CHICAGO—The Chicago Sports Network (CHSN) has reached a deal to bring Missouri Valley Conference men’s and women’s basketball games to the network.

As part of the agreement, CHSN will be telecast both live and tape-delayed men’s and women’s regular-season games. Additionally, CHSN will televise the first round and quarterfinals of the conference’s men’s basketball tournament.

Coverage is slated to start on Dec .18 with men’s basketball, when the Murray State Racers take on the Indiana State Sycamores.

The CHSN coverage will highlight the MVC’s deep basketball tradition and feature four Illinois-based teams: University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Bradley University, Illinois State University (ISU) and Southern Illinois University (SIU).

“We are excited to deepen our commitment to Chicago and Midwest sports by bringing Missouri Valley Conference basketball to CHSN,” CHSN executive producer Joe Riley said. “The conference has many devoted fans in the Chicagoland area, and we look forward to becoming a premier destination for them to watch their favorite MVC teams.”

CHSN will also broadcast eight games of the State Farm MVC Men’s Basketball Tournament, set for March 6-9, 2025, in St. Louis. CHSN will televise the men’s opening round and quarterfinal games on CHSN and CHSN Plus, allowing fans to follow their teams’ journeys toward the MVC championship title.

MINNEAPOLIS—When the Miami Valley Communications Council sought to enhance the quality of its online offerings, the group of cities in the Ohio region chose to go with Tightrope Media Systems’ Cablecast Community Media Platform to upgrade its master control and playout infrastructure for HD.

MVCC is limited to broadcasting in SD for cable distribution of its four PEG channels, but it sought to use the Cablecast system to provide HD quality for online VOD and live streams.

The configuration for MVCC’s updated system is made up of the Cablecast Broadcast Automation software and two quad-channel Cablecast Flex 4 playout servers. The system provides one recording input and one playout pathway for each of the council’s four cable channels. A Cablecast Pro VOD server automatically creates on-demand clips of the station’s programs, which can then be delivered through the cloud-based Cablecast Reflect service. In addition, four Tightrope Carousel systems drive independent bulletin boards on each channel. The new installation was launched in September 2018.

Beyond the system’s capabilities, MVCC staffers praise the ease of use and how the workflow simplifies their process.

MVCC has plans to add Cablecast Live systems for HD live streaming, while updating the video content area of their website with Cablecast’s “public site” publishing tools.