsNet services, this program was in a newscast format similar toSportsCenter, but on CSS, it more closely resembled a southern-exclusive version ofFox Sports Net'sThe Best Damn Sports Show Period.
In March 2008, CSS's owners Comcast and Charter struck separate deals with theAtlanta Braves to simulcast 45 regular season and two exhibition games produced and broadcast in the Atlanta metropolitan area byindependent stationWPCH-TV (channel 17). The broadcasts were available on CSS on Charter and Comcast cable systems throughout Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia (except for Metro Atlanta), and the city ofAsheville, North Carolina.[3][4] This deal ended in the 2011 season – due to the operations of WPCH being taken over byMeredith Corporation under alocal marketing agreement, production duties for the Braves telecasts were transferred to Fox Sports South, and were instead simulcast on SportSouth outside of Atlanta;[5] on March 1, 2013, Fox Sports South and SportSouth announced the channel struck deals to air 45 moreAtlanta Braves games, ending the team's contract with WPCH-TV.[6]
Starting in April 2009, CSS broadcast at least 25Gwinnett Braves games over the next four seasons.[7]
It was announced on March 14, 2014 that CSS would shut down on June 1, 2014. The closure of the network followed the loss of its SEC programming (which had generated much of CSS' ratings and revenue) toESPN's newSEC Network.[8] The final original program that aired on CSS was "Through The Years", a retrospective of the network's 15-year history which first aired on May 23, 2014 and was repeated daily until the network signed off on June 1, 2014.[9]
