Yeehaw! Fort Worth is officially home to the Cowgirl Channel. Here’s how to watch

Yeehaw! Cowtown is now home to the Cowgirl Channel.

The women-focused television channel heralds women in western sports, lifestyle and the modern-day cowgirl. Along with women’s western sports coverage such as barrel racing and ranch rodeo, the network will also be home to original television programming.

“This channel is about women doing hard work in the western heritage that put Texas and cities like Fort Worth on the map,” Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker said. “For that I’m incredibly grateful and so proud to stand up here today and celebrate alongside you.”

The damp day hardly doused the enthusiasm of the more than a hundred people present at the channel’s official launch party in Fort Worth’s Stockyards where the switch was flipped on Dish Network’s channel 269.

Cowgirl Channel creator inspired by young daughter

The Cowgirl Channel, which will call the Stockyards home, is the latest television network from Patrick Gottsch and Rural Media Group who also own the Cowboy Channel and RFD-TV. The women-focused channel was inspired by the cowgirls in Gottsch’s own life.

Around three years ago, Gottsch and family attended the National High School Rodeo Finals in Lincoln, Nebraska, where his young daughter noticed most of the competitors were women. All it took was for Gottsch’s daughter to ask him why there wasn’t a female-focused equivalent of the Cowboy Channel.

It turned out to be a watershed moment.

“Most fathers are inspired by their daughters their whole life and I’m no exception,” he said.

The Cowgirl Channel has been a natural progression for Gottsch, who broke into the television world with RFD-TV in 2000. Next came the Cowboy Channel in 2017 that primarily catered to a male audience.

Over the last five years, women’s western sports have exploded — not only in barrel racing and breakaway roping, but women’s ranch rodeo as well. Gottsch decided it was finally time to launch a network for women.

“I really think the Cowgirl Channel will surpass the Cowboy Channel and RFD-TV with distribution,” Gottsch said.

Today is Cowgirl Channel Day in Fort Worth

To commemorate and celebrate the historic day, Parker and the city of Fort Worth issued a proclamation making Wednesday Cowgirl Channel Day.” Having the network located in Fort Worth only deepens the connection the city has to its western roots, Parker said.

The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame is located in the heart of the city, right next to Dickies Arena and Will Rogers Memorial Center.

“It’s about time,” Museum President Kit Moncrief told a cheering crowd.

The museum has partnered with the Cowgirl Channel and plans to air past Cowgirl Hall of Fame inductee ceremonies, Moncrief said. Other original programming is in the works as well.

Whether its through Dish Network’s channel 269 or through Cowboy Channel+, viewers will have many ways to watch the Cowgirl Channel, Gottsch said.

“Between these three channels RFD-TV, Cowboy Channel and Cowgirl Channel, as long as we can keep it on the air, which we will, it’s here to stay,” he said.