Fans of Chicago’s boys of summer are being left in the cold by NIU’s campus cable.

NIU students in the residence halls will miss out on many Cubs and Sox games because they are on Comcast Sports Net. CSN is not included among the 61 channels provided by Campus Televideo, the vendor of the cable network available in the residence halls on campus. CSN is also the main broadcaster of Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks games.

“We get our programming through a vendor as a package,” said Jay Orbik, director of Media Services. “Comcast charges more for that channel than all the other channels combined.”

CSN and CSN+ are scheduled to broadcast 92 Cubs games and 107 White Sox games during the 2009 season. Residence hall occupants, however, will be able to watch 62 Cubs games and 30 White Sox games on WGN, which is included in the Campus Televideo program.

“It all comes down to cost,” said George Morisette, chief TV engineer at Media Services. “CSN is not part of the basic package, and as a premium channel it would almost double the cost of the package.”

Morisette also added the NIU athletic department had previously offered to offset the cost difference but those plans were dropped after it was deemed to not be cost efficient.

The Media Services department estimates that it would cost an additional $500,000 a year to add CSN to the cable package, a cost that would be passed on to students’ housing bills.

CSN also is a provider of NIU sports coverage. Last season, CSN broadcast three NIU football games and also featured 15 episodes of “Inside Huskie Sports,” a weekly show filmed at Fatty’s that gave an in-depth look at NIU athletics.

Anthony Ianno, a junior industrial engineering major, manages to see a bright side to not being able to watch the games he wants.

“When I lived in the dorms and couldn’t watch the games because they were on Comcast, I would either go over to a friend’s apartment or I would get a group of my floormates to go to a restaurant or bar to watch them,” Ianno said. “It was like an extra opportunity to hang out with my friends and socialize.”