Cubs’ Marquee Sports Network navigates challenging first season

Of all the challenges Marquee Sports Network successfully navigated during its first season broadcasting Cubs games, network general manager Mike McCarthy said its biggest feat had nothing to do with broadcasting.

“Nobody got sick,” he said.

While fans paid close attention to the protocols and testing for players to combat the pandemic, they might have overlooked the precautions TV networks took to bring the games into their homes.

Maintaining social distance and wearing masks in cramped quarters such as the production truck and control room. Placing plexiglass between work stations. Filling out questionnaires and taking temperatures and tests. Handling production work from home that had been done on site.

“All 55 game days were nightmarish tightrope walks because you never know,” McCarthy said. “We didn’t know the crew necessarily down to the eighth camera guy. People were hungry for work.

“We had a couple of mini-scares where some people’s kids were sent home with a fever, and we’d clear out the control room. I didn’t expect to get through it without losing a show. I thought the odds are against us. We took every precaution you could possibly take.”

It was an unforeseen stressor in a launch year that was unlike any other for a regional sports network. Marquee lost about 100 games from its initial inventory, and shows aired with participants conversing remotely. Of course, the other RSNs faced these challenges, too, just not weeks after launching.

Yet Marquee pulled in strong numbers. According to Nielsen, in the key demographic of adults ages 25-54, ratings for Cubs regular-season games increased 30% from 2019, when they aired on NBC Sports Chicago. Among women in that age group, ratings increased 60% (streaming not included). And that was without distribution on Dish Network, which carried NBCSCH last season.

The increases were aided by fan-less games and more people staying home because of the pandemic, but winning always will be the primary ratings driver. The Cubs were in first place in the division every day of the season but one.

Marquee had hoped to bring in a cadre of contributors throughout the season, but the pandemic scuttled those plans. Instead, ex-Cubs Ryan Dempster, Sean Marshall and Ryan Sweeney appeared more than anyone expected. Dempster was largely the third man in the booth with Len Kasper and Jim Deshaies, and Marshall and Sweeney joined Cole Wright on pre- and postgame shows.

“Sometimes out of emergencies, careers are formed,” McCarthy said. “What Sean Marshall and Ryan Sweeney were really bringing to this team at the beginning was geography. They hadn’t done a lot of broadcasting. And we slowly got into a situation where the two of them in different ways got very comfortable, and they’ve become folks we would lean on comfortably going forward.”

Dempster’s usage doesn’t portend a permanent three-person booth. McCarthy spoke of the extra voice being an “energizer burst” during a full season. But with Taylor McGregor or Elise Menaker added as the field reporter, Kasper often had to lead a four-person troupe, which is no easy task.

“He did a great job with it; he’s a natural,” McCarthy said. “He’s got an experimental approach to things. We’re kindred spirits in that way. And I think he got a kick out of it, had legitimate exuberance around some of the things we tried.

“I think anything that’s new is going to be jarring for a period of time. There were a lot of learning curves and challenges for everybody involved, but quite a bit of it worked very well.”

One aspect that didn’t work was Mark Grace serving as the third man from his home in Arizona early in the season. As if that wasn’t awkward enough, Grace told a story in which he channeled TV character Archie Bunker and called his ex-wife a “dingbat.” It was only funny to Grace, who didn’t appear on Marquee for weeks after.

“He made a mistake,” McCarthy said. “We worked with him on staying on our air. There was a fictitious report about him being suspended, which wasn’t the case. He said some things he wished he hadn’t and then apologized for it. And now we move ahead.”

Marquee’s next challenge is to maintain viewers in the offseason. Its biggest endeavor is partnering with the Bears for a weekly prime-time show that precedes a replay of the previous game. (The NFL is allowing RSNs to replay games, though it might be a one-year occurrence.) The network also will take from its collection of Cubs content to air classic games, countdown shows and documentaries.

For live games, Marquee has deals with the Atlantic Coast Conference and Conference USA for football, basketball and other sports via its relationship with Stadium, the multiplatform sports network based in the United Center. Stadium is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which shares ownership of Marquee with the Cubs.

Marquee will be watched most from March to September, and it might not be until then next year, when the pandemic hopefully has subsided, that the network can return to a normal broadcasting environment.