Sports Illustrated and CNN Will Launch 24-Hour Sports Channel

Cable News Network and Sports Illustrated, banking on the combined power of the Turner and Time Warner media empires, will launch a 24-hour, all-sports cable news channel in December.

“It’s a partnership between the most respected name in TV news and the most respected name in sports journalism, coming together to create a world-class sports channel,” SI-TV President Ted Shaker said.

The announcement was made in Atlanta on Friday after directors of Turner Broadcasting System Inc., which owns CNN, approved the launch. The new channel will be called CNN-SI.

Although neither Turner nor Sports Illustrated executives would speculate on anticipated initial viewership or program content, the network will have enormous resources on which to draw.

It combines the CNN and Sports Illustrated staffs in an early byproduct of Time Warner Inc.’s $7.5-billion takeover of Turner, which is awaiting federal regulatory approval. Sports Illustrated is a Time Inc. magazine.

“On the Sports Illustrated side, we have about 100 journalists, and virtually all of them will be expected to participate in some fashion in CNN-SI,” said Steve Robinson, Sports Illustrated senior editor.

One programming decision has already been made. There will be no live event coverage. The network will concentrate on news.

“Certainly what CNN and SI are are news services--one print, one TV,” CNN Sports President Jim Walton said. “And we’ll showcase our strength.”

That would keep CNN-SI out of direct competition with ESPN, except in the area of “SportsCenter,” ESPN’s main sports news telecast.

“ ‘SportsCenter’ does a quality job, and we respect the job that John Walsh and his staff do at ESPN,” Walton said. “We will combine our efforts at CNN and SI to cover sports news as well as imaginably using all our resources. We feel we’ll be able to do a very good job of that.”

CNN-SI actually will compete more directly with NewSports, the all-sports cable news channel that is jointly owned by Rainbow Programming Holdings, Liberty Sports and NBC Cable Holdings. NewSports currently is available in about 9 million homes.

“Rainbow and its partners . . . welcome any potential competitors to NewSports,” Rainbow Chief Executive Joshua Sapan said in a statement. “We’re delighted that cable operators, viewers and potential competitors see the sports news environment as a strong and growing niche market.”

Although Rainbow executives publicly welcomed the new channel, a territorial dispute over sports news loomed in the cable industry.

Time Warner and Cablevision, of which Rainbow is a subsidiary, are two of the country’s biggest cable distributors, and they now will be going head to head with competing cable sports news networks.

Meanwhile, Tele-Communications Inc., the nation’s largest cable distributor, has equity ties to both networks, owning a share of Turner Broadcasting as well as Liberty Sports.

Liberty also has ownership ties to Fox, and they are putting together an all-sports cable network as well, using Liberty’s Prime Sports Channels. With major league baseball already among its properties, the new Fox-Liberty cable network will compete more directly with ESPN.

“Certainly, there will be competition out there,” CNN’s Walton said. “But we’ve talked to a lot of our affiliates and they’re very receptive. We realize there are a lot of challenges ahead.”

Time Warner shares fell $1.125 to close at $43.875 on the NYSE; Turner Class A shares fell 25 cents to close at $28.125 on the Amex.