By FRANK SWERTLOW
Staff Reporter
Media executive Barry Diller has chosen local professional sports as the cornerstone of his nascent television empire.
The first sport he has chosen: basketball. The first locale: Miami.
But if the five-year deal cut recently between Diller’s SilverKing Broadcasting and the Miami Heat NBA franchise goes as planned, Diller will look to cut similar deals with other pro teams across the country, including possibly Los Angeles.
“Local sports is an important part of localism,” said Adam Ware, executive vice president of SilverKing Broadcasting, a division of New York-based HSN Inc.
SilverKing decided to initially air basketball games, rather than other professional sports, Ware said, because NBA contests are played throughout three key broadcast months November, February and May when local advertising rates are set, while Major League Baseball teams such as the Miami-based Florida Marlins dominate the little-watched warmer months.
The deal involves SilverKing affiliate WYHS-TV in Miami broadcasting 30 to 40 Heat games a year, beginning with the 1998-99 season.
In April, WYHS will become the first station to switch over to Diller’s new City Vision programming concept, which emphasizes local programming over national shows.
In addition to having an affiliate in Miami, SilverKing has stations in NBA markets like New York, Dallas, Houston, Orlando, Tampa, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Boston. The company is also part owner of a station in St. Louis.
“This deal allows us to do other sports deals in other cities,” said Ware, who works out of SilverKing’s Santa Monica office.
The broadcast and cable rights to the Los Angeles NBA teams have several more years to run before becoming available.
Wade said the second SilverKing affiliate to be switched over to the new City Vision concept will be either Ontario, Calif.-based KHSC-TV Channel 46, or the SilverKing affiliate in San Francisco. That switch is expected some time in 1998.
For now, SilverKing’s primary focus is on making its concept fly in Miami.
“South Florida is a very competitive market,” said Steve Watson, the Heat’s vice president for broadcast. “If they can make this work here, they can make this work anywhere.”
Ware said the Heat deal now makes SilverKing “a player” that advertisers will notice. “It’s not at all unlike what the NFL did for Fox,” he said. “It established credibility.”
Last October, Diller, who is based in New York, bought most of the TV assets of Universal Studios Inc. That $4 billion deal included the highly successful USA cable network. SilverKing also owns 11 stations in 10 major broadcast markets. The cable network and TV stations are part of Diller’s new TV network that will be the basis of a new company to be called The USA Networks.
