Turner Network Television

Turner Broadcasting Announces Appointments: Betty Cohen has been promoted to the newly created positions of president of Cartoon Network Worldwide and Turner Network Television International. Cohen, who had been executive vice president of the Cartoon Network, will continue to oversee domestic operations of the network in addition to taking on the international expansion of both channels.

Here's rooting for a seven-game NBA Eastern Conference final series between Cleveland and Orlando. Not because the teams have played the best basketball ever. It's just that when the East is over, TNT's NBA coverage ends too. No more Reggie Miller pouncing on Charles Barkley's (oversized) body after Barkley had mocked Miller's (oversized) ears when Miller was a kid in Riverside. No more of the authority Doug Collins brings as analyst.

Ray Romano and Mike Royce, partners in the Emmy-winning "Everybody Loves Raymond," will write and executive produce a pilot, "Men of a Certain Age," for TNT, the network has announced. Romano also will star in the project as a divorced father and one of three longtime friends approaching midlife. The project is the latest in TNT's new push to expand its weekday prime- time schedule with original scripted dramas. The cable network has green-lighted "Raising the Bar," a Steven Bochco project starring Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Gloria Reuben and Jane Kaczmarek, and "Truth in Advertising," a series by the team behind its biggest hit, "The Closer."

The Turner Broadcasting System expects to reach agreement within a month to broadcast five major league games per week on Turner Network Television, The Atlanta Constitution reported. TNT, started by Ted Turner last month, reaches 18 million cable television homes and hopes to reach 50 million by 1990. Turner Broadcasting System now broadcasts Atlanta Braves games on its cable-transmitted Superstation TBS. Ted Turner, who has controlling interest in Turner Broadcasting, owns the Braves.

Filming on location in Kenya has begun on "The Ivory Hunters," the first-ever dramatic feature produced by an environmental organization. The action-adventure drama stars John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini and James Earl Jones. The National Audubon Society and Turner Network Television started production Jan. 22 on the film, which concerns one man's crusade to stop poachers from slaughtering elephants for profit.

Turner Network Television--cable mogul Ted Turner's latest offering--announced its debut programming lineup late Wednesday, and it's heavy on movies and series reruns. The TNT 24-hour schedule--to begin broadcasting Oct. 3--will open with "Gone With the Wind." The schedule promises nine movies on weekdays and Sundays and 11 movies on Saturdays. The balance of programming will consist of children's shows, series reruns, Jacques Cousteau specials and Turner's own "Portrait of America."

Ted Turner confirmed Wednesday that his company is talking with NBC about acquiring rights to portions of the Summer Olympics that the network does not plan to broadcast itself. "We are having some discussions, as has been reported," he said. "I don't know what's going to happen. . . . We are having ongoing discussions. That's all I can say." Turner did not make clear where his Turner Broadcasting System would run such programming if NBC agrees to give up a portion of the U.S.

Cable television mogul Ted Turner said Tuesday he wants to join in the contest for the rights to air the 1990 Emmy broadcast--adding yet another suitor for the show, which has received lackluster ratings for the last two years on Fox Broadcasting. But Turner Broadcasting spokeswoman said no official bid for the Emmy broadcast has been made, pending review of the performance on TV of this year's show. (The Aug. 28 program scored a middling 10.

Steven Bochco, one of television's most successful producers but absent from prime time since the spring of 2006, will return this year with a new legal drama for TNT. The cable channel said Thursday it has ordered 10 episodes of "Raising the Bar," a series about lawyers who went to school together but now find themselves working on opposite sides of the aisle. It will star Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Gloria Reuben, Jane Kaczmarek, Teddy Sears and Melissa Sagemiller. Bochco, 64, who created the series with David Feige, previously produced "Hill Street Blues," "L.A.

Walt Disney Co.'s ABC and ESPN and Time Warner Inc.'s TNT agreed Wednesday to pay the National Basketball Assn. $7.4 billion over eight years for rights to televise its games and, in one of the first deals of its kind, stream action on the Internet and mobile devices. The deal, which begins in 2008 and runs through the 2015-16 season, works out to an average of about $930 million a year. That's a 22% increase over the $765-million average under the current agreement, industry sources said.

Not only do hard-core and casual basketball fans watch TNT's studio show "Inside the NBA." So do the players, who aren't always pleased with what they hear and let their feelings be known, almost instantly. The Phoenix Suns' Raja Bell is the latest to vent -- at halftime. And that has helped make the show a much-talked-about hit, one regarded by many as the best sports show of its kind on television. It was Tuesday night, Game 4 of the Western Conference finals.

ABC Sports bypassed the Clipper-Phoenix Sun series, but if TNT executives are disappointed they didn't get a Clipper-Laker matchup in the second round of the NBA playoffs, they weren't saying so Sunday. "While a 'Hallway Series' would have captured a great deal of attention locally, as well as nationally, the Clippers have great underdog appeal," TNT spokesman Jeff Pomeroy said.

When TNT started calling itself the network that "knows drama" four years ago, it set a course that will culminate June 10 with the debut of "Into the West"-- a big, expensive original miniseries the network hopes will be the Great Buffalo of summer television. In six two-hour episodes, the multigenerational saga covers seven decades and follows two families, the wheel-making Wheelers who leave Wheelerton, Va.

After the breast-baring finale of the Super Bowl halftime show, the NBA and broadcast partner TNT are considering implementing a delay system to avoid televising any unexpected incidents at the league's All-Star game on Feb. 15 at Staples Center.

Walt Disney Co.'s ABC and ESPN and Time Warner Inc.'s TNT agreed Wednesday to pay the National Basketball Assn. $7.4 billion over eight years for rights to televise its games and, in one of the first deals of its kind, stream action on the Internet and mobile devices. The deal, which begins in 2008 and runs through the 2015-16 season, works out to an average of about $930 million a year. That's a 22% increase over the $765-million average under the current agreement, industry sources said.

Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment will produce six original television movies for Turner Network Television in an unusual arrangement that will see the formation of a repertory company to appear in original works by top playwrights. The deal was announced Wednesday by TNT at the Western Cable Show in Anaheim. Among the writers involved with the TV project, which will appear under the "Showcase Theater" banner, are Tom Stoppard, John Patrick Shanley, David Henry Hwang and Wendy Wasserstein.

TNT has paired new NBA commentator Doug Collins with play-by-play announcer Kevin Harlan as a broadcast team. TNT's other newcomer, Steve Kerr, will join Marv Albert and Mike Fratello as Jeff Van Gundy's replacement. Van Gundy left TNT to coach the Houston Rockets. Meanwhile, ABC Sports executive producer Mike Pearl has met with Al Michaels to discuss the possibility of the "Monday Night Football" announcer also doing NBA games.

Fox News Channel yielded its position as the most-watched basic cable network in prime time and on a total-day basis last week, the first time that had happened since war in Iraq began in March. TNT, which is televising the NBA playoffs, topped Fox in prime time with 2.5 million viewers during an average minute, with Fox News finishing behind Nickelodeon, both just above 2 million.