Marquee Sports Network will air a majority of Cubs spring-training games this season remotely, the Sun-Times has learned.
The lead tandem of Jon Sciambi and Jim Deshaies will be in Arizona for the first weekend of games at the end of this month. Most of the remaining games will be called remotely. While the availability of broadcasters is part of the equation, sources say Marquee also is looking to cut costs and focus on regular-season game and shoulder programming.
Sciambi will continue calling college basketball for ESPN into March. The Score’s Zach Zaidman and Iowa Cubs broadcaster Alex Cohen will be among the broadcasters calling spring games remotely. Marquee will be on site for other weekend games. It again plans to air almost every Cubs spring game and will release schedule details in a couple of weeks.
The situation harkens back to the 2020 and ’21 seasons, when most regional sports networks didn’t send broadcasters on the road because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Marquee was the only network to travel in the first half of the 2021 season, making trips to Milwaukee and Cincinnati.
Marquee also is navigating personnel changes. Recently, general manager Mike McCarthy stepped down to attend to his health, and senior vice president of programming and production Mike Santini left for family reasons.
