August 16th Update

For some Philadelphia area radio listeners, it may not seem like football season during weekday afternoons following the announcement that Howard Eskin will no longer be hosting afternoon drive on WIP 610 after Labor Day. Some listeners will be disappointed, and it's likely that others will be pleased. Eskin has been talking sports in Philadelphia regulary for 25 years, longer than there have been any full-time sports stations in most markets.

Eskin's final 3 to 7 PM show is scheduled for September 2nd. As of press time, WIP has yet to announce a replacement, as the station needs to continue its battle against The Phanatic 97.5 and (Eskin's former co-host) Mike Missanelli.

For all of the tradition and ratings Eskin has delivered over the years, there seems to be some degree of mutual benefit from this announcement. Eskin will continue hosting the station's Eagles coverage and is expected to fill in for vacationing hosts. He also has done some fill-in work on Fox Sports Radio and rumors have begun circulating that Eskin has national aspirations in mind, and now has the time to devote to that.

WIP figures to have listeners check out the new afternoon drive show once the host or hosts are announced, and hopes to gain listeners who did not like Eskin's outbursts. Among those rumored for consideration are Anthony Gargano and Glenn Kacknow. I have to think that the announcement will be made prior to Labor Day. Going with interim hosts during the week leading into the NFL opening weekend would not be a good choice, especially with nearly 3 weeks to arrange for a replacement.

It's been a busy few days overall in sports media, even in the courtroom. Or out of the courtroom in this instance. The lawsuit over Conference USA Football TV rights has been resolved via settlement. While Fox Sports Media Group retains the majority of the rights, the settlement results in ESPN having telecast and distribution rights to the Conference USA Championship game for this year and through the 2015 football season. ESPN2 will air this year's game at Noon ET on December 3rd. Fox Sports Media will hold the regular season telecast rights during the same period.

Meanwhile, it was a sad day for long-time baseball fans upon learning of the death of Ernie Johnson Sr. this past Friday (8/12) at the age of 87. Ernie Sr. came to Atlanta with the Braves in 1966 (as did Milo Hamilton) to begin the team's tenure in Atlanta, and called Braves games until 1990. Ernie actually was part of the Milwaukee Braves broadcast team before the team moved to Atlanta.

Fans growing up during the late 60's and 70's around the eastern half of the country could hear Ernie, along with Skip Caray, call the Braves by picking up WSB from Atlanta. In the late 70's when cable TV started to grow, the WTBS (at the time) Atlanta telecasts of the Braves gradually grew to be seen in millions of homes, associating Ernie, Skip, and Pete Van Wieren.

Ernie enabled a lot of viewers around the country to watch and listen to him every day for years, and I'm sure helped to get a lot of TV viewers hooked on regularly watching baseball. Keep in mind this was years before we had practically every MLB game televised and regional and national networks showing games almost every day. For years it was "Braves or nothing" for a lot of cable TV viewers. He will be very much missed.

On the same day (Friday), Montreal sports fans lost Ted Tevan at the age of 78 due to a heart attack following hip surgery. Tevan hosted sports talk on CFOX going back to the 70's, and also worked on CKO, CFMB, and CKGM. Recently, he hosted a weekly sports show on The Team 990.

Two of our long-time play-by-play voices have been awarded more honors. Brent Musburger and Vern Lundquist have been named as co-recipients of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame's "Outstanding Contribution to Amateur Football" Award. Each will be honored at an Awards Dinner in New York City on December 6th.

DETROIT: Speaking of the end of an era, it is still hard to believe that it was a struggle to get University of Michigan games on a Detroit radio station. The school was without a radio station there until last week, when CBS Radio went for a five-year renewal after all. WWJ 950 will now carry the football and basketball games, starting in September (in place of WOMC 104.3), while WXYT-AM 1270 will also air some hockey and women's hoops broadcasts.

MINNEAPOLIS: KSTP ESPN 1500 has added local programming from 9 AM to Noon and has pulled Colin Cowherd's show. Judd Zulgad, who joined the station in February from the Star-Tribune, is leaving the newspaper (after more than 20 years!) to devote his full-time attention to the radio show.

