New Kraken TV Deal Part Of Seismic Shifts In Sports Media Landscape

Editor's Note: This is the third of our 5-part conversation with sports & business writer Carol Schram, a The Hockey News columnist.

The list of legacy and online media outlets Carol's contributed to - from the New York Times to Toronto Globe & Mail to CBC - is longer than Zdeno Chara.

Great - and prophetic - lyrics from Anne Murray's classic tune:

Get out your white suit, your top hat and tails
Let's go backwards when forward fails
No need to remember when
'Cause everything old is new again.

The Seattle Kraken may not have been singing these lines, but sure were thinking them recently when they ditched ROOT Sports on cable for free, over-the-air broadcasts of their games on KING-5 and KONG-6/16.

Games will also be streamed via Amazon's Prime Video.

Before cable and regional sports networks (RSNs) - and for quite a while afterward - local teams aired all their non-network games on free TV. The lure of guaranteed, and lucrative, rights fees enticed teams to migrate to RSNs.

In 2024, so-called "cord-cutting" has emaciated the RSN cash cow. The Kraken are the latest of a small but growing group of NHL and NBA teams to prioritize reaching more fans and regaining full control of their broadcasts.

Since this seismic shift in local sports media is as complicated as it is fascinating, we've enlisted sports business expert Carol Schram for our Kraken Reaction .