The Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame will be inducting its 2008 class on December 16th in New York. The second set of inductions includes Vin Scully and Curt Gowdy from the play-by-play side, along with executives of paramount importance to televised sports as we know them today. Chet Forte, Don Ohlmeyer, and Ted Nathanson are also going to be inducted.
While it is easy to wonder why those names were not among the very first group inducted last year, keep in mind that last year's charter group included Jim McKay and Howard Cosell from the on-air side. Others in that group included Harry Coyle, Ed Sabol (NFL Films), and former NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle.
The NFL will continue playing one regular season game in London next year. Although the 2009 NFL schedule is still in formation, a rare matchup between the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers has been scheduled for Sunday Oct. 25, 2009 at Wembley Stadium in London. The start time will again be in coordination with U.S. television schedules. CBS-TV will have this telecast at 1:00 PM ET. Next year will be the third consecutive year of a regular season game in London, with all being AFC vs. NFC matchups.
HOUSTON - The latest round of radio ratings show a victory of sorts for Mike & Mike and their syndicated ESPN Radio morning show. KFNC 97.5 came in at the top of the 25-54 men demographic. That is news enough on its own when a syndicated show tops a major market in such an important demographic. What makes the story more interesting is this happening after KFNC picked up Mike & Mike from KMBE 790 which dropped it to carry a local show.
I think this signifies still another changing trend about radio and television. It appears that listeners and viewers are making choices based on quality ahead of location. In the instance of Mike & Mike doing better than any other Houston radio sports show in the morning, it shows me that people are not making a "local vs. national" distinction. They want the best show they can find, wherever it comes from. It wasn't always that way. Stations airing syndicated shows were looked down upon and rarely made a dent.
On the TV side, look at how the combined audiences of ESPN, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC have taken away from local news and sportscasts around the country. Same theory. Radio especially needs to increase their local impact. The Mike & Mike success is the result of a good show, but also the result of the positive branding that ESPN has developed. I have to believe this audience consists of a lot of men unable to watch, or to continue watching, ESPN in the morning who then follow on the radio. Some of this could be the lack of success among the Astros and Texans this year, leaving sports fans to crave more national coverage. Yet, in some cities, local sports talk does even better when one or more of the teams is not winning, as the fans have more reason to pick their favorite team apart.
It will be interesting to see how the other sports stations in Houston react with their morning shows over the next few weeks.
CONNECTICUT: Even though it begins with only telecasts of various high school games, congrats to CTSN-TV, the Connecticut Sports Network. The state's first 24 hour sports station made its official launch (Tuesday Dec. 2) from its Hartford studios. For now, CTSN is showing replays of playoff and title games in football, soccer, volleyball, and a couple of others. Plans are in the works to add some live telecasts of local college hoops, and eventually to add coaches talk shows and the like.
CHARLOTTE - Once again sports fans need a scorecard, but in this case it is to follow their local radio stations instead of the athletes. Mornings on 99.9 The Fan began carrying ESPN Radio programming this week (Monday Dec. 1). The Bull AM 620 has now officially dropped Mike & Mike and added Don Imus. (That's easy to remember - associating Imus with "Bull".) 850 AM The Buzz now airs Dan Patrick's radio show live from 10 AM to Noon. 99.9 FM goes local for one whole hour middays, as "Sports Lunch with Mike Maniscalco" is heard from Noon to 1:00 PM.
BATON ROUGE: This past Monday (Dec. 1) was the season debut of LSU Basketball Coach Trent Johnson's weekly radio show at 7:00 PM. The show airs live from a Baton Rouge restaurant on 100.7 FM The Tiger (how appropriate!) and on the LSU Sports Radio Network. However, to the best of my knowledge the show is not streamed live. The show is hosted by Jim Hawthorne and will air throughout the basketball season.
BILLINGS: The nation's newest sports station made its surprise debut on Monday morning (Dec. 1). 105.1 FM dropped music and picked up ESPN Radio.
