Speedvision, Outdoor Life ink pact with TW cable

Deal spells subscriber increase for sister channels

By JOHN DEMPSEY

NEW YORK -- Speedvision and its sister channel Outdoor Life Network have landed a deal with a number of Time Warner cable systems that will add hundreds of thousands of subscribers to each network over the next few years.

The deal covers both analog and digital carriage, depending on the needs of the individual Time Warner cable system. "We're on target with our projections," said Roger Williams, chief operating officer of both networks.

Speedvision said it now reaches about 20 million subscribers, and Outdoor Life is available in 17 million homes. The networks pay cable operators a modest fee to get carriage (between $2 and $3 a subscriber).

Speedvision and Outdoor Life are free to the cable system for the first year. The cable system then gets a negotiable discount in the license fees it pays the networks, starting in the second year, if the system carries both of them. Otherwise, each network charges a monthly fee of about 11¢ per subscriber, with an extra penny tacked on for each additional year of a five- to seven-year contract.

The networks are owned by four cable giants: Fox/Liberty Networks, Media One, Comcast Corp. and Cox Communications.