Tele-Communications Inc. systems in Dallas and Reno, Nev.,
are switching out Country Music Television for Great American Country this month.
Jones International Inc.-owned GAC expects to gain more
than 1 million subscribers from mid-November to year-end, network officials said last
week.
TCI Cablevision in Dallas will change out CBS Cable-owned
CMT for GAC Dec. 21, putting GAC on in 450,000 homes, according to GAC president Jeff
Wayne. A CMT spokesman, however, said the network is only in 285,000 homes in Dallas, so
that's all that it is losing in that market.
A spokeswoman for TCI in Dallas said the system is
instituting a number of changes to its channel lineup, which will be announced this week,
and the addition of GAC is just one of them.
TCI in Reno, with roughly 100,000 subscribers, replaced CMT
with GAC Nov. 17. The region involved includes Reno, Carson City and Vacaville, Nev.
"They're local decisions based on the style and
content of the network," a TCI spokesman said.
Throughout the past year, operators in a number of markets
-- including Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, and Overland Park, Kan. -- have dropped CMT
for GAC in the duel of the competing country-music-video networks. TCA Cable TV Inc. and
Rifkin & Associates Inc. also replaced CMT with GAC across their systems.
From mid-November through the end of the December, GAC will
have gained about 1 million new subscribers, Wayne said. The network will end the year at
6.6 million subscribers, or 1 million ahead of its year-end target of 5.5 million.
"We're delighted," Wayne said.
CMT is also gaining some markets. In late December, Time
Warner Cable in Rochester, N.Y., will add CMT to its lineup. That system has 70,000
subscribers, and the launch will put CMT on throughout upstate New York, the CMT spokesman
said.
