All the sports news that's fit to broadcast

Abstract

Another night of sports, not to mention geography, is under way on Ch. 38, as it has been on the Rogers cable system pay- TV since Sept. 1. "The Financial News Network has been going (in the United States) since November, 1981," said Christopher Taylor, the network's director of affiliate relations. "It was only a daytime service until this spring, but we wanted to go 24 hours and we thought, 'What's a good mix?' " The answer, for the network that prides itself...

All the sports news that's fit to broadcast

Saturday, September 28, 1985

CEC JENNINGS

BY CEC JENNINGS TORONTO'S NEWEST sports channel is a different game on weekdays. Two tapes crawl across the bottom of the screen, listing an apparently endless string of mysterious combinations: ALG 21 1/4 . . . NYSE 104.69 and so on.

The face on the screen mentions that "inventory excesses have been worked off," and adds that "at least the downside momentum has passed." The mind boggles, but that is the Financial News Network. At 8 p.m., Score takes over and clarity moves in. One of the crawling lines now reads: AL Toronto 00 Boston 0 . . . NL St. Louis 03 Pittsburgh 1. And the face on the screen, Byron Day's, says, "I don't know if it's within him to win that one elusive major." Day is a host of a sports call-in show, and he is talking to Tom Landeer of Portland, Ore., a caller who asked how he rated Jack Nicklaus's chances of ever winning another top golf tournament. Behind Day is a map of the United States; a dot locates Portland. When Brent Barret calls in, the dot crosses the continent to Cranston, R.I.

Another night of sports, not to mention geography, is under way on Ch. 38, as it has been on the Rogers cable system pay- TV since Sept. 1. "The Financial News Network has been going (in the United States) since November, 1981," said Christopher Taylor, the network's director of affiliate relations. "It was only a daytime service until this spring, but we wanted to go 24 hours and we thought, 'What's a good mix?' " The answer, for the network that prides itself on immediacy, was sports. "Sports starts at 8 p.m. Eastern and runs until 6 a.m.," Taylor said. "On weekends it's all sports from 8 p.m. Friday to Monday at 6 a.m. We have sports trivia, sports talk, college sports and score updates every 20 minutes. We have basketball, tennis and wrestling, and we've got some dart tournaments coming up." It also has Canadian Football League games, all on a delayed basis. "They're popular here," Taylor said, meaning the United States, where FNN goes into 19 million homes, 11 million of which take Score. "Reaction to the CFL is not overwhleming, but it is positive." More of the same is what the CFL wants, an ongoing hope that U.S. exposure might lead to television revenue and make it easier to recruit players. "Originally (the FNN deal) came to us through an agent in Dallas," said CFL commissioner Doug Mitchell. "It's a one- year trial agreement with them." More than money from FNN, Mitchell said, the CFL is looking to keep a toehold in U.S. television, something that would have disappeared if FNN hadn't moved in when ESPN, another U.S. cable network, stepped out.

The games, both he and Taylor said, are supposed to be blacked out in Canada, where the TV rights are held by a brewery. "Occasionally it might happen that they slip through," Mitchell said. During September at least two games, both a week old, popped up on Ch. 38. One of them, in fact, popped up twice.