How Sam Houston’s Return to Bowers Showed the Evolution of Bearkat Sports Media
By Cheval John | Vallano Media
This article was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
The final version was reviewed, edited and fact-checked by the author
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
With two minutes remaining in the first half of Sam Houston’s Sept. 12 game against Tulsa, the ESPN+ broadcast turned its attention away from the field.
The camera showed the rebuilt west side of Bowers Stadium, centerpiece of a roughly $60 million redevelopment that had kept the Bearkats away from their longtime home for the 2025 season.
Analyst John Harris looked at the new structure.
“That is a beautiful press box.”
It was a simple observation.
But Harris was particularly well positioned to make it.
Years earlier, he had worked Sam Houston games during a considerably different era of college sports television.
In 2016, Harris and Tom Franklin were part of Fox College Sports broadcasts involving Southland Conference programs, including Sam Houston.
By 2017, the pair were calling Sam Houston games on ESPN3.
The difference between those broadcasts and what surrounded Harris at Bowers in 2026 tells a larger story.
Sam Houston had not simply rebuilt its press box.
The media world around it had changed as well.
Video Courtesy of Mellie Valencia YouTube Channel
When Geography Mattered More
For much of college athletics history, following a program depended heavily on geography.
Local newspapers provided game stories and features.
Radio stations carried games within the reach of their signals.
University sports information offices supplied statistics and information to reporters.
Television opportunities, particularly for programs outside the largest conferences, were less predictable.
That placed enormous importance on local media.
Fans outside the immediate market could still follow their teams.
Newspapers traveled, radio signals extended beyond city limits and selected games reached regional or national television.
But geography imposed far greater limitations than it does today.
The arrival of digital media did not eliminate those limitations overnight.
Instead, another layer gradually developed alongside the existing system.
University and conference-produced digital coverage expanded the number of games that could reach viewers outside traditional television distribution.
By the middle of the 2010s, however, the result could still resemble a patchwork.
The Southland Conference’s 2016 football media guide listed television relationships involving ESPN networks, American Sports Network, Cox Sports Television, ROOT Sports Southwest, Fox College Sports and Time Warner Cable SportsChannel.
ESPN3 represented an important part of that transition.
Games could increasingly be accessed through computers, mobile devices and connected televisions rather than depending entirely on conventional television carriage.
The audience was becoming less geographically restricted.
The distribution system was still fragmented.
From ESPN3 to ESPN+
The next decade accelerated that transformation.
Streaming platforms became increasingly central to college sports distribution while conferences and universities expanded their own production capabilities.
Conference realignment and changing media agreements added another layer.
Sam Houston underwent its own extraordinary transformation during the same period.
The football program won the NCAA Division I Football Championship in spring 2021.
The university subsequently moved from the Southland Conference to the Western Athletic Conference before making the much larger jump to Conference USA and the Football Bowl Subdivision in 2023.
By 2026, many Sam Houston games could be watched without a viewer being anywhere near Huntsville.
A game no longer needed a traditional national television window to be nationally available through streaming.
That distinction matters.
National availability is not the same thing as national coverage.
Putting a game on a widely accessible streaming platform makes it possible for someone hundreds or thousands of miles away to watch.
It does not guarantee that national newspapers, television networks or major digital publications will assign journalists to independently report on that game.
Streaming removed much of the geographic distribution barrier.
It did not remove competition for attention.
The Newspaper Changed, Too
While universities and conferences gained new methods for reaching audiences directly, another part of the sports-media ecosystem was undergoing its own transformation.
The way Americans consumed local newspaper journalism was changing.
Pew Research Center found that 43 percent of U.S. adults said they received news from local daily newspapers at least sometimes in 2018.
By 2025, that figure had fallen to 36 percent.
The change in how those readers accessed newspapers was even more pronounced.
Among Americans who used local daily newspapers, 54 percent primarily used print editions in 2018 while 43 percent primarily accessed them online.
By 2025, only 30 percent primarily used print, while 68 percent primarily accessed their local daily newspaper digitally.
Those numbers cannot tell us how any particular newspaper staffs its sports department.
