My Chicago Tribune obit on Jim Corno, one of the good guys, make that great, who had a profound impact on how you watch sports not only in Chicago, but in the entire country.
From the story.
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Few sports fans knew his name and even fewer would be able to identify a picture of him. Yet White Sox and Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf noted nobody had more of an impact on the Chicago sports fan over the last 30 years more than Jim Corno.
“He truly changed sports on TV in Chicago,” Reinsdorf said.
Corno, the president of Comcast SportsNet Chicago, died Tuesday after a long battle with cancer. He was 66.
Born April 5, 1947, Corno ushered in an era that saw sports on television migrate from free over-the-networks such as WGN-Ch. 9 to major regional sports outlets on cable that can provide exhaustive coverage of the local teams. When he signed on to run Reinsdorf’s new pay-TV venture, SportsVision, in 1984, it had 13,000 subscribers. Now CSN Chicago can be seen in nearly 5 million homes.
Corno was a visionary, lauded for making SportsVision the first 24/7 regional operation in the country in 1987. He helped bring the Cubs to what was then Fox Sports Net in 1998, marking the team’s initial venture into cable. Then with the 2004 formation of CSN, which the Cubs, White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks own jointly along with Comcast, he made sure all the entities worked together to develop a network that has produced high ratings and profits for the respective teams.
Blackhawks Chairman Rocky Wirtz called Corno “a perfectionist.”
“He always wanted to make the telecast the best it can be,” Reinsdorf said. “He wanted to get to HD early on, and it wasn’t cheap. But even if you made less money in the short term, he felt it was important for the quality to be there. He always had the viewer’s best interests at heart.”
Reinsdorf recalled when CSN was formed, the teams all wanted Corno to lead the network. They were bracing for a fight, believing Philadelphia-based Comcast would push for someone else.
“They came in and said, ‘We have the one guy who we want to run it,’” Reinsdorf said. “We’re thinking, ‘Here we go.’ And they say, ‘Jim Corno.’”