Prism (TV channel)
Encyclopedia
PRISM was a 24-hour premium cable television
channel intended for cable customers in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
metropolitan area. Launched in September 1976, PRISM broadcast both through cable systems and, from 1983 to 1985, through a scrambled over-the-air signal on WWSG-TV, channel 57. The relationship ended when WWSG was sold and converted into conventional independent WGBS-TV (now WPSG
, and a CW Network affiliate).
. Its administrative offices were in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
while its studios, production facilities, and master control room were all situated in The Spectrum
(event level) at Broad Street and Pattison Avenue in Philadelphia. What differentiated PRISM from other services – some of which included ON-TV
, SelecTV
, and Z Channel
– is that it broadcast exclusive and extensive sports coverage, which included Flyers, Philadelphia Phillies
, and Philadelphia 76ers
games, Big 5
basketball
, and live World Wrestling Federation
events held at The Spectrum (the venue itself lending to the station's tongue-in-cheek naming as viewing a "prism
" allowed one to see "the spectrum
"). Its sports coverage extended to sports-based original programming, such as Broad & Pattison (the South Philadelphia
intersection of the city's sports complex) and The Great Sports Debate. PRISM also broadcast a selection of movies and non-sports programming, such as PRISM Kids and Live At Rafters.
, along with PRISM New England
(now CSN New England) which was launched two years earlier. Rainbow later launched a companion basic cable channel; SportsChannel Philadelphia, an affiliate of Rainbow's SportsChannel America
network, signed on in 1990. The channels, however, had separate graphic and music packages and announcing teams until 1995, when all sports presentation was made uniform.
typeface in its entire identity package. It was used for everything from the logo to text during sports coverage.
Rainbow Media launched websites for all of its television channels in 1996, including PRISM.
acquired a majority stake in Spectacor (PRISM's former owner) to form Comcast Spectacor, which immediately bought the 76ers. It then announced plans for a new all-sports network centered around those teams, effectively driving a stake through the heart of PRISM and SportsChannel Philadelphia. After a year of uncertainty that included plans for PRISM and SportsChannel to affiliate with Fox Sports Net
, Comcast, Liberty Media
, and Rainbow came to an agreement. PRISM and SportsChannel closed for good on October 1, 1997, but with designated successors: PRISM would give way to Liberty's Starz!
movie channel, and the new Comcast SportsNet replaced SportsChannel Philadelphia on the area's cable systems.
and fiber optics. Comcast SportsNet does not uplink to any satellite
. A controversial FCC
guideline (known as the "terrestrial exception") implemented to encourage investment in local programming states that a television channel does not have to make its shows available to satellite companies if it does not use satellites to transmit its programs. This guideline has allowed Comcast to block DirecTV
and Dish Network
from carrying Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia, but it has offered the sports network to Verizon's FiOS
service. Consequently, market penetration by Direct broadcast satellite
providers in the Philadelphia area is much lower than in other cities.
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
channel intended for cable customers in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
metropolitan area. Launched in September 1976, PRISM broadcast both through cable systems and, from 1983 to 1985, through a scrambled over-the-air signal on WWSG-TV, channel 57. The relationship ended when WWSG was sold and converted into conventional independent WGBS-TV (now WPSG
WPSG
WPSG, channel 57, is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. WPSG is owned by the CBS Corporation and is the east coast flagship station for the CW Television Network, which is owned jointly by CBS and Time Warner...
, and a CW Network affiliate).
History
PRISM was launched in 1976 by Spectacor, the owner of the Philadelphia FlyersPhiladelphia Flyers
The Philadelphia Flyers are a professional ice hockey team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League...
. Its administrative offices were in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
Bala Cynwyd is a community in Lower Merion Township which is located on the Main Line in southeastern Pennsylvania, bordering the western edge of Philadelphia at US Route 1 . It was originally two separate towns, Bala and Cynwyd, but is commonly treated as a single community...
while its studios, production facilities, and master control room were all situated in The Spectrum
Wachovia Spectrum
The Spectrum, formerly known as the CoreStates Spectrum , First Union Spectrum , and Wachovia Spectrum was an indoor arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...
(event level) at Broad Street and Pattison Avenue in Philadelphia. What differentiated PRISM from other services – some of which included ON-TV
ON-TV
ON-TV, also known as National Subscription Television, was a subscription television service launched in 1977 by Oak Industries, Norman Lear's Chartwell Enterprises and Jerry Perenchio. Oak was a manufacturer of satellite and pay-TV decoders and equipment...
, SelecTV
SelecTV USA
SelecTV was a subscription television service formed in 1976, and first broadcasting in 1978 The service focused entirely on televising movies, and ended in 1991...
, and Z Channel
Z Channel
The Z Channel was one of the first pay cable stations in the United States. Launched in 1974 from Los Angeles, California, this station was known for its devotion to the art of cinema due to the eclectic choice of films by the programming chief, Jerry Harvey...
– is that it broadcast exclusive and extensive sports coverage, which included Flyers, Philadelphia Phillies
Philadelphia Phillies
The Philadelphia Phillies are a Major League Baseball team. They are the oldest continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional American sports, dating to 1883. The Phillies are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's National League...
, and Philadelphia 76ers
Philadelphia 76ers
The Philadelphia 76ers are a professional basketball team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They play in the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Basketball Association . Originally known as the Syracuse Nationals, they are one of the oldest franchises in the NBA...
games, Big 5
Philadelphia Big 5
The Philadelphia Big 5 is an informal association of college athletic programs in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It is not a conference; indeed the five schools that are members of the Big 5 are members of three separate conferences: the Atlantic 10, the Big East, and the Ivy League.The five...
basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...
