Negotiations Continue for Sale of Z Channel

Negotiations for the purchase of the Z Channel by Cable-vision Systems Corp., a New York-based cable operator that owns a network of regional sports channels, are continuing, but no deal has been finalized, a spokesman for Z Channel president Jack Williams said Thursday.

Cablevision’s SportsChannel America, a recently launched sports network with aspirations of competing with ESPN, owns sports channels in New York, New England, Chicago, Florida and Philadelphia. The Z Channel, which added sporting events to its longstanding movie fare last April--including Dodgers, Angels, Clippers and Loyola Marymount games, plus boxing and wrestling--would seem to be the perfect addition to SportsChannel’s network.

Dan Martins, a spokesman for SportsChannel, would say only that there have been talks between Cablevision and Z. He said comments about what the sale might mean to the future of Z’s programming were premature.

Reports have suggested that SportsChannel is likely to eliminate movie programming as Z Channel subscribers have come to know it since the channel’s birth in 1974, in favor of full-time sports and business programming. Cablevision recently announced that it had arranged to receive such programming from NBC’s new cable channel. The most likely programming lineup for all of SportsChannel’s regional outlets once these deals go into effect would be news and business programing during the morning and early afternoon and regional and national sporting events in the evenings and on weekends.

For now, however, the Z Channel will continue to air movies and local sports as usual.