New England (the other 50% was owned by the Celtics and the Whalers). The same deal would also give CBS a 50% interest in Rainbow's other networks, then-premium services Bravo and American Movie Classics. The partnership with the Washington Post and CBS would end in 1987 when both companies sold their shares back to Cablevision, citing delays in the deployment of cable television service in New York and other cities as the reason for exiting the partnership. Also, in 1987 SportsChannel Florida was launched, initially with programming from local college teams and out-of-market MLB games that SportsChannel already had rights to through its other networks. While the Florida network got off to a slow start, this proved to be a great move as it gained rights to several expansion teams in the years that followed. The NHL and partnership with NBC In 1988, SportsChannel would make its largest television deal, gaining national television rights for the National Hockey League from ESPN. The three-year $51 million agreement also included rights to playoff games. A national network SportsChannel America (also the new name for the group of networks) was also launched on October 6, 1988 to make the games available to cable subscribers in areas without a SportsChannel affiliate. Maryland-based Home Team Sports and Minneapolis-based Midwest Sports Channel (independently owned and operated despite the similar sounding name) would also sign-up as affiliates. Later that year, Cablevision would also gain a new partner. In December 1988, NBC and Cablevision announced that they would form a joint venture to operate their respective cable networks, including SportsChannel. Through this partnership, SportsChannel launched five additional networks in the Bay Area, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. The partnership also produced the Olympics Triplecast, a pay-per-view service providing additional coverage of the 1992 Summer Olympics. In 1991, the one year-old San Francisco-based SportsChannel Bay Area merged with rival TCI's Pacific Sports Network to become SportsChannel Pacific. This would become the second regional sports network to affiliate both with SportsChannel and the Prime Network (Home Team Sports had done so since 1988). SportsChannel Los Angeles later ceased operations at the end of 1992 due to financial issues, with all of its sports broadcast contracts being acquired by the competing Prime Ticket. Joint-venture with Prime and merger with Fox Sports Net In 1993, Rainbow and Liberty Media formed Prime SportsChannels America, a venture in which the companies pooled programming