Today marks the onset of a new era for Northern California sports fans as Comcast SportsNet Bay Area debuts "SportsNet Central," a half-hour sports news program devoted solely to Bay Area sports. The show will air every night at 6, 10:30 and midnight and will provide news, highlights, interviews and features.

"Comcast SportsNet has given us all of the tools to do something very special for a market that I truly believe is starved for what we're about to bring," Comcast SportsNet Bay Area news director Chris Olivere said. "We're going to run the gamut from A to Z of everything in the Bay Area."

The new show is similar to ones Comcast SportsNet already has running in a handful of other major markets across the country, such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Comcast purchased a majority share of Fox Sports Net Bay Area in 2007 and changed the name to Comcast SportsNet Bay Area. The network then invested in a 37,000-square-foot newsroom and studio in downtown San Francisco and hired close to 100 new employees for positions both in front of the camera and in production.

All of that was in preparation for today.

"If the Giants are playing the Dodgers, we'll have in-depth highlights and breakdowns and we'll be in the locker room," Olivere said. "If there is a local story that deserves coverage, you can rest assured we'll be on top of it.

Fans have never had that opportunity here. Rather than getting three minutes a night (on local newscasts), they're getting several hours of live television."

CSN Bay Area carries Giants, Warriors and Sharks games and airs pregame and postgame shows around those telecasts. The network is also today debuting "Chronicle Live," an hour-long sports talk show hosted by Greg Papa that will feature a rotating panel of experts to discuss the issues and topics pertinent to Bay Area sports. The show runs Monday through Friday at 5 p.m. and 11 p.m.

At the beginning of this decade, Fox Sports Net Bay Area tried its luck at a daily sports news show but it never took off and was canceled in less than two years. CSNBA is confident this product will be different, most notably because the crew will be locally based. FSN's show was aired out of Chicago.

Many of CSNBA's reporters and anchors also have Bay Area ties.

"Even though their coverage was not bad by any stretch, it does not replace being part of the community and having that commitment to be part of the community," Olivere said. "You're not really understanding the pulse of that region. The majority of our staff are born, raised or have local ties. These people are getting paid to do something they have been passionate about, or in some cases, obsessive about for their entire lives."

CSNBA's staff seems as ready as it can be to make an impact in the local sports landscape. The network has invested a substantial chunk of resources and money into the product and the crews have spent the past couple of weeks going through real-time dress rehearsals every night.

Still, since what CSNBA is about to unveil is new to the market, there remains some uncertainty about how it will be received by the viewing public. That's why the network feels it's imperative to put out a good product at the outset.

"I don't know that we can win in the first couple of weeks, but we can lose in the first couple of weeks," CSNBA general manager Ted Griggs said.

The network's decision to start today makes sense. The A's begin the 2009 season tonight, the Giants get under way Tuesday and the Sharks are about to embark on a potentially historic Stanley Cup playoff run.

"When we start, we have to look like we've been doing it for 20 years," Olivere said. "You don't get a second chance to make a first impression. We need to come on the air and be clean, credible and compelling from night one. We won't get a second opportunity to do that."

CSN's decision to invest so much in the new programming is quite a contrast from what most companies are doing nationally in this economy, especially considering CSN has another affiliate, Sacramento-based Comcast SportsNet California, less than 100 miles away.

"We're just really lucky to be able to have the resources, especially in this economy, that Comcast is providing us," Griggs said. "I almost wish I could say we don't have some of the technology they've given to us so we'd have a built-in excuse. We have everything we need to do a great job."