ATLANTA: The hiring of David Pollack (former Cincinnati Bengal and U. of Georgia player) by ESPN means that Pollack is leaving his 3 to 7 PM co-hosting gig on The Zone 790. "The Pollack & Bell Show" with Mike Bell had become the highest rated show on The Zone, which just added the 4th hour to the show a few weeks ago. No word, as of press time, as to whether or not another co-host will be named, or if the show will continue to be four hours. Speculation has "2 Live Stews" moving back to afternoon drive and Bell to middays.

PITTSBURGH: The Pirates' recent fade in the N.L. Central standings started after the most recent ratings period. WPGB-FM certainly hopes the Pirates can jump back into September contention, as the station jumped up into 3rd place in the market during the July ratings period.

LOS ANGELES: KSPN 710 has decided to air all New York Jets regular season games this year instead of one of the national packages, and will carry the Jets broadcasts with Bob Wischusen and Marty Lyons. After being perplexed at first, I can see the reasoning behind this.

In addition to the following that Jets QB Mark Sanchez has in Southern California, there are a lot of transplanted New Yorkers in the area who would welcome this. Since the L.A. market is, for some reason, now considered a primary market for the Chargers telecasts, it means that not many of the Jets games would be shown there on Sunday TV. By taking one of the "national" NFL packages, KSPN would often be airing a game also shown on TV.

DENVER: The Ticket 102.3 has moved Joel Klatt and Charles Johnson into afternoon drive, while Les Shapiro and JoJo now air in the Noon to 3 PM position. A cost-cutting move via the buyout of Rich "G-Man" Goins from the afternoon show is part of the reason for the change. Yet, as still happens in radio, Goins, who left the station on July 15th, was not replaced, and may return to the station in a part-time or fill-in role.

BALTIMORE: WJZ 105.7 is adding Glenn Younes, who has been on the Sirius/XM Mad Dog Channel to its pre-game and post-game Ravens coverage.

LOUISVILLE: WHAS-TV has added Kent Spencer as a sports reporter, who comes over from WTVQ-TV Lexington. Also in Lexington, WLEX-TV sports anchor Mary Jo Perino takes over the Sunday morning sports talk show on WVLK 590 from Larry Glover, who continues his weekday afternoon show with the station.

NATIONAL: The Big Ten Network announced its football telecast play-by-play teams for the coming season. Eric Collins and Chris Martin will be the lead team. Other play-by-play and color teams are Tom Hart and Derek Rackley as well as Matt Devlin and Glen Mason.

Yahoo Sports Radio Network (formerly Sporting News Radio) has added "The Arian Foster Show" for Thursday nights at 7 PM ET for the rest of this year, naming the former running back as the host of a new weekly show, focused on the NFL.

Sports Media Report - July 8th update

It is a week where sports related publicity about the media is most definitely a mixed bag rather than a positive among the sports fans.CBS-TV Sports is making a big deal about its decision to replay a 1963 "Wonderful World of Golf" match between Jack Nicklaus and Sam Sneed this comong Sunday (7/12) as a lead-in to its scheduled coverage of the final round of the John Deere Classic.

Right idea, but wrong network. CBS-TV still has plenty of ground to make up if it wants to be recognized once again as a TV sports leader. Their offerings are still a far cry from their days in the '90's when they topped the TV sports world with MLB, NFL, and NBA coverage on a regular basis before bailing out on all for a while. Instead, this airing comes off as an obvious plea for the older audience to come back to watching televised golf. My hunch is that those who would tune in to remember Sam Sneed (who was around 50 years old at the time of the original airing) probably are not as in tune with today's golfers and might not stick around for the Deere Classic.

What would be the "right" network? That would be ESPN Classic, but that network continues its decline from years ago, unfortunately. Given the millions of dollars and relationships that ESPN enjoys with MLB, NFL, NBA, and the NCAA (plus a couple of stints with NHL rights in the past), one would think that ESPN Classic would provide a steady diet of major league pro and college games from over the years.

Instead, "Classic" gets trounced by the "Best Of" telecasts on MLB Network, NFL Network, and NBA Network. While there are some NCAA football and basketball classic games shown, these tend to be more in season and themed toward specific matchups. (That would be fine if the rest of the programming were up to standard.)

