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Tennis Channel nets 15-year deal

Time Warner makes a commitment of unusual length for the channel, slated to start in the fall.

By JOHN C. COTEY, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published June 18, 2002

The concept, David Meister says, is a good one -- non-stop, around-the-clock tennis coverage, with lessons, match coverage and player features all rolled into one channel.

Need proof? Meister points out Monday's announcement that Time Warner Cable signed an affiliation agreement with the Tennis Channel, a 15-year deal to launch the channel on all its systems.

"It's tremendous certification," said Meister, chairman and CEO of the Tennis Channel. "We have demonstrated to the satisfaction of (Time Warner) that it's not only going to be a great service, but we're committed to it."

The length of the deal is unprecedented in a business where most deals rarely exceed five years, Meister said, and shows Time Warner's confidence in the channel.

"Time Warner is buying into, first, the concept that there's 70-million adult Americans who are into tennis," Meister said. "Secondly, they liked our vision and they way tennis will be presented ... and thirdly, they looked at the people who are involved and know, you guys have done this before."

Time Warner, the industry's second-largest cable operator, will offer the channel primarily on its digital sports tier, which also includes the Golf and Speed channels.

Time Warner has about 270,000 digital cable subscribers out of about 900,000 customers in the Tampa Bay area. An expected 20-million homes will have digital service by the end of the year.

No financial terms were announced, and neither was a launch date. Meister, a former executive with HBO Sports and Cinemax, and former singer-songwriter turned tennis teacher and entrepeneur Steve Bellamy announced plans for the Tennis Channel at last year's U.S. Open.

An expected launch date this summer already has been pushed back, but Monday's announcement means the channel probably will meet a fall launch date.

Though Meister said his channel won't be patterned exactly after the Golf Channel, a success since its 1996 inception, it proves their model can work.

"We're very familiar with the Golf Channel, but it's not that we said let's do something (like it)," Meister said. "But they gave certification throughout the industry a couple of years ago that a channel devoted to one sport like racing, golf or tennis can succeed."

That should be good news for tennis fans, who have been unhappy about the shoddy network coverage of their sport, including this year's tape-delayed French Open women's final between Venus and Serena Williams.

Meister and Bellamy already have lined up a pretty impressive backbone for their channel, with key investors such as Universal CEO Frank Biondi, Columbia Pictures, HBO, global sports marketing company IMG (which represents Tiger Woods and Muhammad Ali) and Pete Sampras.

The channel's advisory board includes important tennis figures Billie Jean King, Brad Gilbert, ATP board member Charlie Pasarell, Tennis Week magazine publisher Gene Scott and Tennis magazine publisher Jeff Williams.

-- Information from other news organizations was used in this report.

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