Launching a regional sports network is nothing new to White Sox and Bulls chairman Jerry Reinsdorf. In 1982-83, Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks games aired on SportsVision, a pay-TV service devised by business partner Eddie Einhorn. It required a converter box that unscrambled the signal through what was then WPWR-Channel 60.
It was so far ahead of its time that it failed, miserably. It didn’t gain nearly enough traction from fans who had been watching games free of charge for years on over-the-air TV. In late 1983, Cablevision bought SportsVision, moved it to cable and renamed it SportsChannel in 1989.