Sports Service May Be Victim of FNN Sale : Television: While buyer NBC has made no decision, the service duplicates some of CNBC programming.

The Financial News Network’s weekend sports news service is expected to be dropped as part of NBC’s acquisition of the beleaguered cable network.

“I don’t believe there have been specific decisions made, but I think it’s unlikely that we would continue running the sports service,” Joe Rutledge, vice president of corporate communications for NBC, said Friday.

FNN and NBC said Tuesday that they had reached a definitive agreement for the broadcast network to buy most of the cable programming assets of FNN for $105 million. NBC said that it intended to merge its Consumer News and Business Channel with FNN, creating a single cable-TV business news channel available in about 30 million households.

The NBC definitive agreement appeared to scuttle a previous deal with a joint venture formed by Dow Jones and Westinghouse Broadcasting. FNN said that the Dow Jones/Westinghouse offer was not binding.

Although the joint venture would not comment about possible legal action against FNN, Dow Jones and Westinghouse said in a two-page letter to FNN that it was willing to renegotiate and still sought “to consummate the closing of our purchase as promptly as possible.”

John Loesing, an FNN sportscaster since the unit opened in 1985, said that he is pessimistic about its future should the sale to NBC go through.

“It’s probably not good news, considering that CNBC has its own weekend programming already,” Loesing said. “I think the handwriting is on the wall and the ink is dry.”

The FNN: SPORTS service broadcasts 16 hours each Saturday and Sunday, offering sports scores, news, video highlights, features and call-in quizzes and talk shows.

Loesing said that unlike the parent company, which has piled up about $142 million in debts, the sports unit had “been operating in the black for some time,” although some profits were from much-criticized “infomercials”--program-length advertisements--and sponsorship from gambling services shunned by other broadcasters.

Also contributing to this story was Staff Writer John Lippman.