In news that we’ve been discussing for at least six (!) years, CSN Philly will officially be rebranded as “NBC Sports Philadelphia” before the upcoming hockey season. The move, which will apply to the television channel, the website and also The Comcast Network, will take effect on October 2.

The 2017-18 Flyers season begins October 4.

TCN will be renamed “NBC Sports Philadelphia+” and will still carry a number of Flyers and 76ers games throughout the year. The NBC Sports rebranding is happening across the country with CSN networks. CSN Mid-Atlantic will be renamed as NBC Sports Washington, CSN New England will become NBC Sports Boston, and the same changes will happen with CSN Chicago and CSN Northwest. CSN already rebranded its two California stations last year.

In terms of the content, nothing is really expected to change. CSN Philly has already been tightly connected with NBC 10 here in the city, with the two networks sharing resources and reporting when applicable. That will continue. Programming isn’t expected to change -- at least not in the short-term. We still expect that the national NBC Sports Network will continue to pick up local NBC Sports Philadelphia broadcasts when possible as well.

It’s certainly been a year of change at CSN Philly / NBC Sports Philadelphia. Long-time Flyers reporter Tim Panaccio was let go by the network in June, in addition to various other changes in terms of their on-air talent: Sixers reporter Dei Lynam, Phillies reporter Leslie Gudel and anchor Neil Hartman have all been let go this year. This is happening in other markets as well -- just this week, Capitals reporter Jill Sorenson was let go by CSN Mid-Atlantic, for example.

As we wrote back in June:

This is happening all over sports media, particularly with companies that have a ton of overhead with expensive broadcast rights and a shifting television market driving their business. ESPN laid off their entire damn hockey department earlier this year (plus lots of others), and just this week, Fox Sports decided to cut their entire digital writing team in favor of propping up clowns like Skip Bayless and Jason Whitlock on FoxSports.com. CSN isn’t a national broadcaster, but they still pay for broadcast rights in local markets (like Philly) across the country. It’s a similar trend. They’re losing subscribers, and thus money, and they can’t offset those losses with their digital product. In most cases, it’s also because that digital product isn’t very good. The level of analysis of the game -- particularly hockey, which is poorly covered in even the “good” American markets -- you’ll get from a CSN or a traditional newspaper these days pales in comparison to what you can get elsewhere online. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Rebranding to NBC Sports might not mean much in reality, but it’s certainly another signal that things are in flux with the channel that broadcasts Flyers, Sixers and Phillies games.