Tennis Channel is an American sports-oriented digital cable and satellite television network owned by the Sinclair Television Group subsidiary of the Sinclair Broadcast Group. It is devoted to events and other programming related to the game of tennis, along with other racquet sports such as badminton, pickleball, and racquetball. Launched on May 15, 2003, the channel is headquartered in Culver City, California, and produces its programming out of an HD-capable broadcast center in the Los Angeles suburb of Culver City. Ken Solomon serves as the network's Chief Executive Officer. Tennis Channel is available across the United States from most cable providers and on satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network. As of January 2019, the channel has 61.2 million households as subscribers (66.4% of those with cable). History In 2001, Tennis Channel was founded by Steve Bellamy in the shed in his backyard, who soon hired Bruce Rider to head up programming and marketing. A group known as the "Viacom Mafia"—a group that includes Viacom's former CEOs, Philippe Dauman and Frank Biondi, and current CEO, Thomas E. Dooley—became involved in the founding of the channel. This group invested and rounded up additional investors, Bain Capital Ventures, J.P. Morgan Partners, Battery Ventures, Columbia Capital, Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, who as a group invested about $100 million. These founders felt with other single sports channel like the Golf Channel succeeding with a mostly male demographic and tennis having viewer of both sexes and of a desirable high-end demographic that a tennis channel would draw in advertisers. The channel was launched in early-2003, with its first live event being a Fed Cup tie in Lowell, Massachusetts in April.Barry MacKay was one of the original Commentators. In 2005, Tennis Channel acquired the ATP Tour's Franklin Templeton Tennis Classic in Scottsdale (which it had held the television rights to) from IMG, and moved it to Las Vegas as the Tennis Channel Open in 2006. Tennis Channel announced plans to hold women's and junior events alongside it. In 2005, after struggling viewership (having only reached a subscriber base of 5 million by 2006), attributed to a lack of coverage of high-profile tournaments (such as the Grand Slam), the channel's David Meister was replaced by Ken Solomon. On February 1, 2006, Tennis Channel became a charter member of the new Association of Independent Programming Networks. Tennis Channel's senior vice president of distribution Randy Brown was a co-founder