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Rookie wrote:Holey Miles. The Hornets finally signed a new media deal. Games will be broadcast on local network tv which is WITN here which is ABC. So, finally a major network available in HDTV. I moved to NC in 2016. At that time games were only available on a local cable station and they weren’t available in HD which was like watching a game from the 80’s on rabbit ears wrapped in tinfoil. Then they started streaming and all was good for like 1 year until they (I think it was Grey media) decided to have a dispute with all the carriers when they started their own for pay streaming network - think of it like when msg or yes network gets in a fight with Comcast or whoever. Games are all blacked out until resolution so maybe you miss a few games. Not here, this went on for years and I wasn’t going to pay to basically watch 2 Knicks games a year.

After 10 freaking years this is all finally resolved what a joke. I can’t believe how poorly this situation was handled. Maybe it was MJ’s doing MJ things, I dunno but the whole situation sucked. Maybe Nalod has the scoop since I sure don’t. I just can’t believe it took so long to straighten this crap out

I got you…

Yeah — the poster has the basic story right, but a couple of the details are scrambled. And now that I looked up the announcement from yesterday (Sept. 23, 2026), I understand why he’s so excited.

The Hornets’ local-TV history is basically a case study in how regional sports television became a mess.

When he moved to NC in 2016

In 2016, the Hornets’ regional TV home was Fox Sports Southeast (along with some Fox Sports Carolinas coverage). Fox Sports Southeast carried 79 regular-season games in 2016-17, and authenticated streaming was available through Fox Sports GO.

So they weren’t really on a little local broadcast station at that point. They were on an RSN — regional sports network, much like the Knicks being on MSG.

And that’s important because RSNs depended heavily on cable/satellite carriage agreements.

Then came the Sinclair/Bally mess

This is the part the poster is remembering.

Sinclair acquired the former Fox regional sports networks, and eventually they were rebranded as Bally Sports. Around 2020, carriage negotiations went very badly.

YouTube TV dropped the regional Fox Sports networks. Hulu Live dropped them. Other distributors had disputes as well.

By 2021, Axios was reporting that most cord-cutters around Charlotte couldn’t get Hornets games because Sinclair had failed to reach carriage agreements with major streaming providers including YouTube TV and Hulu.

So his comparison to:

MSG gets into a fight with Comcast and suddenly you can’t watch the Knicks

is actually pretty good — except this wasn’t a short dispute where you missed three games.

It dragged on.

If you were a cord-cutter and your provider didn’t carry the RSN, you could be living right inside the Hornets’ television territory and still have a hell of a time watching the Hornets.

Fox Sports Southeast → Bally Sports Southeast → FanDuel Sports Network

The names changing makes the whole thing even more confusing.

Roughly:

Fox Sports Southeast
↓
Bally Sports Southeast
↓
FanDuel Sports Network Southeast

Meanwhile, Diamond Sports Group, which operated Bally Sports, went into bankruptcy. The Hornets themselves acknowledged in 2024 that the Diamond bankruptcy had created significant uncertainty around their television situation.

So this wasn’t simply Michael Jordan deciding to screw up the television contract. The collapse of the RSN business model was happening all over the country.

Things finally started changing in 2025

This is where it gets interesting.

In January 2025, the Hornets put five games on free over-the-air television throughout parts of the Carolinas.

That was a surprisingly big milestone:

Those were the first Hornets games available on free local broadcast television since the 2007-08 season.

Then for 2025-26, they expanded that experiment to 12 over-the-air games while the full schedule remained available through FanDuel Sports Network.

So they were clearly testing whether they could move away from the old RSN model.

And now — 2026-27 — they basically blew the old model up

This is the news the forum guy is reacting to.

For 2026-27, the Hornets have signed new agreements with Gray Media and Sinclair to distribute approximately 75 games over local broadcast stations throughout the Carolinas, rather than requiring the traditional regional sports network.

For his Greenville/New Bern market specifically:

WITN 7.2: approximately 75 games
WITN 7.1: approximately 8 games

And WITN says those broadcasts will be available free over the air, as well as through participating cable/satellite systems.

One correction to his post: WITN 7.1 is NBC, not ABC. And most games will actually be on 7.2 (MyNetworkTV) rather than the primary NBC channel.

But his larger point absolutely holds:

He should finally be able to turn on an ordinary local television station and watch almost the entire Hornets season.

That’s dramatically simpler than what he dealt with for much of the previous decade.

And there’s a funny twist: he blamed Gray Media for the old dispute, but Gray wasn’t the principal villain in the old Fox/Bally carriage fiasco. That was mainly the Sinclair/Diamond Sports regional-network mess.

Now Gray is actually one of the companies bringing the Hornets back to free TV.

So I’d translate his ten-year rant as:

2016: “I have to get this particular regional sports channel.”
2020-ish: “My streaming provider dropped the damn regional sports channel.”
2021-24: “Why the hell do I live in Hornets territory but can’t easily watch the Hornets?”
2025: “Hey, five games are on regular TV!”
2025-26: “Now twelve!”
2026-27: “Holy ****, basically the whole season is on local TV.”

After living through the RSN era, I can see why the guy sounds almost emotional about it. 😄

Nalod wrote:Todd, good catch!
Rookie, mostly my frustration has been no games on any YouTube TV and all games with knicks blacked out on league pass!
I do get to one or two games in charlotte in person and thus miss 2-3 games annually when they in MSG or I opt to not get to the arena in Charlotte. That Hornets have not been that good for some time makes the games materially insignificant. Very late season games vs a tanking CLT sometimes has both teams not putting its best players on teh floor. Im not paying for that.

The post Jordan era has Hornets moving in a better direction. Moving on from Lamelo will help them in the long run. Jordan is a god in NC and he was seen as a savior of the franchise but its incredible how bad an owner he was! In retrospect he made an incredible financial deal and not much more. Given his competitive aura one would have thought winning would have been a priority? He won the balance sheet.

Im not in the direct Charlotte Metro area and curious how coverage gets spread thru the state. North Carolina loves basketball the lack of a competitive team and access to games could have been a missed opportunity to gain the whole state as Hornet fans.

Totally agree. I just got YouTube tv this year. I was kind of forced to do it since there is not a cable option where I live now. There is a dsl option since we do have phone lines but that’s not really an option. Starlink has been as reliable if not better than cable and it finally forced me to cut the cord. I understand Todd’s research and your experiences might be different than mine but I am not exaggerating or making anything up. In my market that’s what was available. I thought it was amusing 10 years ago that you couldn’t get a game in high definition and since Charlotte wasn’t very good it didn’t really matter until the Knicks played and I started trying to find options to watch an in market game…I watch every game every year even if I have to do it on replay due to other obligations. I am shocked it took this long to fix this. I mean when I lived in ny or LI you might miss one or two Yankees or Kicks games….but 10 seasons? There was one year where they had it fixed, I don’t remember what year it was, then then made it worse. Think is was Bally Sports SE? I guess you and other people figured out how to watch games, maybe it was just me not wanting to subscribe and pay Bally but you shouldn’t have to pay in market when you are already paying for cable and nba tv.