, and live World Wrestling Federation
World Wrestling Entertainment
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. is an American publicly traded, privately controlled entertainment company dealing primarily in professional wrestling, with major revenue sources also coming from film, music, product licensing, and direct product sales...
events held at The Spectrum (the venue itself lending to the station's tongue-in-cheek naming as viewing a "prism
Prism (optics)
In optics, a prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that refract light. The exact angles between the surfaces depend on the application. The traditional geometrical shape is that of a triangular prism with a triangular base and rectangular sides, and in colloquial use...
" allowed one to see "the spectrum
Spectrum
A spectrum is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary infinitely within a continuum. The word saw its first scientific use within the field of optics to describe the rainbow of colors in visible light when separated using a prism; it has since been applied by...
"). Its sports coverage extended to sports-based original programming, such as Broad & Pattison (the South Philadelphia
South Philadelphia
South Philadelphia, nicknamed South Philly, is the section of Philadelphia bounded by South Street to the north, the Delaware River to the east and south, and the Schuylkill River to the west.-History:...
intersection of the city's sports complex) and The Great Sports Debate. PRISM also broadcast a selection of movies and non-sports programming, such as PRISM Kids and Live At Rafters.
Rainbow Media ownership
In 1983, PRISM was sold to Rainbow MediaRainbow Media
AMC Networks is an entertainment company in the United States that owns the national cable channels AMC, IFC, WE tv, and Sundance Channel; the regional News 12 Networks, the art house movie theater IFC Center in New York, New York, and the film company IFC Films.The company was originally launched...
, along with PRISM New England
CSN New England
Comcast SportsNet New England is a regional cable sports television network based in Burlington, Massachusetts that operates in Massachusetts, eastern and central Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island...
(now CSN New England) which was launched two years earlier. Rainbow later launched a companion basic cable channel; SportsChannel Philadelphia, an affiliate of Rainbow's SportsChannel America
SportsChannel America
SportsChannel America was a cable television network operated by Cablevision. It was the country's first regional sports network, and thus an important ancestor to many of the United States' regional sports outlets, especially Fox Sports Net and Comcast SportsNet. SportsChannel New York was the...
network, signed on in 1990. The channels, however, had separate graphic and music packages and announcing teams until 1995, when all sports presentation was made uniform.
1993: PRISM changes its colors
The 1980s three-stripe logo PRISM had been using since 1976 was retired in mid-1993 in favor of a modern logo and identity that came with a revamp that attempted to spice up PRISM's non-sports programs. PRISM began using the UniversUnivers
Univers is the name of a realist sans-serif typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1954.Originally conceived and released by Deberny & Peignot in 1957, the type library was acquired in 1972 by Haas. Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei was later folded into the D...
typeface in its entire identity package. It was used for everything from the logo to text during sports coverage.
Rainbow Media launched websites for all of its television channels in 1996, including PRISM.
1996-97: PRISM meets its end
In 1996, ComcastComcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
acquired a majority stake in Spectacor (PRISM's former owner) to form Comcast Spectacor, which immediately bought the 76ers. It then announced plans for a new all-sports network centered around those teams, effectively driving a stake through the heart of PRISM and SportsChannel Philadelphia. After a year of uncertainty that included plans for PRISM and SportsChannel to affiliate with Fox Sports Net
Fox Sports Net
The Fox Sports Regional Networks, or simply Fox Sports Net , are a collection of cable TV regional sports networks in the United States owned and operated by News Corporation.- Beginnings :...
, Comcast, Liberty Media
Liberty Media
Liberty Media Corporation is an American media conglomerate and the control is exercised by company Chairman John C. Malone, who owns a majority of the voting shares....
, and Rainbow came to an agreement. PRISM and SportsChannel closed for good on October 1, 1997, but with designated successors: PRISM would give way to Liberty's Starz!
Starz!
Starz is an American premium subscription channel that features mainly first-run motion pictures, along with some original programming...
movie channel, and the new Comcast SportsNet replaced SportsChannel Philadelphia on the area's cable systems.
Legacy
PRISM's legacy is noteworthy because Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia continues to distribute its signal to Cable TV providers via PRISM's terrestrial infrastructure using only microwaveMicrowave
Microwaves, a subset of radio waves, have wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz. This broad definition includes both UHF and EHF , and various sources use different boundaries...
and fiber optics. Comcast SportsNet does not uplink to any satellite
Satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
. A controversial FCC
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
guideline (known as the "terrestrial exception") implemented to encourage investment in local programming states that a television channel does not have to make its shows available to satellite companies if it does not use satellites to transmit its programs. This guideline has allowed Comcast to block DirecTV
DirecTV
DirecTV is an American direct broadcast satellite service provider and broadcaster based in El Segundo, California. Its satellite service, launched on June 17, 1994, transmits digital satellite television and audio to households in the United States, Latin America, and the Anglophone Caribbean. ...
and Dish Network
Dish Network
Dish Network Corporation is the second largest pay TV provider in the United States, providing direct broadcast satellite service—including satellite television, audio programming, and interactive television services—to 14.337 million commercial and residential customers in the United States. Dish...
from carrying Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia, but it has offered the sports network to Verizon's FiOS
Fíos
Fíos is one of 17 parishes in Parres, a municipality within the province and autonomous community of Asturias, in northern Spain....
service. Consequently, market penetration by Direct broadcast satellite
Direct broadcast satellite
Direct broadcast satellite is a term used to refer to satellite television broadcasts intended for home reception.A designation broader than DBS would be direct-to-home signals, or DTH. This has initially distinguished the transmissions directly intended for home viewers from cable television...
providers in the Philadelphia area is much lower than in other cities.