Espn Plans Sports News Network
Whatever you do, don’t call it ESPN3! “We wouldn’t like that at all,” ESPN president and CEO Steve Bornstein said. “We have other plans for ESPN3, but we’re not talking about that today.”
Monday, ESPN announced its empire is getting bigger. It just bought 22 acres across the street in Bristol, Conn.; work is nearly complete on more than 80,000 square feet of new office and production space, and, oh yes, there’s a new network.
On Nov. 1, ESPN will launch a 24-hour, all sports news network called ESPNEWS, which Bornstein calls “a logical extension of our franchise.”
ESPN hasn’t released programming details, but executive editor John Walsh said ESPNEWS will be better able to track breaking news stories than either ESPN or ESPN2 because it won’t be locked into other programming.
“If we were around today, we could be talking about Marge Schott or Albert Belle, or John Calipari’s move to the Nets, or Michael Jordan, or the NHL Cinderella story. And in two weeks, the Michael Irvin trial is coming up,” Walsh said. “There are numerous topics.”
ESPN said the network would feature scores, highlights, analysis, interviews, live press conferences, and statistics, as well. ESPN will hire a separate staff for ESPNEWS, but some announcers could be used on both.
“We’ve done some pretty extensive and exhaustive market research and found that our viewers want a new sports news network, and they want it from ESPN,” Bornstein said.
In February, CNN and Sports Illustrated announced a collaboration on a similar project, CNN-SI, which is expected to launch in December. It was the first major move announced after Turner Broadcasting and Time Warner agreed to their merger. CNN is a Turner enterprise, while Time Warner owns SI.
Bornstein said timing of the ESPNEWS launch had nothing to do with the planned CNN-SI launch a month later.
“We’ve been planning this for quite some time, independent of anything anybody else is doing out there,” Bornstein said.
Both new networks will compete directly with NewSport, a joint operation of Rainbow Programming Holdings, Liberty Sports and NBC Cable Holdings, currently in 9 million homes.
ESPN reaches more than 68 million American homes, or just about every home with access to cable TV, while ESPN2 just topped 33 million. Plans are to package all three networks together, with incentives, in an effort to sell ESPNEWS and ESPN2 to new affiliates.
The question is, will anybody watch?
“That same question was asked 15 years ago when cable was in its infancy,” Bornstein said. “I see the same thing happening as we look into our crystal ball over the next 10-15 years.”
Out takes
CBS Sports producer-director Frank Chirkinian, who just turned 70 last week, has been given the PGA of America’s 1996 Distinguished Service Award for his work in pioneering golf coverage.
Chirkininian directed the first televised PGA Championship in 1958 for CBS.
NBC’s rating for the first two games of the NBA Finals between Chicago and Seattle are up 14 percent over last year and are the second highest ever. Friday night’s Game 2 did a 13.9 and 27 share, while the two-game average was 15.3. The highest two-game Nielsen average ever was 15.7 for Chicago-Phoenix in 1993.
Also, NBC said its preliminary rating figure for Sunday night’s Game 3 was 17.6, up 11 percent over last year’s Orlando-Houston Game 3 overnight.
HBO will replay Oscar De La Hoya’s bloody, four-round victory over Julio Cesar Chavez Saturday night as the final attraction in a card that also includes two live fights, one involving Roy Jones Jr. The card starts at 6:30 p.m. PDT.
“There are some great slow motion, reverse angle replays that show De La Hoya just exploding on Chavez,” HBO Sports spokesman Ray Stallone said. “And when Dr. Flip Hermanski jumped into the ring to stop it, he just happened to do it right next to one of our microphones, so we’ve got some very dramatic audio as well.”