NewSport

NewSport/American Sports Classics
Launched	1993
Closed	1998
Owned by	Cablevision NBC Liberty Media
Slogan	"As It Happens"
Country	United States
Language	American English
Headquarters	New York
Replaced by	American Sports Classics
Sister channel(s)	SportsChannel

NewSport was a 24 hour sports news channel that was a joint venture of Cablevision's Rainbow Media, NBC, and Liberty Media.^[1] NewSport debuted in 1993, predating ESPNews by 3 years. However, its growth was slow as it was picked up by few cable systems besides Cablevision, which owned part of both SportsChannel and NewSport. Ironically even Cablevision did not give the network full-time coverage as it shared a channel with The Weather Channel on some of their systems. At its peak NewSport had only about 10 million subscribers. Eventually NewSport's slow growth and lack of viewers, combined with the wide distribution and success of ESPNEWS, resulted in the shutdown of NewSport on July 9, 1997.

NewSport developed a unique sports ticker, known as the "NewSport Score Box", in 1995, which appeared in the lower corner of the screen, and aired original shows like NewSport Talk, NewSport Journal, NewSport Tonite and Scoreboard Central.

American Sports Classics

American Sports Classics was a short-lived 24 hour sports nostalgia service channel that replaced NewSport on July 9, 1997. Like NewSport, ASC was unable to stand up to competitors, specifically Classic Sports Network (which later became ESPN Classic). ASC featured more biographical and magazine type shows, in contrast to Classic Sports Network, which at the time showed mostly classic games and events. This was due to a failure to obtain rebroadcast rights. ASC ceased operations in mid-1998, shortly after SportsChannel discontinued operations.

References

1. ^ http://www.variety.com/article/VR110057.html?categoryid=30&cs=1