FanDuel Sports Network Southeast
FanDuel Sports Network Southeast
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FanDuel Sports Network Southeast

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FanDuel Sports Network Southeast

FanDuel Sports Network Southeast is an American regional sports network owned by Main Street Sports Group (formerly Diamond Sports Group) and operated as an affiliate of FanDuel Sports Network. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the channel broadcasts regional coverage of sports events throughout the southeastern United States, with a focus on professional sports teams based in Atlanta, Tennessee, and Charlotte.

FanDuel Sports Network Southeast is available on cable providers throughout Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and parts of North Carolina (roughly from Asheville to Charlotte); it is also available nationwide on satellite via DirecTV. The channel's programming reaches an estimated 8.9 million cable and satellite subscribers.

The channel traces its history to Turner South, a cable and satellite television channel that was launched on October 1, 1999, by the Turner Broadcasting System. It was the first regional entertainment network developed especially for viewers in the southern U.S., featuring a mix of movies, comedy and drama series, regional news updates, and unique original programming. The channel also aired professional sports events featuring Atlanta Braves of Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association's Atlanta Hawks, and the National Hockey League's Atlanta Thrashers, all of which were owned by Turner at the network's launch and the former two of which also aired in the Atlanta market and nationwide on Turner-owned TBS.

Turner Broadcasting/Time Warner restricted Turner South's distribution to its designated broadcast territory in the southeastern United States, with satellite providers that carried the channel being required to black out the channel in areas not covered by the ZIP codes in Turner South's coverage area.

News Corporation filed a lawsuit against Turner Broadcasting and its corporate parent Time Warner in a Georgia Superior Court on June 15, 1999, citing that the plans Turner had unveiled to carry sports events on Turner South violated a non-compete agreement that the two companies signed as part of News Corporation's $65 million purchase of the original SportSouth in 1996, which prohibited Turner from launching a regional sports network in the southeastern United States until 2008.

On February 23, 2006, Fox Sports Net's then-parent company News Corporation, looking to further expand its roster of sports teams and events, purchased Turner South for $375 million. The deal included all existing sports contracts, involving teams that sister network-to-be FSN South (now Bally Sports South) also held the regional cable television rights to broadcast.

After the deal was completed, FSN sought a new name for the channel, with network officials eventually chose to rebrand it as SportSouth, after coming up with about 60 different suggestions. The SportSouth name was originally used as the name for what is now Bally Sports South, which was founded by Turner Broadcasting in 1990 and was purchased by News Corporation's Fox Cable Networks unit in 1996, becoming a charter outlet of Fox Sports Net. Under Turner ownership, the original SportSouth carried Braves and Hawks games, as well as NBA games from the Charlotte Hornets, World Championship Wrestling events, college sports and some syndicated programs.

Turner South officially relaunched as SportSouth on October 13, 2006, becoming the 15th regional sports network owned as part of Fox Sports Net; the rebrand took place with its first official event broadcast: an NHL game between the Atlanta Thrashers and the Carolina Hurricanes. The relaunched channel dropped all non-sports entertainment programming, replacing it with other regionally produced programs and national sports news, documentary and magazine programming sourced by FSN. On-air promotions for SportSouth included sports figures native to the South such as Steve Spurrier, Bob Hartley, Bo Jackson and Heath Shuler.

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