BCSN is a

regional sports network A regional sports network (RSN) in the United States and Canada is a television channel that presents sports programming to a local media market or geographical region. Such channels often focus on one or a few teams who currently play in Major L ...

founded in 2003 (and first went on the air on January 7, 2004) to carry sports broadcasting, which had previously been aired on fellow cable-only station

WT05 WT or Wt may refer to: * Weight People * Watertender, a former petty officer rating in the United States Navy * Weapons technician, a former petty officer rating in the United States Navy * Robert Wight (1796–1872), in botanical taxonomy, a ...

Overview

The station airs

Toledo Mud Hens The Toledo Mud Hens are a Minor League Baseball team of the International League and the Triple-A affiliate of the Detroit Tigers. They are located in Toledo, Ohio, and play their home games at Fifth Third Field. A baseball team nicknamed the ...

games, BGSU ice hockey and other BGSU sports,

University of Toledo The University of Toledo (UToledo or UT) is a Public university, public research university in Toledo, Ohio, United States. It is the northernmost campus of the University System of Ohio. The university also operates a Health Science campus, ...

sports,

high school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., ...

sports including the Northwest Hockey Conference,

college basketball College basketball is basketball that is played by teams of Student athlete, student-athletes at universities and colleges. In the Higher education in the United States, United States, colleges and universities are governed by collegiate athle ...

, and other sports games. The network also had broadcast rights to carry the

Cleveland Indians The Cleveland Guardians are an American professional baseball team based in Cleveland. The Guardians compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League Central, Central Division. Since , the team ...

. Previously BCSN carried Toledo Storm hockey games from 2004 to 2007 and starting in 2009, the network began carrying every home game of the

Toledo Walleye The Toledo Walleye are a professional ice hockey team based in Toledo, Ohio. The Walleye are members of the Central Division of the Western Conference of the ECHL. The Walleye were founded in 1991 as the Toledo Storm and play their home games ...

ECHL hockey team. On April 14, 2011, BCSN began broadcasting some of its sports games in

1080i In high-definition television (HDTV) and video display technology, 1080i is a video display format with 1080 lines of vertical resolution and Interlaced video, interlaced scanning method. This format was once a standard in HDTV. It was particular ...

high definition High definition or HD may refer to: Visual technologies *Blu-ray Disc, the universal optical High Definition disc format *HD Photo, former name for the JPEG XR image file format *HDV, format for recording high-definition video onto magnetic tap ...

. All Toledo Mud Hens and Toledo Walleye games are broadcast live in high definition. On August 23, 2012, BCSN began broadcasting its standard-definition channel in a 16:9

letterboxed Letter-boxing is the practice of transferring film shot in a widescreen aspect ratio to standard-width video formats while preserving the film's original aspect ratio. The resulting video-graphic image has mattes of empty space above and belo ...

format. Several Toledo Rockets football games broadcast on BCSN since 2009 have also been broadcast on

WXYZ-TV WXYZ-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States, affiliated with American Broadcasting Company, ABC. It is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside independent station WMYD (channel 20). The two stations shar ...

, Channel 7, in

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

as lead-in to ABC's college football coverage. Starting in 2014, additional Rockets football games broadcast on BCSN will also be broadcast on

WMYD WMYD (channel 20) is an independent television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside ABC affiliate WXYZ-TV (channel 7). The two stations share studios at Broadcast House on 10 Mile Roa ...

due to that station becoming sister to WXYZ-TV. On December 13, 2012, BCSN ended a media partnership with

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

-affiliate

WTOL WTOL (channel 11) is a television station in Toledo, Ohio, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Tegna Inc., which provides certain services to Fox affiliate WUPW (channel 36) under a joint sales agreement (JSA) with American Sp ...

because of the level of service performed by the two stations. On January 7, 2013, BCSN launched BCSN 2. Beginning in fall 2013, BCSN began a media partnership with

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting * Aliw Broadcasting Corporation, Philippine broadcast company * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial American ...

-affiliate

WTVG WTVG (channel 13) is a television station in Toledo, Ohio, United States, affiliated with ABC and The CW. Owned by Gray Media, the station maintains studios on Dorr Street ( SR 246) in Toledo, and its transmitter is located on Stadium Road ...

, resulting in the largest television sports team in the Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan viewing area. The partnership also includes BCSN using the WTVG studios for some of its on-air sports shows. In 2016, BCSN 2 got regional rights for

Columbus Crew SC The Columbus Crew are an American professional soccer club based in Columbus, Ohio. The club competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member of the Eastern Conference. The team began play in 1996 as one of the 10 charter clubs of the league. ...

soccer games because of the limited distribution of Spectrum Sports Ohio in the Toledo market. That agreement ended after the 2018 season, and all regionally televised Crew games now can be seen in Toledo via

Bally Sports Ohio FanDuel Sports Network Ohio (formerly Bally Sports Ohio) is an American regional sports network owned by Main Street Sports Group (formerly Diamond Sports Group) as part of the FanDuel Sports Network chain. The channel broadcasts regional cove ...

and

Bally Sports Great Lakes SportsTime Ohio was an American regional sports network which was last known as Bally Sports Great Lakes. At the time it left the air, the network was owned by Main Street Sports Group (formerly Diamond Sports Group) and operated as an affiliat ...

. In 2018, BCSN began airing its programming over-the-air from a low-power transmitter in Findlay, Ohio on WFND-LD Channel 19. In 2023, BCSN partnered with the Northern Lakes League to turn BCSN 2 into the NLL Network, which primary airs live games and replays of games from that conference. NLL Network continues to serve as an overflow channel, airing live Toledo Mud Hens games when other action is being featured on BCSN. BCSN is also the Toledo affiliate of '' Inside Michigan Football/Basketball'', which is also available in Toledo through the program's Detroit affiliate,

Bally Sports Detroit FanDuel Sports Network Detroit is an American regional sports network owned by Main Street Sports Group (formerly Diamond Sports Group) and operated as an affiliate of FanDuel Sports Network. It provides coverage of local sports teams in the st ...

, and '' Buckeye Football/Basketball Weekly.''

On-Air Shows

* Sports Nightly * Local Catch * Monday Night at the Races * Your Shape Up * Rocket Roundup * BG All-Access

References

External links

Official website
Sports television networks in the United States Television channels and stations established in 2004 College basketball on television in the United States 2004 establishments in Ohio Sports in Ohio {{US-tv-station-stub