The role of Television

Television has helped to build fan bases ever since the 1950's. As much as anything elese, the spread of television images has spurred the global markets for certain sport products such as the NBA, Nike, and Michael Jordan. When the worldwide number of television sets per 100,000 people doubled between 1981 and 1997, it seemed that all sport boats could rise with a surge of viewrs. In the last decade, however, the focus has changed from broad to narrow markets. The success of sport television-think TBS, ESPN, and Fox- and the excess capacity on broadband cable systems has spawned a host of new speciality sport channels. The late 1990's saw the birth of the golf ans speed channels, the Outdoor life Network, and rumors of a tennis channel. The dot-com bust and economic recession did not temper the enthuisiasm of channel builders. By late 2002, a raft of a new cable networks was all the buzz. These incluided Blackbelt TV, the Football Network, the Ice Channel, College Sports Television, NBA TV, and the NFL Channel.

Could the market sustain this competition? Neil Pilson, one-time president of CBS Sports and well-known consultant, thought so. "if you reach 300,000 families who are avid figure skating nuts, your efficiencies are quite strong, even though you're not reaching a large total number", he contended. "You're reaching the committed". But even some new network leaders were hedging their bets. Blackbelt's Wesley Hein admitted thet "peoplewould say maybe it's not the best timing, starting a network in one of the worst advertising markets in years".