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One month into David Wisnia’s tenure as president and chief executive officer of regional sports network NESN, the company is preparing to launch a new FAST channel to be distributed throughout the United States. NESN Nation will provide fans across the country with content centered around Boston sports teams such as the Red Sox and Bruins as the network pursues a content strategy built on innovation and audience expansion. The unveiling of the creation of such a channel coincides with the 40th anniversary of NESN’s first sports broadcast. The news of the addition of a FAST channel to NESN’s portfolio was first reported by Anthony Crupi of Sportico.

Wisnia succeeds Sean McGrail in the role, who worked for NESN for the 40 years the show was on the air. McGrail will continue to serve as a senior advisor to the company’s board of directors, while Wisnia will assume responsibility for leading NESN and SportsNet Pittsburgh. Before landing this new job, Wisnia held positions at FOX Sports, CBS and MGM Studios, but most recently served as managing director at Alvarez & Marsal, a global management consulting firm.

“We will be launching a FAST network across the country,” Wisnia said. “We haven’t announced the exact time frame yet, but we’re very excited about it.”

The last few years have seen a proliferation of free, ad-supported streaming TV channels across the country. Roku opened its own FAST branch earlier this summer and MSG Networks also added a FAST option to its offering. Several popular sports programs, such as Up & Adams And The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotzwill air on FanDuel TV and DraftKings Network, respectively, and will feature synergies with sports betting companies. Paramount Global presents additional sports media content on its CBS Sports HQ FAST channel along with its linear CBS Sports Network outlet. NESN is now expected to join in and continue to create and produce new content to be distributed via digital channels.

“For now and for the foreseeable future, our MVPDs continue to be great partners and pay significant amounts of money to distribute our content,” Wisnia explained. “At the same time, digitalization is the engine of growth and the consumer there. So they follow parallel paths and change over time as consumers change over time and so the focus is on controlling what we can control. Market dynamics will constantly change, so change as needed given those dynamics.”

NESN is co-owned by the Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins and serves as a broadcast station for regional broadcasts surrounding both teams. The channel reaches 4 million households in nine designated market areas and is distributed across various cable and over-the-top media platforms. NESN launched a direct-to-consumer platform in June 2022, allowing fans to purchase subscriptions to watch the network’s content without a traditional cable television subscription through a multichannel video programmer (MVPD).