This may get confusing, but NewSport is here. And you probably didn’t even notice it creep onto your cable system early Sunday morning.
“NewSport Wrap-Up,” carried on SportsChannel, was the debut offering by the former SportsChannel America. SportsChannel Chicago will carry NewSport programming until a separate cable outlet can be cleared on local cable systems.
In addition to the 1 a.m. Sunday program, SportsChannel Chicago will be producing a 5 p.m. “NewSport Tonight” news-and-previews show Monday through Friday from its Oak Park studios starting Feb. 14. Dyrol Joiner will anchor. In exchange, at least for now, NewSport outlets around the country also will carry the 10 p.m.”SportsChannel Report.”
“We’re very excited about it,” says SportsChannel Chicago boss Jim Corno, who expects the NewSport channel locally to double as a SportsChannel-Plus outlet. “There’s a real market for this (an all-sports news channel). ESPN2 hasn’t done a lot different-it’s events.”
Whether operators will take to another basically basic cable channel (see next item) remains to be seen. But Corno is optimistic.
“Everybody is going to have to find ways to make these things work,” he says. “We haven’t begun talking to operators about NewSport recently. People will be able to see elements of NewSport through SportsChannel Chicago. NewSport already has the distribution SportsChannel America had,” which Corno estimates at between 7 million and 8 million homes nationwide.
Bad news: While several TCI systems around the suburbs are now carrying ESPN2, Chicago Cable viewers are not as lucky. Not only did they miss last Thursday’s Duke-North Carolina basketball showdown, but, according to company officials, they’ll be missing a lot more than just Wednesday night’s Arkansas-Kentucky game. While the TCI subsidiary plans to add more channels in April, an official says they’ll only be premium channels. Why TCI would keep ESPN2 off its largest system in the state appears to be a matter of greed. And Congress thought it had resolved all this nonsense last year. Guess again.
Take a look: Nicholas Kent, producer of the PBS documentary “Power Plays” that begins at 9 p.m. Monday on WTTW-Ch. 11, says he got the idea for the six-hour series that takes an inside look at business in sports while working on “Naked Hollywood,” his highly acclaimed look at the movie business.
“We were filming a sequence at (the Great Western Forum) because we were trying to track down the agent, Mike Ovitz,” Kent says from his London home. “The seating plan of the Forum was kind of a map of Hollywood power. The more powerful you were, the closer to the court you sat. Ovitz, Jack Nicholson, Kevin Costner were all seated on the court. So the starting point of `Power Plays’ was to look at sports as a mirror of American society. And also to look at the parallels between the world of entertainment and the sports world.
“(NBA Commissioner) David Stern, in particular, talks about modeling the NBA on Disney. There are tremendous parallels between sports and Hollywood. And one of the closest parallels is the world of the agent.”
Ah, the agent. While most Chicagoans will zoom in on the opening segment featuring Michael Jordan and local prep star Michael Herman, it’s “The Big Pitch” (9 p.m. Tuesday) that says the most about how corrupt today’s sports scene has become.
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“When someone is successful in Hollywood, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re secure,” says Kent. “There’s a tremendous air of paranoia in that town because these stars, producers and directors are always fearful their next movie will be a box-office flop. Whereas in sports, the people are much more self-assured. The only similarity are with the agents. They’re exploiting the fact you have these two tribes-players and owners-who don’t speak the same language.”
Kent spent much time in Chicago preparing the series, which took two years to put together. Besides Jordan, there are pieces on Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn talking about the White Sox business dealings.
“It really struck me in Chicago the way the local press covers high school sports,” Kent says, “almost as if it’s professional.”
Random thoughts: Shame on SportsChannel for pulling the plug on the conclusion of the De Paul-St. Louis telecast Sunday for the start of the Blackhawks-Mighty Ducks game. . . . How bad are things going for CBS when another network’s analyst, NBC’s Johnny Miller, wins your first golf telecast of the year? . . . CBS’ pairing of analysts Billy Packer and Al McGuire (or, as McGuire said, “two guys who think they know it all”) on Sunday’s Purdue-Iowa game, however, proved you don’t always need a play-by-play man for an entertaining telecast. . . . What’s the country coming to when news about a figure skater pre-empts a Saturday afternoon basketball telecast?
Programming notes: SportsChannel and WMVP-AM join forces to cover Michael Jordan’s baseball workout at 10:30 a.m. Monday, with Steve Kashul, Dyrol Joiner and Julie Judelson reporting from IIT.