In news that will mean nothing to most people but everything to some, it was announced Friday that American Sports Network will cease all operations at the end of this month. Employees at the company's West Palm Beach, Fla., headquarters today were told the company was shutting down.
ASN was a large carrier of sports coverage the Big Four networks did not pick up, with contracts with Conference USA, the Sun Belt, the MAC, the Southland, the Ivy League, the CAA and others. ASN provided lots of local TV coverage, but most viewers likely came in contact with it through ESPN3.
The network operated on a shoe-string budget -- to put it kindly -- with announcers often calling games off monitors and anchors providing sportscasts for a number of local news stations from their Florida studio.
Regardless of the company's internal operations, the news is tough to take for the conferences gasping for air time not sucked up by the Power 5. It appears at the moment Campus Insiders will assume ASN's ongoing contracts with conferences, but what that means exactly is unclear at this time.