Prime Sports Upper Midwest

Prime Sports Upper Midwest

Country	United States
Broadcast area	Iowa Minnesota North Dakota South Dakota Wisconsin
Network	Prime Network
Headquarters	St. Paul,Minnesota
Programming
Language(s)	English
Ownership
Owner	Hubbard Broadcasting(61.4%) Liberty Media(38.6%)
History
Launched	1990(1990)
Closed	December 31, 1995(1995-12-31)

Prime Sports Upper Midwestwas an Americanregional sports networkowned byHubbard BroadcastingandLiberty Media,which operated as an affiliate of thePrime Network.Headquartered inMinneapolis,Minnesota,the channel broadcast regional coverage of sports events throughout theUpper Midwestregion. Prime Sports Upper Midwest was available on cable providers throughoutIowa,Minnesota,North Dakota,South DakotaandWisconsin.

History

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 TimberwolvesandMilwaukee 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 Twinsbaseball, and the backing ofMidwest Radio and Television,the owners of the dominantWCCOstations. MSC's strength in the Twin Cities became more dominant in 1992 afterCBS Corporationpurchased 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, namelyGannettNBCaffiliateKAREpermanently unseating Hubbard'sKSTP-TVas the market's spirited competitor to WCCO, andKMSP-TVbeginning 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 Corporationacquired a 50% ownership interest in the Prime Sports networks on October 31,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.Fox Sports would then purchase MSC in 1999 fromViacomas it spun off extraneous assets from its first merger with CBS, relaunching it asFox Sports Northin 2001.