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TNT cuts deal for TV golf rights

On the cable television dial, Turner Sports' TNT is a station that you surf by on the way to ESPN, unless something catches your eye.

That something is usually basketball. But even though the NBA put TNT on the sports-television map, the network is proving to be more than just hoops, and is hoping channel surfers begin putting on the brakes.

This week, TNT became one of golf's biggest television players, paying an estimated $30-million (according to reports in USA Today and the New York Times) for exclusive cable TV rights to the British Open through 2006.

TNT will air 28 hours of British Open coverage in 2003, including live weekend coverage with two hours on Saturday and Sunday. It will be the first time a cable network has aired live weekend coverage of the Open.

The deal also includes exclusive cable rights to the Senior British Open and the Women's British Open Championships. TNT has the PGA Championship, the PGA Grand Slam of Golf and the 2003 President's Cup as well.

TNT also shares the second half of the NASCAR season with NBC and boasts college football games, a 30-minute live sports show debuting Oct. 31 called Listen Up! Charles Barkley with Ernie Johnson, Wimbledon coverage and figure skating among its 500 hours of sports programming a year.

TNT does not aspire to be the next ESPN, but it certainly considers the 24-hour sports king its competition and often bids against it for the same events.

"We're choosy but we think we go after highly visible, exclusive events," Turner Sports president Mark Lazarus said.

TNT is unique in that it airs movies and syndicated television series such as Law & Order, ER, NYPD Blue, X-Files and Charmed, with some of sports' biggest events sprinkled in.

And that's fine with Lazarus.

"We're not the default channel for sports and I think that's okay," Lazarus said. "But ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox aren't default channels either. In that way, we're set up like a regular broadcast channel."

Lazarus says TNT's mixture allows it to market sporting events as specials, and that's attractive to viewers and advertisers. He also has a theory that he is trying to commission a study for -- one that proves that viewers who go to a station for a particular event are more in an "active" watching mode, while those who stumble across sports on stations such as ESPN and Fox Sports Net are "not fully engaged" and likely to disengage after a brief time.

Lazarus said his station will continue to add events, but only those that fit into the station's overall theme of quality drama: "We look for sports that matter and dramatic sports."

In other words, no bowling, billiards or strongman competitions.

"We'll continue to add events that fit (our) criteria," Lazarus said. "We're interested in other things. We've got the NBA six more seasons, NASCAR four more seasons, golf through 2009 (British Open) and 2011 (PGA Championship and Grand Slam). I think we've made some strategic long-term investments."

AROUND THE DIAL: The Bucs will not be on Fox Sunday, as CBS sends its team of Dick Enberg, Dan Dierdorf and Bonnie Bernstein to the game against Cleveland. ... The NASCAR prerace show on NBC has beaten CBS's NFL Today each of the past two weeks in national ratings. Last weekend in Tampa/St. Petersburg, NASCAR prerace won 4.5-0.9. ... GameDay will show a sample of ESPN's reality documentary series -- The Season -- for a peek at how FSU prepared for its game at No. 1 Miami. There also will be features on Miami running back Willis McGahee and a tongue-in-cheek investigation by Curry Kirkpatrick into the whereabouts of the Mississippi goal posts, which were torn down after the Rebels win over Florida Saturday. ... On the New American Sportsman at 8 p.m. Monday, there is much promise for hi-jinks as Roy Jones Jr. hunts antelope in New Mexico. ... SPORTS iN DEMAND is offering a free preview of its NHL Center Ice package to digital cable subscribers through Tuesday. Viewers who order the package during this time will receive a $20 discount on the subscription price of $159.

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