Showing posts with label scully. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scully. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
Sports Media Report - Sept. 8 update
Great to see that Vin Scully has agreed to return to his Dodgers broadcast duties for the 2009 season, since that will mark an even 60 years as the lead voice of the Dodgers franchise. He will continue to handle the home games and road games no further east than Colorado. After all these years, Scully continues to work alone when he broadcasts.
While going solo has been unique for a number of years, I can't help but think of how we may never have that again. It goes to show how the number of announcers used on a telecast and some radio broadcast packages is getting out of hand. On NBC-TV's Sunday Night Football opener between Chicago and Indianapolis, it seemed like there were three teams with 53 person rosters: the Bears, the Colts, and NBC-TV's studio staff.
Telecasts of games were successful all these years with as few as two announcers to handle everything (including pre and post game) at the games. Now, the networks feel the need to have at least 5 people in studio (NFL, TNT on NBA, others), with football having some telecasts with three in the announcing booth. While this is too much in one direction, radio still has a few instances of too little. Chicago is one example. Even in a top 3 media market, White Sox radio voice Ed Farmer calls each entire game, while Cubs voice Pat Hughes calls at least 8 innings of every game. This is even funnier when you realize that we can SEE the action on TV with tons of announcers but not when listening on radio.
KANSAS CITY: Speaking of long-time broadcasters, this past weekend marked the 40th anniversary of former Chiefs QB Len Dawson along with Larry Moore beginning on KMBC-TV. Let's put this in perspective for football fans. When Dawson began his broadcasting career in Kansas City, the Chiefs were starting their 2nd season in the NFL after coming over from the American Football League. Joe Namath had not guaranteed a Super Bowl win at that point in time.
On that note, congrats to Seattle Seahawks radio voice Steve Raible, who just began his 25th season calling the Seahawks games. He is joined again this season by Warren Moon as analyst on KIRO 710.
SAN DIEGO: As we suspected for weeks, after more than 20 years Lee "Hacksaw" Hamilton is now completely out of the San Diego radio market, at least for the moment. It was termed "by mutual agreement" that Hamilton is gone from XTRA Sports 1360 as of last week. Like him or not, Hamilton is a pioneer of hard core sports radio talk, especially on a regional and national level, even when his shows were local. Word is that he is on the lookout for either a college or NFL play-by-play gig.
HOUSTON: Still no announcement about the location of Astros radio broadcasts for next year and beyond, even after the exclusive negotiating period has past for KTRH to retain the games.
CINCINNATI: Bengals fans finally have one station where they can always find the games now that WEBN 102.7 FM has taken over the broadcasts on the FM side from sister station WOFX-FM. On the AM side, WCKY 1530 also airs the games through September. After the Reds baseball season comes to a quiet conclusion, powerhouse WLW 700 will again carry the remainder of the Bengals broadcasts.
ST. LOUIS: Controversial sports host Kevin Slaten returns to the local airwaves on Monday October 6, starting during the midday on KSLG 1380 AM. Slaten was dismissed by KFNS 590 in April after the controversy surrounding Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan reportedly not knowing he was being interviewed live on the air. Oct. 6th is also the date that Slaten's non-compete clause expires.
MILWAUKEE: After several mentions of the Milwaukee sports radio market and heating up and 540 Sports doing a separate Brewers post-game show after night games are over, and the Brewers into a lengthy sellout streak, comes this bit of ratings news. This past Thursday (Sept. 4), the Brewers game telecast against the San Diego Padres drew less than 20% of the audience that watched the NFL season opener between the Giants and Redskins. Not only an out of market game, but not even a divisional game for Packers fans.
That has me interested to see how the next few Packers telecasts do against Brewers games in September.
ELSEWHERE: While it is nowhere near SEC dollars, the Western Athletic Conference now as a 7 year deal with ESPN including ESPN360.com and ESPN Mobile TV. The network properties now hold the rights to all conference controlled games from this season through the 2016-17 seasons.
New Haven CT's ESPN 1300 AM now carries its own version of the "Bobby and the Bird" show each Sunday from 9 AM until 11 AM. The two are well known from Connecticut's WICC 600 AM where they continue their 7 PM to 9 PM Sunday night top rated sports show.