Nor should changes in newspaper readership automatically be used to assume that an individual newsroom eliminated reporters or reduced particular beats.
They do establish the changing distribution environment surrounding local journalism.
At the same time, universities, conferences and independent publishers gained increasingly direct ways to reach audiences.
The demand for sports information did not disappear.
Its distribution multiplied into different forms.
One Game, Many Media Systems
Sam Houston’s return to Bowers Stadium against Tulsa offered a snapshot of what that environment looks like today.
The game was carried on ESPN+, with Jason Metko handling play-by-play alongside Harris and Kendra Sheehan reporting from the sideline.
Radio provided another path.
The Bearkat Sports Network broadcast featured Jason Barfield and Brian Adams, with local carriage through KSHU 90.5 FM and digital access through Sam Houston athletics platforms.
KSAM 101.7 provided another local media presence from Bowers.
SiriusXM subscribers could find the game nationally as well, although the service carried Tulsa’s radio feed rather than the Bearkat Sports Network production.
Afterward, an Associated Press report carrying a Huntsville dateline could circulate through publications far beyond Walker County.
Traditional local journalism remained part of the picture.
So did a growing category of independent digital coverage.
Sidelines–Sam Houston, for example, describes itself as independent from the university while maintaining a digital presence focused specifically on Bearkat athletics.
That represents a form of sports coverage that would have been far more difficult to distribute broadly during the early decades of Bowers Stadium.
An outlet no longer needs a printing press, terrestrial transmitter or television station to build an audience around a university athletic program.
None of these media forms completely replaced another.
They accumulated.
A supporter could watch ESPN+, listen to radio coverage, follow social updates during the game, read newspaper or Associated Press coverage afterward and continue discussing the program through independent digital communities.
One football game had become several different media products at once.
Video Courtesy of Hello Huntsville Youtube Channel
Local No Longer Means Nearby
That may be one of the most significant changes of all.
Historically, local media often described both the subject being covered and the geographic community consuming it.
A Huntsville newspaper covered Sam Houston because Sam Houston was in Huntsville.
A Huntsville radio station naturally served listeners within reach of its signal.
Digital distribution increasingly separated those two ideas.
Today, an outlet can be intensely local in subject matter while serving an audience scattered across Texas, the United States or beyond.
A Sam Houston graduate living hundreds of miles from Huntsville can watch many of the same broadcasts, see many of the same photographs and participate in many of the same conversations as someone living a few blocks from campus.
In that environment, “local” increasingly describes what is being covered rather than where everyone consuming the coverage happens to live.
Sam Houston’s evolution does not represent every local sports market.
But it offers a useful case study of a broader change: geographic barriers around sports distribution have weakened while competition for audience attention has intensified.
The local newspaper is no longer competing for attention only with another newspaper, radio station or television station.
That attention can move among ESPN, university-produced content, conference platforms, independent publishers, podcasts, social media and countless other sources.
More distribution does not necessarily mean more journalism.
But it unquestionably means more choices.
Why the Press Box Still Matters
All of this creates an apparent contradiction.
If audiences can follow Sam Houston from almost anywhere, why does a university need increasingly sophisticated physical media infrastructure?
Because digital media is not actually created in the cloud.
It begins somewhere.
Cameras need positions.
Broadcasters need booths.
Production crews need connectivity.
Statistics have to be generated.
Photographers need working areas.
Interviews have to be conducted.
Game operations and broadcast personnel must communicate.
Sam Houston’s rebuilt west side reflects that reality.
The five-level facility includes much more than traditional newspaper workspace.
Its upper levels incorporate broadcast and production functions, game-day operations, coaches’ areas, suites, visiting administration space and dedicated areas for the press.
The modern press box is therefore not a monument to an older media era.
It is infrastructure for the new one.
When Bowers Stadium opened in 1986, geography placed much greater limits on how people could experience Sam Houston football.
Forty years later, fewer people need to be anywhere near Huntsville to follow a Bearkat game.
Yet reaching all of those distant screens, speakers and phones still requires people working somewhere physical.
The digital game still begins somewhere physical.
Harris had worked Sam Houston games during an earlier generation of college sports media.
