Altitude Sports and Entertainment


Altitude Sports and Entertainment is an American regional sports cable and satellite television channel that is owned by Stan Kroenke's Kroenke Sports & Entertainment. The channel, which serves the Rocky Mountain region of the United States, features a mix of professional, collegiate and high school sporting events as well as some entertainment-based programming.
Launched on September 4, 2004, Altitude is headquartered in the Denver suburb of Centennial, Colorado. Altitude also operates Altitude 2, a secondary overflow channel that is used in the event of scheduling conflicts with games simultaneously set to air on the main Altitude channel.

History

Altitude Sports and Entertainment was launched on September 4, 2004. The channel was launched as a team owned competitor to FSN Rocky Mountain, which became the official broadcaster for both of Kroenke's teams on launch.
Altitude agreed to carry some games from the first season of the Fall Experimental Football League in October and November 2014.

Programming

The channel holds broadcast rights to the four Denver-based professional sports teams that are owned by Kroenke – the NBA's Denver Nuggets, the NHL's Colorado Avalanche, Major League Soccer's Colorado Rapids, and the National Lacrosse League's Colorado Mammoth. Altitude features in-depth coverage of the four teams, including holding broadcast rights to the majority of Avalanche, Rapids and Nuggets games. The channel's logo bug changes colors depending on the team being broadcast.
Altitude also holds television rights to Major League Lacrosse's Denver Outlaws, the Pacific Coast League's Colorado Springs Sky Sox and the Colorado Eagles. Altitude also broadcasts live college athletics from the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. They also simulcast select college football games from Montana, Montana State, New Mexico State and the Southland Conference. The channel previously broadcast Southeastern Conference, Western Athletic Conference, Big East Conference, and Big 12 Conference games from ESPN+.
It also airs entertainment programming including live theatrical productions and concerts, as well as a simulcast of veteran basketball referee Irv Brown's weekdaily radio program. Former Colorado governor Bill Owens hosted a talk show on the network during the final two years of his administration.
As the team is principally owned by Kroenke, Altitude serves as production partner for the Los Angeles Rams' NFL preseason games.

Distribution

On August 28, 2019, Altitude was dropped by Dish Network. Three days later, the channel was dropped by Comcast and DirecTV. All three providers are accusing Altitude of demanding significant annual price increases for the channel's content, which they deemed unacceptable. On October 31, 2019, Altitude was restored by DirecTV after the two sides reached a multi-year agreement. The disputes with Dish Network and Comcast remain unresolved.
Unlike other regional sports networks, Altitude is unavailable on live streaming services such as AT&T Now, FuboTV, Hulu, Sling TV or YouTube TV.

On-air staff

Current on-air staff

Altitude HD is a high definition simulcast feed of Altitude Sports and Entertainment, that broadcasts in the 1080i resolution format. The HD feed broadcasts Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche games in HD. Colorado Rapids soccer matches are not available in HD. The channel also operates a high definition simulcast feed of Altitude 2.