Instead, "classic" features have been reduced to programming such as poker, kick boxing, and the like. Or should I say, don't like. ESPN Classic seems to be more of an overflow channel when NCAA football and basketball schedules require use of another ESPN Family channel to show a live game. "Instant Classic" has some merit, but considering all of the years of great games, many long forgotten, sit on shelves instead of gather a bigger audience than boxing matches with fighters I have never heard of.

Meanwhile, Comcast Cable continues to make life dangerous (in the wallet) for its subscribers. Now things are getting vague as to where us sports fans stand. Within the past week, I have seen 3 separate newspaper accounts from different parts of the country with different stories about how subscribers will fare regarding certain channels. One story (from Illinois) says that NFL Network will be moved from the (extra fee) sports package to digital classic. Another story from Arizona claims that a similar sounding digital package is being eliminated resulting in a different additional charge to receive the sports channels. Instead a "digital preferred" package will magically appear, and you can bet it won't be for the same cost. Just a hunch that it will be about $5 per month more to receive these sports channels "free" which used to cost an additional $5 per month.

My local Comcast Cable system has posted that ESPN Classic is being moved to the "extra fee" sports package at the end of the month. It is likely the Big Ten Network also will be, since that was the plan last year when BTN was added to Comcast and other systems, but that matter has been quiet to this point.One of the reports I read does confirm that NFL Network and NBA Network are expected to be moved to "digital classic" in time for their respective seasons.

Frankly, they should have been there all along. No thank you cards from me if it really does happen, but a feeling that justice has been served.Hopefully the BTN realizes that, especially in this economy, they might not retain enough subscribers within a pay tier to make it worthwhile and will make the effort to remain on digital basic.

While I realize it would cost even more dollars to fight the battle, I'm still of the belief that we are already paying for these sports channels and there should not be an additional fee for them as long as consumers are still forced to pay for channels we don't want.

Meanwhile, after a bit of (undeserved, in my opinion) flac from some fans and media, ABC/ESPN seems to be increasing the role that Matt Millen will have on college football telecasts for this season. While nothing is official yet, the moving of Paul Maguire away from the primary team of Brad Nessler and Bob Griese and into more studio work and radio assignments could very well be to clear more room for Millen. Granted, Millen was not successful with the Detroit Lions, but he was recognized for his excellent broadcast work in the past, and there is no reason for that to have changed.

WASHINGTON D.C.: The speculation is even more rampant this week about WJFK 106.7 changing over to all sports within this month. Reports have surfaced that Wizards basketball will be moving over to WJFK for this season. Should this happen, it clears the landscape for the Nationals, Wizards, and Capitals to each have one radio station to itself for play-by-play. WFED 1500 had been carrying both the Wizards and Capitals (when not conflicting) with both teams reportedly buying their air time. One of those teams could move to WTEM 980, giving all 3 separate packages, always a better deal for the fans.

PHILADELPHIA: D.C.'s loss could be Philly's gain. Former Redskin Brian Mitchell, recently let go from WTEM in D.C. (either due to cost cutting or comments about the team, whose owner also owns the station), has returned to WIP, this time joining Howard Eskin for the afternoon drive spot.

MIAMI: While the speculation continues that Sid Rosenberg will join WQAM to host its midday sports talk show shortly after Labor Day and in time for the start of the NFL season, the 10 AM to 1 PM time slot has officially gone to sports. Panthers TV voice Steve Goldstein has been named interim host of that time slot.Miami's Channel 6, the NBC-TV affiliate, has cut back on its sports department with the layoffs of sportscaster Andrea Brody along with Jeff Tavss, who had served as Executive Sports Producer. The station is now down to a 2 person department, Joe Rose and Adam Kuperstein.

HOUSTON: Like Miami, reductions on the TV sports side. Keith Norton has left KPRC-TV Channel 2 after nearly 3 years, with management admitting that the position will not be filled. At Channel 39, Ray Fisher is out and that station now only brings the "Sports Minute" as part of its one hour nightly newscast. Why even bother with sports at all?

LOS ANGELES: It is tough enough to go up against Vin Scully, such as Charlie Steiner and Rick Monday do during Dodgers home games and road games in the west when Scully does most of the games on TV.But Steiner made it worse this past Sunday (7/6) from San Diego when the Padres shocked the Dodgers with a 5 run 9th inning to tie the game and send it to extra innings. The problem was that the Padres got the 2 run hit which tied the game with 2 out in the 9th, and the 3rd out was made on the bases an instant after the tying run had scored.

