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| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Iowa Minnesota North Dakota South Dakota Wisconsin |
| Network | Prime Network |
| Headquarters | St. Paul,Minnesota |
| Programming | |
| Language | English |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | Hubbard Broadcasting (61.4%) Liberty Media (38.6%)[1] |
| History | |
| Launched | 1990 (1990) |
| Closed | December 31, 1995 (1995-12-31) |
Prime Sports Upper Midwest was an Americanregional sports network owned byHubbard Broadcasting andLiberty Media, which operated as an affiliate of thePrime Network. Headquartered inMinneapolis,Minnesota, the channel broadcast regional coverage of sports events throughout theUpper Midwest region. Prime Sports Upper Midwest was available on cable providers throughoutIowa,Minnesota,North Dakota,South Dakota andWisconsin.
Prime Sports Upper Midwest launched in 1990, receiving its affiliation with the Prime Network through Liberty's partial ownership interest. The centerpiece of the network's sports coverage was the rights to the games of theNBA'sMinnesota Timberwolves andMilwaukee Bucks, along with a number of college sports events and outdoors programs.
The network struggled only having one team's sports rights against the more establishedMidwest Sports Channel, which had the rights toMinnesota Twins baseball, and the backing ofMidwest Radio and Television, the owners of the dominantWCCO stations. MSC's strength in the Twin Cities became more dominant in 1992 afterCBS Corporation purchased Midwest Radio and Television, along with the Twins' win in the1991 World Series, while PSUM was stunted by the terminal mediocrity of the Timberwolves in the 90s, along with other challenges to Hubbard's longevity in the Twin Cities market, namelyGannettNBC affiliateKARE permanently unseating Hubbard'sKSTP-TV as the market's spirited competitor to WCCO, andKMSP-TV beginning its slow rise in viewership and news and sports strength.
In the spring of 1995, MSC signed an agreement with the Timberwolves to acquire the exclusive regional cable television rights to the team's games beginning with the1995–96 season. As a result, on October 5, 1995, Hubbard and Liberty Media announced that Prime Sports Upper Midwest would be shut down. The announcement came three weeks beforeNews Corporation acquired a 50% ownership interest in the Prime Sports networks on October 31,[2] with the intent to partner with Liberty to have the Prime Sports networks to serve as the cornerstones for a new group of regional sports networks – developed as a cable venture forFox Sports – which would also offer national programming distributed to the Prime-affiliated RSNs not owned by Liberty. Prime Sports Upper Midwest ceased operations on December 31, 1995.[3] Fox Sports would then purchase MSC in 1999 fromViacom as it spun off extraneous assets from its first merger with CBS, relaunching it asFox Sports North in 2001.