Now, looking across a facility built for the demands of another generation, he offered a much simpler assessment.
“That is a beautiful press box.”
It was.
But what mattered more was everything now capable of traveling beyond it.
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
Give Your Audience Access To Your Creative Process
By Cheval John
Today’s post is a case study of former ABBA member, Anni-Frid Lyngstad’s, “Frida”, solo album, “Something Going On” and what we as entrepreneurs can learn.
ABBA was on top of the charts consistently during their time together (Agnetha Faltskog was married to Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson was married to Frida prior to the group forming of course).
Many were drawn to their acapella sound.
The success of the band led to the strain on their marriages.
Frida wanted to do a solo English album which would have a different sound from ABBA.
So she choose Phil Collins, who is a drummer as well, to produce her first solo english album.
She listened to Collins’ first solo album “Face Value” for eight months.
The record label, Polar Music, sent out messages to major publishers around the world about Frida’s solo project.
In an overwhelming answer, they got 500 songs.
They then listened to all of them and choose the eleven songs for her album.
Collins and the session players flew into Stockholm and recorded the album tracks.
They added the trumpets from Earth, Wind and Fire’s Phenix Horns to some of the tracks.
They also added the orchestra sound recorded at Air Studios in London, England.
It took them a month and a half to put the album together.
As a result, “Something Going On” was a huge hit worldwide.
The single,”I Know There’s Something Going On” hit number one in Switzerland, Belgium, Costa Rica and France.
It was also number fourteen on the Billboard 100 and became one of the best selling singles in the United States in 1983.
Before the advent of social media, publicists would book musicians on major media leading up to the launch of their album because those outlets have the largest audience.
What made Frida’s success different?
She gave Sveriges Television (SVT), a national Swedish broadcaster, access to the making from start to finish of the album, “Something Going On.”
SVT edited the recordings to make it into a one-hour television special.
It is safe to say Frida understood her audience very well.
She knew it was history in the making because she was venturing into the unknown from her association with ABBA.
That is why it is important to showcase the behind the scenes of your business and share the “secrets” to your success.
It is not like someone will go and knock you out of business due to sharing your secrets.
Your audience will appreciate you because of your willingness to take them on your journey to success with your business.
They will even go out of their way to share your finished product with their friends and family.
For example, you can allow your listeners to see the entire recording process of your podcast via live streaming.
In the same manner of television shows which records in front of a live studio audience, you can be that business or person which live streams your recordings to your audience.
You can let them know in advance that this live stream recording will last about 30 minutes while encouraging them to leave comments.
Once the live stream part of the recording is over, you can answer their questions as part of the post-production show.
If your podcast is interview based, this can allow your audience exclusive access to ask your guest questions in the comments section during the post-production.
This strategy can help you boost your podcast which is part of your business.
With third party applications like Blue Jeans Network, Zoom, and Crowdcast.io, you can simulcast your podcast recordings to either facebook live, periscope or YouTube Live.
So go out and allow your audience access to your creative process in the same manner as Frida did 35 years ago.
What are your thoughts on the case study?
The Rise of Cheddar TV: Building Business News for the Streaming Generation
By Cheval John | Vallano Media
This article was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
The final version was reviewed, edited and fact-checked by the author
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
When ESPN launched in 1979, the idea of dedicating an entire television network to sports was still a gamble.
The network ultimately demonstrated something important about specialized media: a passionate audience could support a destination built around its interests.
Nearly four decades later, entrepreneur Jon Steinberg made a different kind of media bet.
In 2016, Steinberg launched Cheddar, a digital-first business news network designed around the viewing habits of younger audiences.
Rather than trying to beat established financial networks such as CNBC and Bloomberg at the traditional cable television game, Cheddar built its strategy around an emerging reality: people were increasingly consuming video through streaming platforms, smartphones, computers, and social media.
Cheddar did not invent streaming, of course.
But it recognized early that changing distribution could create an opening in an established media industry.
That makes its rise more than a story about financial journalism.
It is a business case study about finding an underserved audience, building around changing consumer behavior, and understanding that distribution can sometimes be as important as the content itself.
It also has an interesting parallel in sports media.
