OLN/SI Partnership?

[SueNJ97]

OK, maybe an 'old twist' since SI tried this with CNN before and it didn't work. Interesting, though.

http://www.nypost.com/business/51644.htm

SI EYES TV DEAL

By TIM ARANGO

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

August 26, 2005 -- Sports Illustrated once again has TV ambitions.

More than three years after Sports Illustrated's TV venture with corporate cousin CNN failed, SI is now eyeing a partnership with Comcast's Outdoor Life Network that would give the venerable magazine a new television platform, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Executives at Time Inc. — SI's corporate parent — have been holding internal discussions about such a deal, but sources say talks between Comcast and Time Inc. have not yet begun in earnest.

Word of a possible link-up comes as Comcast is seeking to rebrand OLN as a mainstream sports network to take on the industry juggernaut ESPN.

Time Inc. and OLN already have a relationship — OLN licenses the name "Outdoor Life" from Time Inc., which publishes a magazine under that name, and the two companies have worked together in the past on programming. And Time Warner and Comcast are already in the sports business together. The two media giants are co-owners of a new network that will begin airing New York Mets games next year.

A spokesperson for Time Inc. declined comment. A Comcast representative also had no comment.

Comcast recently inked a rights deal with the National Hockey League to air games on OLN, and are expected to make a run at rights for Major League Baseball and a Thursday and Saturday night NFL package. Comcast is expected to re-name the network — which until now has broadcast minor sporting events such as the Boston Marathon and the Iditarod dog sled race — as it builds the channel into a competitor to ESPN.

So formidable — and profitable — is ESPN that Comcast made a hostile takeover bid for ESPN parent Disney last year. The bid, which ultimately failed, was motivated in part by the escalating fees that ESPN charges cable operators such as Comcast.

Time Inc. is looking outside its corporate boundaries for a television partner is another sign of the failed promise of media consolidation, as SI already tried, and failed, to launch a viable competitor to ESPN with CNN.

In 1996 the two Time Warner properties launched CNN/SI, a 24-hour sports network. The network, which reportedly never turned a profit, was shuttered in 2002, when it reached just 22 million homes. That network was mainly focused on sports news, rather than live games, although it did air such events as women's soccer and early-round Wimbledon matches.

CNN and SI weren't the only ones who have been forced to abandon ambitions of forming a national competitor to ESPN. In 2002 Fox Sports dropped a national sports show that was designed to compete with ESPN's "SportsCenter." Fox Sports is owned by News Corp., the parent company of The Post.

[aylbert]

I read in Sports Illustrated they are renaming it to the Sweat network. I hope they dont.

[eldon]

and we all know what great coverage SI gives hockey....

[Z-Man]

Anyone have SI.com access to the subscriber columns? I'd like to see this article posted....

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/preview/s...%252Findex.html

[aylbert]

Anyone have SI.com access to the subscriber columns?  I'd like to see this article posted....

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/preview/s...%252Findex.html

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The article wasnt that good, but thats where I got the Sweat network from... Let me make an account and Ill post it.

[aylbert]

OLN -- once the Outdoor Life Network -- wants to woo viewers from the glitzy "Worldwide Leader" with a macho lineup that looks a lot like ... the original ESPN

ESPN commentator Chris Berman.

Brian Bahr/Getty Images

By Stephen Cannella

Late one night in the 1980s, before digital and reality and Boo-yah!, David Letterman reeled off a list of the Top 10 Off-season Sports on ESPN. Shirts-and-Skins Speed Typing, Miniature Horseshoes, Oprah Tipping -- the gag was funny because those events were only marginally more absurd than what viewers actually saw on the cable network. At that point ESPN had yet to broadcast an NFL or major league game, and it needed all the content it could get. Australian Rules Football, tractor pulls, the USFL ... if you were perspiring and had an opponent, chances were the folks in Bristol, Conn., would put you on the air.

The self-styled Worldwide Leader is more discriminating now, as the NHL learned last week when ESPN bid it adieu after serving as hockey's home since 1992. Even with airtime to fill on several networks, ESPN, which in June passed on a $60 million option for this season, couldn't see spending millions for a sport that was outdrawn by poker before it nuked the 2004-05 season.

One channel's money pit is another's loss leader, however, and 20 years from now we may see the NHL as the first pawn in a new battle for the attention of the sports viewer. Meet the Outdoor Life Network, which happily gobbled up two seasons' worth of NHL rights for $135 million last week. Or rather make that OLN: The 10-year-old network, known chiefly for its coverage of the Tour de France and its hunting shows, has already changed its name in an effort to shed its woodsy image. "We want to continue to be a leader in the outdoor and adventure worlds," says president Gavin Harvey, "but the NHL is one part -- a huge part, but just one part -- of an overall effort to reposition OLN."

The NHL may have tumbled from mainstream to field and stream, but OLN's parent company, Comcast, could be thinking big, by using hockey to help build a network to compete with ESPN. Over the last four years Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts -- he oversees the nation's largest cable provider, with 21.4 million subscribers, and tried last year to acquire ESPN as part of a failed bid to buy Disney -- has quietly built a sports empire. He has local networks in Philadelphia, Washington-Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Sacramento and San Francisco; two national entities, the Golf Channel and OLN; and ownership of the NHL's Flyers and the NBA's 76ers, plus two arenas in Philadelphia.

As ESPN once did, OLN has been stockpiling programming: the Tour de France, professional bullriding, the America's Cup yacht race, the Iditarod, the Boston Marathon and the Gravity Games. OLN is also talking to the NFL -- which bestowed instant legitimacy on ESPN in 1987 and Fox in 1993 when it struck deals with the upstart networks -- about a package of Thursday-night games starting with the 2006 season. TNT, TBS, FX and the NFL Network are also believed to be after those rights, but a source with knowledge of the NFL's TV committee told SI that OLN is "the leader in the clubhouse" to win the bidding, thanks largely to Comcast's vast subscriber base. "OLN has announced that it's open for business," says former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson. "Every important sports property will beat a path to see if they're interested."

OLN's emergence comes as ESPN redefines what a sports network should be. Under programming whiz Mark Shapiro -- who last week announced he's leaving his executive vice president post to join Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder's effort to take over Six Flags and morph the theme-park chain into an entertainment company -- ESPN has focused on developing movies and series (Hustle, Playmakers) and shows like ESPN Hollywood that make some purists cringe. But ESPN president George Bodenheimer says he is happy with the course Shapiro set. "Based on our ratings and performance," he says, "we're on the right track."

OLN isn't above a little entertainment (Survivor reruns are a programming staple), but it sees an opening as it recasts itself as the Sweat Network. "We like the whole thing of competition, a very male-oriented network," says Marc Fein, vice president of programming. "We want to keep that base of outdoor enthusiasts but make it more about competition -- man versus man, man versus nature, man versus beast."

It wouldn't mind a little network versus network action, either.

Issue date: August 29, 2005

[RowdyFan42]

I don't think they were being literal with the name. It actually seemed like a reference to the description they gave of old-school ESPN: "If you were perspiring and had an opponent, chances were the folks in Bristol, Conn., would put you on the air."

[aylbert]

I don't think they were being literal with the name.  It actually seemed like a reference to the description they gave of old-school ESPN:  "If you were perspiring and had an opponent, chances were the folks in Bristol, Conn., would put you on the air."

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I would have agreed if it was "recast themselves as a sweat network" not

"the Sweat Network." Whatever Im glad if im wrong, cause I hate the name