Henry Schleiff, chairman and CEO of Court TV, is relinquishing the latter title at the behest of Time Warner, which is expected to assume full ownership of the cable network.

Schleiff, who has been the top executive at Court TV since 1998, will retain his chairman title. But the industry veteran told his management team this week that Time Warner chief operating officer Jeffrey Bewkes informed him he would lose the CEO designation, sources said.

Bewkes' own cable division, Turner Entertainment Group, is in line to control of Court TV once Liberty Media Corp. divests its 50% stake as part of a larger transaction between the companies said to involve an ownership transfer of the Atlanta Braves baseball team.

Schleiff, 58, was elevated to chairman of Court TV in 1999, after coming on as president and CEO the previous year. He came over from executive vp at Studios USA. He also previously served at Universal Television Group, Viacom and HBO.

Still to be determined is whether the rest of Schleiff's management team at Court TV will stay on once Liberty is out of the picture. Top execs who might be updating their resumes include Art Bell, president and chief operating officer; Marc Juris, general manager, and Charlie Collier, executive vp and general manager of advertising sales.

When cable groups absorb new assets, redundancies in all sorts of departments are typically eliminated in the name of cost cutting. A significant portion of Court TV's 400-plus employees could be pink slipped.

Turner already has a well-entrenched executive team in place headed by chairman and CEO Phil Kent and president Mark Lazarus, that might have little room for new blood from Court TV.