Finding an Opportunity in an Established Market
Before founding Cheddar, Steinberg had already accumulated significant experience in digital media, including serving as president and chief operating officer of BuzzFeed and later leading Daily Mail North America.
That experience gave him a front-row view of changing audience habits.
With Cheddar, he bet that younger viewers could be reached with business news designed around digital distribution rather than the traditional cable model.
The network still covered financial markets, but its editorial universe stretched beyond stock prices and quarterly earnings.
Technology, startups, venture capital, entrepreneurship, media, consumer products, and innovation became important parts of the programming.
That distinction mattered.
Someone didn’t necessarily need to be an active stock trader to care about the next technology company, an emerging consumer brand, or an entrepreneur building a startup.
Cheddar was essentially broadening the definition of who might be interested in business television.
Built for Streaming From the Beginning
One of Cheddar’s most important advantages was that digital distribution wasn’t something added years after the network launched.
It was fundamental to the original concept.
Cheddar distributed programming through streaming services, connected television platforms, social media, and other digital outlets.
By the time Altice USA announced its acquisition of Cheddar in 2019, the company’s reach had become substantial.
Altice said Cheddar was available in approximately 40 million pay-TV homes, distributed through virtual television services including YouTube TV and Sling TV, and available through free streaming platforms including Pluto TV and the Roku Channel.
Altice also reported that Cheddar’s content generated more than 400 million monthly video views across social platforms at the time.
Those figures came from the acquiring company rather than an independent audience audit, but they illustrate how aggressively Cheddar had expanded beyond a conventional television channel.
The strategy was simple: don’t make the audience come looking for you.
Go where the audience already is.
Credibility in a New Format
Being digital-first did not mean abandoning the symbols associated with traditional financial journalism.
Cheddar established a major broadcasting presence on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
It also expanded its New York production footprint to locations including Nasdaq MarketSite and the Flatiron Building.
That was smart branding.
The NYSE gave a young streaming network an immediate visual connection to Wall Street, while Cheddar’s presentation, graphics, subject matter, and distribution strategy signaled that it wasn’t trying to recreate traditional financial television.
It wanted credibility without looking old.
That balance helped establish a recognizable identity in an industry already occupied by much larger competitors.
Where Sports Media Enters the Story
This is where Cheddar becomes especially interesting from a sports media perspective.
Cheddar did not create the streaming transformation in sports, nor did sports organizations simply copy its strategy.
The connection is more useful than that: both illustrate how media businesses responded to audiences gaining more control over where, when, and how they consumed content.
Sports organizations have faced many of the same questions.
What happens when fans no longer depend on one television package?
What happens when highlights are consumed on phones?
What happens when fans want interviews, documentaries, analysis, behind-the-scenes material, and live events across multiple platforms?
The answer increasingly has been for leagues, conferences, teams, and broadcasters to think beyond the traditional television channel.
Cheddar was confronting essentially the same distribution problem in business journalism.
It recognized that producing the content was only part of the job.
Making that content accessible was another part entirely.
Video Courtesy of Chat Sports YouTube Channel
Distribution as a Business Strategy
That distinction is easy to overlook.
A company can produce excellent journalism, a university can produce an excellent sporting event, and an independent creator can produce an excellent video.
None of that guarantees an audience will find it.
Distribution determines how easily that product travels.
Cheddar treated distribution as part of the product itself.
That approach helped the network appear in numerous places rather than depending on viewers developing one particular viewing habit.
For sports organizations, the comparison is particularly relevant because media distribution has become inseparable from the sports business.
Streaming services, conference networks, direct-to-consumer products, social media clips, team-produced documentaries, and athlete-created content all compete for a fan’s limited attention.
The platforms may be different, but the underlying business question remains remarkably similar:
Where is the audience, and how do we make it easier for them to reach us?
The $200 Million Milestone
Cheddar’s growth eventually attracted a much larger media company.
In June 2019, Altice USA completed its acquisition of Cheddar for $200 million, subject to customary closing adjustments.
For a company founded only three years earlier, the transaction represented a remarkable milestone.
It also provided evidence that digital-first distribution and a differentiated audience could create substantial business value even in a market dominated by established television networks.