Steiner first reported that the "out" on the basepaths meant that the Dodgers had won the game, which they had not. Seconds later, he corrected himself, but the damage had already been done. Basic radio play-by-play instinct is that you wait until you are certain of what happened before relaying it to the audience. There were likely some fans who instantly turned the game off before Steiner made his immediate correction and apologized.

By all accounts, Vin Scully handled that play as smooth as always on the TV side. But, unfortunately for Charlie, one doesn't need nearly 60 years of play-by-play experience to call an important play correctly all the way through.

DENVER: KEPN 1600, the local ESPN Radio outlet will debut its new 7 - 9 AM morning show next week. Gary Miller (from Channel 4) and Vic Lombardi will host "Sports Insiders".

TAMPA: AM 1010 seems to have phased out the Sports Chix from its Noon to 3 PM weekday slot. Lynne Austin supposedly resigned within two weeks of Leslee Lacey also leaving the show. Tom Krasniqi has been named to take over the slot, but no co-host has been named as of this writing.

Sports Media Update - February 18th..............

While too many sportscasts focus on sports news other than the games themselves being played, now we have an overlooked story about basketball games which may not be able to be broadcast in the interest of selling tickets.

The nomination for the "Say what?" Award of the month goes to the promoters of a pair of Kentucky regional high school basketball tournaments coming up in March. That state's 9th and 10th Region Tournaments will be played at the Bank of Kentucky Center. Yet, arena officials have announced that unless specific games are sold out at least one week prior to being played, there can be no live broadcasts of the games. Not even radio or internet.

The only "exception" would be if a school located more than 30 miles away from the arena is playing. But there is a catch. No teams from the Northern Kentucky Athletic Conference are located more than 30 miles from the 9,400-seat arena.

Let's get this straight. An arena sponsored by a local bank for the benefit of added publicity doesn't want one of its biggest events on radio, TV, or even on the internet. I have made a few inquiries and thus far haven't found out about any local radio stations which are even talking about this, let alone trying to broadcast the games.

As I have commented several times in the past, a high school tournament is the type of event that "should" be on HD Radio and might help to make HD Radio viable after all. News and sports stations could use the secondary and perhaps thirdary channels to broadcast and then replay important high school games.

It gives the people who can't get to the games, such as grandparents and shift workers, the chance to hear a loved one and/or the local school in action. The family of the kid who has the big game or makes the winning shot would want to listen to and record the replay as a keepsake.

Local advertisers would know the small but targeted audience they are reaching.

But the radio stations would rather put on "album b-sides of the 80's" or some format that doesn't cost anything and the people forget about. And now, to top it off, we have a local bank behind preventing local high school tournament games from being broadcast. But where is the Cincinnati media on this one?

To this point, as far as I know, only the Kentucky Enquirer (part of the Cincinnati Enquirer) newspaper and web site have picked up on this story.

KR Sports has handled broadcasting the 9th Region tourney over the years. This new restriction probably means that Kevin Rengering and Randy Wilson will miss doing these broadcasts for first time since 1984.

The arena and promoters "defend" this by saying that a specific tournament game which sells out at least one week in advance could then be broadcast. But this isn't like the NFL where a local TV station buys remaining tickets to be able to have the local telecast and generate the ad revenue. This could be thousands of tickets for each of several games. Since the teams in the games generally aren't known more than a week ahead of time (and don't think that is a coincidence either), a TV or radio station buying tickets early could then be shutting out fans of one or both participating schools.

Meanwhile, elsewhere around Kentucky, the Kentucky High School Athletic Association enables a participating high school to select or allow a broadcast outlet for its games, at a cost of $350 for the radio rights.

If the Bank and the arena are that worried about not selling enough tickets, then don't host the games. But if they insist on bringing greed into high school sports, this is a different story. One that merits additional and immediate attention.

But I'm afraid that with the state of radio management being where it is today, this will go untouched. If I were in a position to do something about this, I would ask a competing bank or S & L to purchase all remaining tickets, give them the value of that purchase in air time, and have that competing bank sponsor the broadcasts after giving away the tickets at their branches nearest the participating schools.