Bowling Green OH's WBGN 1340 has announced a 2 year deal to broadcast the city's Class A baseball team starting in April, including www.1340WBGN.com, and is expected to carry all 140 games.
While going solo has been unique for a number of years, I can't help but think of how we may never have that again. It goes to show how the number of announcers used on a telecast and some radio broadcast packages is getting out of hand. On NBC-TV's Sunday Night Football opener between Chicago and Indianapolis, it seemed like there were three teams with 53 person rosters: the Bears, the Colts, and NBC-TV's studio staff.
Telecasts of games were successful all these years with as few as two announcers to handle everything (including pre and post game) at the games. Now, the networks feel the need to have at least 5 people in studio (NFL, TNT on NBA, others), with football having some telecasts with three in the announcing booth. While this is too much in one direction, radio still has a few instances of too little. Chicago is one example. Even in a top 3 media market, White Sox radio voice Ed Farmer calls each entire game, while Cubs voice Pat Hughes calls at least 8 innings of every game. This is even funnier when you realize that we can SEE the action on TV with tons of announcers but not when listening on radio.
KANSAS CITY: Speaking of long-time broadcasters, this past weekend marked the 40th anniversary of former Chiefs QB Len Dawson along with Larry Moore beginning on KMBC-TV. Let's put this in perspective for football fans. When Dawson began his broadcasting career in Kansas City, the Chiefs were starting their 2nd season in the NFL after coming over from the American Football League. Joe Namath had not guaranteed a Super Bowl win at that point in time.
On that note, congrats to Seattle Seahawks radio voice Steve Raible, who just began his 25th season calling the Seahawks games. He is joined again this season by Warren Moon as analyst on KIRO 710.
SAN DIEGO: As we suspected for weeks, after more than 20 years Lee "Hacksaw" Hamilton is now completely out of the San Diego radio market, at least for the moment. It was termed "by mutual agreement" that Hamilton is gone from XTRA Sports 1360 as of last week. Like him or not, Hamilton is a pioneer of hard core sports radio talk, especially on a regional and national level, even when his shows were local. Word is that he is on the lookout for either a college or NFL play-by-play gig.
HOUSTON: Still no announcement about the location of Astros radio broadcasts for next year and beyond, even after the exclusive negotiating period has past for KTRH to retain the games.
CINCINNATI: Bengals fans finally have one station where they can always find the games now that WEBN 102.7 FM has taken over the broadcasts on the FM side from sister station WOFX-FM. On the AM side, WCKY 1530 also airs the games through September. After the Reds baseball season comes to a quiet conclusion, powerhouse WLW 700 will again carry the remainder of the Bengals broadcasts.
ST. LOUIS: Controversial sports host Kevin Slaten returns to the local airwaves on Monday October 6, starting during the midday on KSLG 1380 AM. Slaten was dismissed by KFNS 590 in April after the controversy surrounding Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan reportedly not knowing he was being interviewed live on the air. Oct. 6th is also the date that Slaten's non-compete clause expires.
MILWAUKEE: After several mentions of the Milwaukee sports radio market and heating up and 540 Sports doing a separate Brewers post-game show after night games are over, and the Brewers into a lengthy sellout streak, comes this bit of ratings news. This past Thursday (Sept. 4), the Brewers game telecast against the San Diego Padres drew less than 20% of the audience that watched the NFL season opener between the Giants and Redskins. Not only an out of market game, but not even a divisional game for Packers fans.
That has me interested to see how the next few Packers telecasts do against Brewers games in September.
ELSEWHERE: While it is nowhere near SEC dollars, the Western Athletic Conference now as a 7 year deal with ESPN including ESPN360.com and ESPN Mobile TV. The network properties now hold the rights to all conference controlled games from this season through the 2016-17 seasons.
New Haven CT's ESPN 1300 AM now carries its own version of the "Bobby and the Bird" show each Sunday from 9 AM until 11 AM. The two are well known from Connecticut's WICC 600 AM where they continue their 7 PM to 9 PM Sunday night top rated sports show.
Bowling Green OH's WBGN 1340 has announced a 2 year deal to broadcast the city's Class A baseball team starting in April, including www.1340WBGN.com, and is expected to carry all 140 games.
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