But the acquisition was not the end of Cheddar’s story.
In April 2021, around the network’s fifth anniversary, the brand became Cheddar News.
By then, its coverage extended across business, technology, media, culture, politics, and other areas.
The evolution showed that Cheddar itself was continuing to change.
And that leads to perhaps the most important lesson in the entire story.
Being Early Doesn’t Mean You Can Stop Adapting
The media environment Cheddar entered in 2016 became dramatically more competitive.
Streaming services multiplied.
Podcasts became major sources of business information.
YouTube creators built their own media brands.
Newsletters gave individual writers direct access to audiences.
Social platforms turned entrepreneurs, executives, athletes, and analysts into publishers themselves.
Traditional media companies also became much more aggressive about streaming and digital distribution.
In other words, some of the characteristics that made Cheddar unusual in 2016 became increasingly normal.
That’s one of the paradoxes of innovation.
A company can correctly identify the future and still have to compete once everyone else arrives there.
Cheddar’s ownership changed again in December 2023 when Altice USA sold Cheddar News to Archetype.
Financial terms of that transaction were not disclosed.
The sale shouldn’t erase what Cheddar accomplished, nor should its earlier $200 million acquisition be treated as proof that the original model was permanently solved.
Together, those events tell a more useful business story.
Innovation creates an advantage.
It does not guarantee that the advantage lasts forever.
What Content Creators Can Learn From Cheddar
There are several lessons here for independent publishers, entrepreneurs, and digital creators.
The first is to look for audiences established competitors may be underserving.
Cheddar did not need every CNBC or Bloomberg viewer to switch networks.
It needed to establish a meaningful audience of its own.
Second, distribution deserves nearly as much thought as production.
Publishing an article isn’t a distribution strategy.
Neither is uploading a video and hoping people discover it.
Search, social media, newsletters, streaming platforms, partnerships, and direct audience relationships can all extend the life of the original content.
Third, differentiation matters.
Cheddar didn’t establish itself by simply becoming a smaller CNBC.
Its younger presentation, technology coverage, startup focus, and streaming-first distribution gave viewers a reason to understand the brand differently.
Finally, adaptation never ends.
The strategy that differentiates a company today may become standard industry practice tomorrow.
The Sports Business Lesson
That last lesson may be especially important in sports.
A league might sign an innovative streaming agreement.
A conference might build a successful digital network.
A university might develop an impressive in-house production operation.
But technology continues moving.
Audience habits continue changing.
The next distribution model eventually arrives.
That means the goal cannot simply be to “go digital” or “start streaming.”
Those are tools, not permanent strategies.
The deeper objective is understanding how the audience behaves and being willing to change as those behaviors change.
That was the opportunity Cheddar recognized in 2016.
Cheddar’s Story Is Still Being Written
Cheddar did not disappear after the 2023 ownership change.
The brand has continued operating and expanding its streaming distribution, remaining focused on areas including business, technology, finance, and innovation.
That makes Cheddar more interesting than a simple rise-and-fall story.
It began as a startup challenging assumptions about financial television.
Within three years, it was acquired for $200 million.
It subsequently expanded its editorial identity, changed ownership again, and continued operating in a media industry that looks considerably different from the one it entered.
Its trajectory illustrates both sides of disruption.
Recognizing change early can create enormous opportunity.
But eventually, everyone else recognizes the change too.
Final Thoughts
Cheddar’s rise was never simply about creating another financial news channel.
It was about recognizing that the relationship between audiences and media was changing.
The company understood that younger viewers could be interested in business, technology, entrepreneurship, and finance without consuming those subjects in the same way previous generations had.
And in that sense, its story connects naturally with sports.
Sports fans didn’t suddenly stop caring about sports when their viewing habits changed.
Business audiences didn’t suddenly stop caring about business when they moved away from traditional television.
The audience didn’t disappear.
The audience moved.
Cheddar’s bet was to move with it.
That remains a valuable lesson for media companies, sports organizations, entrepreneurs, and independent publishers today.
Getting ahead of the next change matters.
Understanding that you’ll eventually have to change again may matter even more.
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
Share this: