TBS Coverage of Goodwill Games to Begin Today

Cable mogul Ted Turner, whose TBS channel today begins 86 hours of coverage of the Goodwill Games, calls the 17-day sports extravaganza “cable television’s largest original programming event ever.” But about 17% of the 54 million cable households that receive TBS--roughly nine million homes--won’t have the opportunity to watch it.

That’s because many cable operators declined to pay a surcharge of between 90 cents and $1.10 per customer assesed by Turner to carry the Goodwill Games. The Olympics-style event, taking place in Seattle and six other Washington state cities, features more than 2,500 of the world’s best athletes from more than 50 nations competing in 21 sports.

TBS officials said that about 95% of their Southern California viewers will see the Goodwill Games. They were unable to specify the local systems that will not be carrying the event, and a random sampling of cable operators contacted by The Times found none that had refused to pay the extra fee.

The cable systems that did opt against the Goodwill Games will get alternate programming from TBS, consisting of old movies.

Turner is charging extra for the games in an effort to cut his losses. Turner said that cable companies will pay $38 million for the games and figures this year’s losses to be at least $10 million on a $180-million budget.

Turner Broadcasting puts the loss for the inaugural Goodwill Games, held in Moscow in 1986, at $24 million. Turner’s plans were far more ambitious then, with 129 hours of coverage, and rights were also sold to broadcast stations throughout the nation, overexposing a product that had a limited audience in the first place. Stations in Boston, Washington, Detroit and Chicago reported ratings of less than 1% for Sunday telecasts.

Turner conceived the Goodwill Games in 1984 as an effort to decrease tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States.