<p>Its mismatched lineup features shows on Southern foods, music and attractions along with some live Atlanta sporting events, and a healthy dose of old movies and TV reruns.</p><p>Its original programming ranges from "Junkin'," which follows a goofy pair of hosts shopping at flea markets throughout the South, to "Rick & Bubba Show," a studio viewing of the syndicated morning radio show with comic bits including hamburger-eating contests and frozen turkey tosses.</p><p>It's Turner South, the nation's only regional cable network, and if you haven't surfed cable television channels in the South in recent years, you've probably missed it.</p><p>The channel has been called the on-air scratch-and-dent sale of the Turner Broadcasting empire, but as it celebrates its fifth year of programming this month, its executives say Turner South is about to hit its stride.</p><p>Available in just six states and 7.3 million homes, its best known by its viewers for its odd mix of programs. Channel-surfers who stumble across Turner South could find themselves in the middle of an Atlanta Braves game, an "In the Heat of the Night" rerun, or an old movie from the Turner library, including such urban fare as 1994's "Low Down Dirty Shame," starring Keenen Ivory Wayans.</p><p>See the confusion?</p><p>The network, only recently tracked by Nielsen because of its small coverage area, has yet to turn a profit. Executives insist Turner South is doing better than hoped and could become profitable in a matter of months.</p><p>"We're doing very well. We've gone though the same life cycle as every network," said David Rudolph, a Turner executive who came up with the idea for Turner South when in the shower one morning and now runs the network.</p><p>Analysts say Turner South is a bold experiment that could one day reward the cable giant.</p><p>"It's certainly not a big hit, but for Turner, it's fine. It's sort of a new business model, that you can regionalize. I congratulate them for surviving," said Marc Berman, a television analyst for Media Week Online.</p><p>Turner South was created for two reasons. First, a baseball broadcasting dispute in the late 1990s forced TBS to slash the number of Braves games it aired, from 125 to 90 per season. That came about the same time Turner was acquired by Time Warner, giving Turner networks a huge library of old movies.</p><p>Turner executives brainstormed ideas for a new cable network to take the movies and Braves leftovers, plus air the games of a new hockey team acquired by Turner, the Atlanta Thrashers.</p><p>So Turner South was born. Rudolph planned a re-creation of the old TBS SuperStation, which in its early days had a distinct Southern identity with Braves games, wrestling matches and frequent airings of "The Andy Griffith Show." TBS now is a general entertainment network that shows mostly comedy movies and syndicated sitcoms.</p><p>"TBS had grown so far from its original stuff, and we wanted to go back and re-create TBS at its roots," said Rudolph, who originally called his network TBS2.</p><p>But Turner South struggled. Distribution was secured in just Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. (The network is now available in parts of North Carolina, too.) Advertising was another tough sell, the coverage area being too little for some national campaigns but far too large for local cable advertisers.</p><p>Things picked up when Turner South started beefing up its original programming. The network is now 50 percent original, with some shows posting solid performances in the markets where they compete.</p><p>Among the bright spots are "Rick & Bubba Show," the taping of the radio show out of Birmingham, Ala., and "Junkin'," where the young hosts drive an El Camino to sales looking for quirky items they then sell on eBay.</p><p>Turner South's director of original programming, John Parry, came up with the idea for "Junkin'" but didn't realize how many people liked the show until the network launched a tour to promote its shows this summer.</p><p>"We were astounded by the response," Parry said. "'Junkin" does extremely well for us, especially when you consider it's just junk on TV."</p><p>The next phase will be original documentaries on Southern topics such as the civil rights movement or blues music.</p><p>"Before we were completely dependent on channel-surfing," Rudolph said. "Now we're starting to have appointment viewing."</p><p>As long as Turner has shows and movies to slap on Turner South, there's no reason the company shouldn't keep running it, said Berman, the media analyst.</p><p>"They have the luxury of having all this inventory, so for Turner this is just another platform. They can keep this going for a long time," he said.</p><p>___</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>HASH(0x2857090)</p>
