Sept. 24, 2003
Football: Penguins Part of TFN's "Soft Launch"
Weekend
Baton Rouge, La. – TFN, The Football Network, the
nation’s first cable network devoted
entirely to football, will “soft
launch” on Friday evening, Sept. 26,
and continue with weekend
programming (6 p.m. Friday through
Midnight Sunday EDT) until it moves
into a 24/7 mode of daily
broadcasting in November. The third
game scheduled to be broadcast by
the network is YSU's contest at
Liberty on Saturday night.
The announcement was made by Jerry Solomon, President and
CEO, who said “We expect to launch
in about two million homes and grow
from there. We will be fully
operational from our headquarters in
Baton Rouge, broadcasting from
studios at Louisiana Public
Broadcasting until our own
facilities, 9,000 sq. feet complete
with HD capability, are completed in
the spring.”
TFN has been producing and syndicating live I-AA college
football, and producing two Saturday
morning half-hour programs, “Fantasy
Football 2003” and “Football 101”
which are seen on SPIKE TV (and
later streamed on Yahoo! Sports).
The soft launch will include a
Friday night prep game, Warren
Central (Indianapolis, Ind.) vs.
Carmel (Ind.).
Saturday, Sept. 27, will see a lineup of five I-AA college
games; Brown at Harvard at noon (all
EDT), Rhode Island at Richmond
(Atlantic 10) 3:30 p.m., Youngstown
State at Liberty (Big South) 7 p.m.,
Weber State at Eastern Washington
(Big Sky) at 10:30 p.m., and
Northwestern State at
Northern Iowa
(Gateway) at 1 a.m.
Sunday night will feature coverage of the Canadian Football
League, its first US network
telecast since 1997. The premiere
game will be Calgary at Ottawa to be
presented at 7 PM EDT.
Each evening will feature a one-hour studio show, TFN
Tonight, reviewing news from all
areas of football. (The show will be
abbreviated on Saturday to
accommodate the live game coverage).
“The experience of our production and programming people has
been enormously helpful in keeping
us on the fast track towards these
milestones,” said Rick Gentile,
Senior Vice President, Programming
and Production. “The pace towards
launch has been incredible, working
through construction at our Baton
Rouge headquarters, signing talent,
securing rights, negotiating with
MSOs, meeting with advertisers,
working towards the inaugural
All-Star Classic for I-AA, planning
a spring awards telecast, and
developing original programming. It
has been a remarkable few months for
us, but the culmination of several
years of building towards this day.” |
