Plans called for TNT to offer 250 nights of original and live sports programming per year within five years of its debut. On March 7, Turner Broadcasting System's board of directors unanimously approved Ted Turner's plan for Turner Network Television, with October 3 as the channel's proposed launch date. However, the proposed launch date, originally slated for July 1 of that year, was delayed because it would have presented several issues, including obtaining channel clearances and assembling a programming schedule in such a contracted timespan, and the unfavorability of promoting a service during the summer (when television networks typically programmed reruns). Cable systems were given the option of substituting a superstation (other than SuperStation TBS) or other out-of-market television station for TNT upon launch without incurring any copyright liabilities for carriage of the distant signal for the second half of 1988. įormer logo, used from October 3, 1988, until Jfrom 1992 onward, this logo was accompanied by a yellow oval background.īy February 1988, Turner had disclosed that TNT's programming would focus around movies from the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) film library – which Turner acquired as a result of his 1986 sale of the MGM film studio to Kirk Kerkorian – and major television events, including made-for-cable movies, high-profile specials, sports events, documentaries and miniseries. Turner also entered into preliminary discussions with NBC to purchase a 25% stake in the company, with the prospect of using NBC's financial and programming expertise to get TNT off the ground however, such discussions terminated by January 1988 without a resolution. Turner Broadcasting struggled to obtain carriage commitments from various cable providers to commence with the proposed service's launch plans, putting uncertain TNT's fate. Turner originally estimated that TNT would be offered to cable systems at a monthly rate of 10¢ per subscriber at launch (increasing to 20¢ per subscriber per month by March 1989), with 10 minutes of advertising being carried each hour (three to four minutes of which would be given to prospective cable systems for local advertising). On October 6, 1987, Ted Turner announced the launch of Turner Network Television (TNT)-his fifth basic cable network venture, following SuperStation TBS, CNN, Headline News (now HLN) and the short-lived Cable Music Channel-in a keynote address at the opening day of the Atlantic Cable Show in Atlantic City, New Jersey, stating that the channel would center around major television events. (The agreement with the NFLPA originally called for 18 games to be broadcast by WTBS on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights during the originally proposed strike season, but was reduced to the exhibition games amid lawsuits filed by the National Football League against Turner Broadcasting and the NFLPA union.) The TNT syndication service also produced and distributed the first Goodwill Games-organized by Ted Turner himself, in response to the Olympic boycotts involving the United States and the Soviet Union of the 19 Summer Olympics-in 1986. The Turner Network Television syndication service launched in 1982 to produce two exhibition games organized by the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) during the NFL strike, which were broadcast on WTBS and its national superstation feed. Prior to the launch of the channel in 1988, the Turner Network Television name had been utilized by the Turner Broadcasting System for an ad hoc syndication service which produced and distributed various sporting events for carriage on Turner's Atlanta, Georgia superstation WTBS (channel 17, now WPCH-TV, which was separated from its national cable feed, TBS, in October 2007) as well as broadcast television stations throughout the United States. See also: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer § MGM Entertainment