Turner Network Television reached agreement yesterday with CBS Sports as the cable carrier of the 1992 and 1994 Winter Games, putting Olympic coverage on cable for the first time.
CBS plans 118 to 120 hours of coverage for each Games—from Albertville, France, in 1992 and from Lillehammer, Norway, in ‘94. TNT—a basic cable service launched last year by Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.—will provide about 50 more hours during each Olympics and also rebroadcast the CBS prime-time Olympic programming at 1 a.m. EST every night.
TNT will pay CBS about a $50 million rights fee covering both Olympic Games, according to CBS Sports President Neal Pilson. CBS is paying $243 million for rights to the 1992 Winter Games and $300 million for the 1994 Games. CBS will sell all national advertising time for TNT’s Olympic Broadcasts and the two networks will share the ad revenues.
“We see the cable package as providing expanded television coverage,” Pilson said from New York. “It will allow the American audience to see events that otherwise would not be televised by CBS.”
“There will be a good cross-section of Olympic events,” said Turner Sports President Terence McGuirk. “Everything will be represented.”
TNT will provide Olympic coverage from 1 to 6 p.m. EST weekdays and from 6 to 7 p.m. weekends. CBS will provide the production feed for the TNT broadcasts. The cable network will use its own on-air talent, with CBS broadcasters also available for TNT’s coverage.
TNT, whose everyday fare largely is older films, is carried in 33 million homes. (Turner’s TBS, by contrast, just crossed the 50 million mark.) TNT “should reach full penetration of the cable industry” by the time of the 1992 Games, McGuirk said.
The CBS-TNT agreement decidedly differs from NBC’s approach with cable for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. NBC has agreed with Cablevision Systems Corp. to make available some programming on pay-per-view television. Cablevision plans to use up to three pay-per-view channels on which cabled viewers who live in pay-per-view areas can tune in to specialized Olympic programming.
“Having a basic cable service [rather than NBC’s pay-per-view approach] will improve the promotion of the Olympics” for CBS, Pilson said.