Spaning The Globe For Coverage

The media covering the media took over with the announcement about the owners of the Boston Red Sox buying the Boston Globe. While the concern is understandable at the beginning, this is a story that will eventually play out one way or the other regardless of the initial reaction.
If the readers are not happy with how the news is covered, they'll stop reading and buying. If they are pleased with the content, the Globe will remain a viable entity. Give the readers credit. They'll know if the coverage is biased or slanted, and it will reflect directly.

Plenty of people seem to have overlooked that the Globe was sold by the New York Times Company. The NY Times, of course, reports on the Yankees  and Jets (among other teams and news) to its readers, many of whom don't like the Red Sox or the Patriots. Yet, I don't know of complaints about bias in the NY Times against the Red Sox or Patriots. The Globe is in business to make money, and not to determine reporting policy. Those media members expressing concern about this transaction might be better served to find actual news to report on instead of non-stop rumors and speculation.

While few will admit to the curiousity about Alex Rodriguez and his "comeback" to the Yankees on Monday night (8/5), many were watching. Even though the Yankees were playing the last place White Sox in Chicago, the YES Network telecast, according to the overnight numbers, was the highest rated game of the season thus far. Even in Chicago, the ratings on CSN Chicago were the highest for any prime time telecast this season. (The afternoon Opening Day telecast drew more viewers.)

The TV ratings for local baseball telecasts are definitely being impacted by the division races this season. Last week (7/30), the K.C. Royals drew the 2nd highest ratings ever for a Fox Sports Kansas City telecast, and that game was against the lowly Minnesota Twins. But the Royals were on a big winning streak at the time, and with ratings up more than 40% for the entire first half of this season.

The Cleveland Indians, also in contention in August for the first time in years, have upped their local ratings by more than 30% from last season. Their recent winning streak included two of their highest rated Sports Time Ohio telecasts of the season, and those were against the last place White Sox.

Same story in Pittsburgh with the Pirates holding on to first place. The July 30th ROOT Sports telecast of the Pirates against St. Louis in a battle for first place was the highest rated Pirates game ever for ROOT Sports.

The soon to debut Fox Sports 1 has added Hall of Famer Chris Chelios as its NHL analyst to help fill all of the time it will have when it debuts until or unless they add enough quality content to make the network viable. While Fox continues to hype this to no end, I'm wondering if they'll even attract the same size audience (in the early going) that the Speed Channel has had over the past couple of years.

The latest radio ratings are breaking this week from the mid-June to mid-July period. Based on the larger market data already released, there is little change or growth for the all sports stations again. In fact, Chicago's WSCR The Score 670 dipped one-half of a rating point overall, while rival WMVP ESPN 1000 also declined slightly.

In Houston, where the sports stations continue to struggle, KBME 790 has removed the morning team of Matt Jackson and Adam Wexler after it finished well behind KFNC ESPN 97.5 and KILT 610 in the morning.

CHICAGO: While WMVP ESPN 1000 continues to struggle, the station gave midday co-host John Jurkovic what was termed a multi-year extension to continue as midday co-host along with Carmen DeFalco. Jurkovic has already been on WMVP for 13 years.

ATLANTA: Even with the Georgia Tech games being heard on 106.7 this season, 680 The Fan will carry the weekly football and basketball coaches shows along with a daily GA Tech segment.

MORGANTOWN: Tony Caridi will indeed return for his 16th season of West Virginia radio football play-by-play, although an analyst to work with him has yet to be named.

CLEBURNE TX: KCLE 1460 has dropped music and gone all sports as ESPN 1460. The station will continue to provide local high school play-by-play with Ward Whites, who is also the Station Manager, on the call.