Tennis Channel delayed, won't broadcast San Jose, Memphis
By Matthew Cronin
tennisreporters.net
The much ballyhooed launch of The Tennis Channel has been delayed again, this time at least until April.
As a result, The Tennis Channel will not broadcast coverage from two February tournaments it owns rights to _ San Jose and Memphis. The Tennis Channel is also unlikely to broadcast from two March tournaments it owns rights to _ Scottsdale and Delay Beach.
"While we wanted to get the channel up in San Jose, we never pinpointed an exact date. Although I don't want to give an exact date, broadcasting Monte Carlo (April 14-40) seems pretty doable," Tennis Channel president Steve Bellamy told tennisreporters.net, even though that he told Tennisweek.com last summer, "We're going to launch in December [2002]."
The Tennis Channel owns the rights to '03 Tennis Masters Series tournaments in Europe, including Monte Carlo, Rome (May 5-11), Hamburg (May 12-18, Madrid (Oct. 13-19) and Paris (Oct. 27-Nov. 2).
Rumors have been circulating that the proposed 24-hour-a-day Tennis Channel is having funding problems, but Bellamy said that things are going swimmingly.
"We have significant investors in the Tennis Channel who are stratospherically wealthy. They release money based on certain benchmarks. Once we hit those benchmarks, the floodgates open."
The Tennis Channel, which already has deals with cable operators AOL Time Warner and NCTC, is currently negotiating with other companies such as San Diego and Orange County's Cox Cable and AT&T. Bellamy also said the company is fine-tuning satellite deals.
"From the beginning, people told me launching this winter was very optimistic, so I'm not upset about it," Bellamy said. "There are a lot of hurdles we have to jump over."
The Tennis Channel also owns rights to the WTA tournaments in Sarasota at the end of March, the Family Circle Cup in Charleston, S.C. in early April and the men's clay court tournament in Houston, Texas, at the end of April. Whether the company gets on the air and manages to send crews to broadcast those tournaments is in question.
The Tennis Channel plans to devote 40 percent of its content to live tournament tennis, 40 percent to instructional tennis, resorts and equipment telecasts and 20 percent to tennis news and player profiles.
I'm beginning to think TTC will never happen
