Rogers Sportsnet is a 24-hour Canadian cable broadcaster of sports, which has equivalent digital television signals. It is owned by Rogers Sportsnet Inc., which is owned by Rogers Media.

Rogers Sportsnet was founded by CTV Television Network as CTV Sportsnet, a name which complemented their CTV Newsnet headline-news cable channel. It went on the air for the first time on October 9, 1998. When CTV purchased NetStar, the parent company of TSN, in 1999, they were forced to sell either Sportsnet or TSN by the CRTC. They later sold Sportsnet to Rogers, at which point the service was renamed Rogers Sportsnet.

Broadcasting nationally across Canada, the station is actually like a network, with four regional feeds airing different sporting events tailored to the region they serve. The Sportsnet feeds are:

• Sportsnet East, which serves Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador.
• Sportsnet Ontario.
• Sportsnet West, which serves Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Nunavut and Northwest Territories.
• Sportsnet Pacific, which serves British Columbia and Yukon.

Although cable companies in Canada are only permitted to carry the local Sportsnet feed on analogue cable packages, all four feeds can be carried on digital cable. However, in some instances programming on the out-of-market Sportsnet feeds, such as regional National Hockey League games, are blacked out.

External link

• Rogers Sportsnet Website (http://www.sportsnet.ca)