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Published on Wednesday, 31 August 2011 18:10
The Chicago Blackhawks today announced their broadcast schedule for the 2011-2012 NHL season. Once again, the majority of games will be seen locally on Comcast SportsNet Chicago, with more than a few games also airing on WGN-TV.
Of the 82 games in the regular season, 70 of them will be shown locally. Comcast SportsNet will get to air 50 games, while WGN-TV will get to air 20. Regardless of which of these two stations air the games, the same announcing team will be behind the microphones: Pat Foley on pay-by-play and Eddie Olczyk on commentary. All games on CSN & WGN-TV will be in HD.
Comcast SportsNet Chicago will once again get the most Chicago Blackhawks broadcasts, with 50 games being shown. However, a few games may get pushed to CSN+ early or late in the season due to conflicts with live baseball telecasts. Before and after almost every game, CSN will have live pre-game and post-game shows. The station begins broadcasting the first of its 50 games with the Blackhawks season opening game against the Dallas Stars on Friday, October 7th. Additionally, CSN will televise two (out of the seven) pre-season games. This is the eighth consecutive year for CSN to air Blackhawks games. The Chicago Blackhawks organization are 20% owners in Comcast SportsNet Chicago.
WGN-TV gets 20 regular season games, the majority of which will air on Saturdays or Sundays, so as not to preempt national CW programming. The only exceptions will be two Tuesday broadcasts with games that start after 9:00pm, and two Friday broadcasts, one that starts after 9:00pm and one that is on the Friday afternoon after Thanksgiving. WGN-TV's first Blackhawks game of the regular season will be on Saturday, October 15. Additionally, WGN-TV will be airing two (out of the seven) pre-season games. WGN-TV first started airing Blackhawks games in 1961 and continued through 1975. This will be the fourth consecutive season since the Blackhawks returned to WGN-TV.
The Blackhawks will have 12 guaranteed nationally shown games. Versus will carry 6 games, NBC will carry 2 games. There are four other games that will be carried by either NBC or Versus, depending on NBC deciding on whether or not they wish to air these "flex" scheduled games.
The complete 2011-2012 Chicago Blackhawks schedule, including where to find the television broadcasts on a given day, can be downloaded or viewed at this link
HERE.
Once again, the radio home of the Chicago Blackhawks will be WGN-AM. The announcing team of John Wiedeman and Troy Murray will again be returning to call the games. WGN-AM will broadcast all 82 Chicago Blackhawks regular season games, plus three of the pre-season games. As happens every year, there may be a few rare cases where, due to conflicts with Chicago Cubs broadcasts, the Blackhawks games will be heard on WIND-AM and on WGN-AM's website until the Cubs broadcast ends.
This will be the fourth consecutive season for the Blackhawks on WGN-AM. The Blackhawks moved their broadcasts to WGN-AM at the start of the 2008-2009 season, over from its previous home on WSCR-AM. Earlier this year, the team
signed a five-year extension with WGN, keep the radio station as its flagship home through the end of the 2015-2016 NHL season.