The sponsoring bank generates walk-in traffic from the schools and positive publicity. The radio station has provided a unique opportunity for the bank to deliver its message. The community would be properly served with coverage of its local high school tournament.

And that radio station would perform a positive local innovation. If not, what kind of precedent could this set?

LOS ANGELES - As we suspected last week, the Angels have followed the Texas Rangers into the idea of splitting their radio coverage, as if fans will remember that different stations carry the weekend games than during the week. KFWB 980 will be airing 110 of the Angels regular season games starting in April. KLAA 830 (owned by Angels owner Arte Moreno) will only carry the weekend games.

However inconsistent, this marks a return of baseball to KFWB which was the Dodgers flagship station from 2003 through 2007. The broadcast team stays the same, with Rory Markas and Steve Physioc on play-by-play and Rex Hudler on color, as well as Terry Smith.

As a result, Angels and Rangers fans now have to find out where to listen to the games instead of having one station all the time. This, after trying to find out if that night's game is on over-the-air TV, regional cable (or an overflow channel when conflicts with other teams), ESPN, or Fox-TV. These teams could have a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday series with 3 TV channels and 2 radio stations involved. This helps the fans how?

MILWAUKEE - Cory Provus has left the Chicago Cubs radio booth to become the #2 broadcaster of the division rival Milwaukee Brewers starting immediately. Provus will handle radio play-by-play of the middle 3 innings and pre and post-game shows, with ageless Bob Uecker handling most of the play-by-play.

No replacement named yet for WGN Radio and the Cubs broadcast booth yet, which is only for handling one inning each game to relieve Pat Hughes. Provus is another Syracuse University graduate, coming from the school which has produced Bob Costas, Marv Albert, and Dick Stockton, among others.

CHICAGO - Congrats to Kip Lewis, the son of former New York Jets defensive back and NFL assistant coach Sherman Lewis, has been hired by Comcast SportsNet Chicago. His reporter and anchor duties will begin on March 2nd. Lewis was a sports anchor for WRTV-TV Indianapolis, and is best known for a weekend sports stint at WPIX-TV New York in 2004 and '05.

DENVER - The Rockies TV coverage stands to have improved pre and post-game programming. Fox Sports Rocky Mountain no longer has local studios, and as a result the surrounding game coverage will originate at the site of the game. In a perfect world, this should mean better access to interviews and game specific information. Drew Goodman and George Frazier remain as the play-by-play team.

Nearby Ft. Collins Colorado has 870 KJMP Radio joining the regional network by picking up the Nuggets and Avalanche broadcasts starting in the fall. Flagship KCKK 1510 from Denver takes over, with KTNI 101.5 handling one of the conflicting games. KJMP carries ESPN programming the majority of the time, but word is they are targeting local sports talk prior to the start of the upcoming football season.

Denver's "The Fan" 104.3 FM, which loses the Nuggets and Avalanche, will continue along carrying ESPN Radio's national games. They are adding Colorado College hockey. Realistically, that is not a threat to compete against the Avalanche games. Sister station KEPN 1600 cointinues with Irv Brown and Joe Williams talking sports during the afternoon.

Mile High Sports Radio 1510 is losing morning co-host Tyler Maun to his dream of baseball play-by-play. Maun is leaving the Denver market and relocating to Myrtle Beach to handle the Class A South Carolina Pelicans broadcasts. That will make a nice resume for Maun to have play-by-play experience along with the Denver market, considering that he is at the tender age of 23.

COLUMBUS GA - Out with the local, in with more syndicated programming. Even smaller markets making the cutbacks. Mike Vee and Rachel Baribeau are out from WEAM 1580 as their 4 - 7 PM sports show has been canceled after 2 1/2 years due to budget cutbacks.

The replacement is a syndicated show from Alabama. So much for U. of Georgia fans wanting to hear about their team on a regular basis. The station has added Atlanta Hawks basketball along with the ESPN NBA package. Vee will continue as the voice of the Columbus Cottonmouths road games. This while the Columbus market now has - get this - a mighty one hour of local sports talk each day. And that is on a different station. WSHE 1270 airs B. R. Johnson from Noon to 1 PM on weekdays.