Should Chicago Cubs fans stop watching Marquee Sports Network in the final week of their first playoff season in five years?
Should Bears fans tune out their “Monday Night Football” game against the Washington Commanders on Oct. 13 on ABC-7 and ESPN?
Gov. JB Pritzker seems to think so.
The Democrat from Illinois urged citizens to boycott several networks after Disney-owned ABC suspended “The Jimmy Kimmel Show” over jokes Kimmel made about President Donald Trump. The suspension came following moves by Nexstar Media Group Inc. and Sinclair Broadcasting to preempt or suspend the late-night talk show on their affiliates, and after pressure from the FCC to take action against Kimmel.
Pritzker called it a “free speech” issue that should alarm every American, saying “we only have one other thing to do, which is public action, people actually speaking up, speaking out, boycotting, showing up and protesting, and their representatives who agree with them doing the very same.”
Pritzker made the statement on MSNBC’s “The Briefing with Jen Psaki,” and his press office later released a statement adding Nexstar and Sinclair to the list.
“An attack on the First Amendment of this magnitude is a five-alarm fire and we should all be treating it as such,” the statement read. “What’s clear here is that Nexstar and Sinclair are capitulating to the president so he approves their mergers. Everything should be on the table.”
Free speech is certainly something to fight for, and Pritzker is right about the urgency of preserving our constitutional rights to say whatever we please without fear of reprisal. Speak up, speak out and protest, for sure. Cancel the Disney+ and Hulu streaming apps, forget about going on that Disney cruise or making a trip to Disney World or Disneyland.
But I can’t imagine viewers would stop watching their favorite teams and sports over Kimmel’s plight, so perhaps we need to come up with another solution.
It’s easy for Pritzker to ask citizens to boycott Disney-owned ABC/ESPN over the Kimmel controversy, and his concern over FCC interference on behalf of President Trump’s fragile ego is justified.
Boycott “Dancing with the Stars?” No problem. Give up “Good Morning, America,” which has turned into an infomercial for Hulu, Disney and ESPN shows? Easy enough.
But boycott the Alabama-Georgia game Sept. 27 or the rematch of the Bears-Commanders “Hail Mary” game in October?
Will football fans tune out big games to support free speech?
As a longtime viewer of ABC and ESPN who loves and hates Disney’s networks, I’d have a difficult time saying goodbye to all the sports telecasts I enjoy watching.
Maybe Pritzker, who attended Duke and Northwestern, is not a college football fan. Who knows?
But we do know Pritzker is a Cubs fan. He mentioned it a few times during his Aug. 1 speech at Wrigley Field when the Cubs made their 2027 All-Star Game announcement.
“I’m grateful to the Cubs organization and to the Ricketts family, who have made spectacular upgrades to the ballpark and the neighborhood while preserving all that makes it special,” he said. “As governor I’m very proud to have worked with the general assembly to provide security enhancements, to bolster public safety around the park, and I’m also a proud Cubs fan, so that made it especially easy.”
After waiting for applause, Pritzker added: “And I guess here is where I am supposed to say ‘And I love the teams that people in Illinois across the state love.’ But I’m a Cubs fan.”
While Pritzker didn’t specifically mention the Cubs this week in his call for action, he assuredly knows Sinclair is the corporate co-owner of Marquee Sports, along with the Cubs.
John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune
Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts talks about the Marquee Sports Network during the opening ceremony of the Cubs Convention on Jan. 18, 2020, at the Sheraton Grand in Chicago. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Sinclair owns the Diamond Sports Group, which owns 50% of Marquee. The Rickettses own the other half.
Marquee launched in 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and televises every Cubs game that’s not part of a national broadcast. Some years there’s been little reason to watch, but this year was the exception, with the Cubs earning a National League wild-card spot, led by young stars such as Pete Crow-Armstrong and Cade Horton.
Cubs fans pay a significant monthly fee to watch them on a DTC app or a streamer or cable provider such as Comcast, which charges $20.25 per month for regional sports. Comcast announced in July that it would move Marquee into the “ultimate tier” of pricing after this season, meaning it will be an extra $20 per month starting in October.
Editorial: That was a lousy bit, Jimmy Kimmel. But there’s no role here for government intervention.
No matter where they stand on Kimmel or the “free speech” issue, many Cubs fans will be canceling Marquee anyway once the regular season ends Sept. 28. The network won’t broadcast any of the team’s postseason games, so there’s no need to have it. They’ll save a few hundred dollars by canceling it for five or six months and starting up again when the 2026 season begins in March. It’s no different than NFL fans canceling Amazon Prime in January and renewing it in September when the next season of “Thursday Night Football” begins.
Canceling Marquee means they’ll miss Cubs reruns, betting shows, Bears postgame shows, Ian Happ’s podcast and some other sports broadcasts. But Marquee is primarily a seasonal network that depends on Cubs games for viewers. The rest is just filler.
While Sinclair wants to punish Kimmel for jokes it found objectionable and even demanded an apology from him, it should be noted that Marquee knows a little about censorship. In its third season in 2022, Marquee stopped the taping of a sports talk show called “The Reporters” when one of the panelists was slightly critical of Cubs President Jed Hoyer.
In a discussion on the Cubs, WSCR-AM 670 morning host David Haugh said Hoyer “lacked” transparency and asked if he was “tethered to reality.” ESPN-1000 personality Peggy Kusinski agreed with Haugh and called for more “honesty” from the Cubs brass. The show’s producer abruptly stopped the taping, claiming they had some kind of technical difficulty.
Before they began taping again, the panelists were told not to revisit the “transparency” angle. The original conversation criticizing Hoyer was cut from the show, which aired later.
Obviously a Cubs-owned network censoring criticism of a Cubs executive was problematic, even if Hoyer was not at all involved in the decision. But no one would’ve known about the censorship if the story had not been leaked to the Tribune. After the Tribune reported the story, Marquee announced it would televise the show live to avoid a repeat. “The Reporters” eventually was canceled because of lack of interest from viewers.
Marquee has improved under new management, but criticism of the Cubs is rarely heard, with the exception of studio analyst Cliff Floyd. The White Sox, meanwhile, are frequently subjected to harsh criticism after losses from Chicago Sports Network studio host Ozzie Guillén, the former manager, who said in 2023 he would quit the job if the team told him what or what not to say.
“If the White Sox or the player don’t like what I say, too bad,” Guillén said. “I never say, ‘This guy should be fired,’ or ‘That guy should be hitting there.’ … Do I have an easy job? No. But the reason I have it, the reason they picked me to do this job, is because the fans know I will tell the truth.”
It’s not easy telling the truth, especially in this day and age, when a strong opinion can get you canceled in a nanosecond. Viewers deserve honesty and can make up their own minds, whether it’s Kimmel’s opinions or Guillén’s.
Hopefully we can find a way to preserve free speech in this country and still be able to watch the sports and teams we love without boycotting specific networks.
And if you don’t like something, just turn the channel.
Paul Sullivan
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