Couldn't Fox Tell Us What We Missed?

Technical difficulties are, as they say in the sports world, part of the game. But Fox Sports did not have to make them as "difficult" as they did on Sunday (9/15) for NFL viewers watching, or trying to watch, their regional NFL telecast between the Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings.

This telecast had problems ranging from not having any on-screen graphics to a complete loss of the feed during play throughout much of its telecast on a rainy day in Chicago. I certainly understand that things go wrong from time to time, and probably had as much or more patience than most fans while watching this telecast unfold. Personally, I have had my share of things go wrong while on the air from a game and in the studio producing a broadcast. It happens.

However, my problem with Fox Sports on this one is because of elements they COULD control, but didn't. People sharp enough to have network jobs should have enough experience to be able to improvise in order to help the viewers deal with the problems. But Fox did not.

There was a stretch of several minutes during the second quarter of the game during which the telecast did not have any graphics on the screen, including not having the score box at all. That means that viewers who just tuned in or were also watching other games could not see the current score and the amount of time remaining. Those who had been watching likely knew the score, but also had no idea of the time remaining in the quarter and other pertinent information also included within the "Fox box".

Again, I understand that technical problems can happen. Thom Brennaman, the play-by-play voice for this game, did apologize several times for the technical difficulties and was more than fair in acknowledging them. Of course, with the game score and time remaining constantly on the screen week after week, I can even excuse Brennaman for not providing the time remaining and game score more often. Even though he, as a broadcaster with so many years of experience, should have known to do so.

My issue is more with the producer(s). With all of the cameras available, one of them should have been focused on the stadium scoreboard, which shows the game score and the ticking clock with time remaining. That is all they had to do to cover up this "technical difficulty". Just show the stadium scoreboard between plays. Brennaman wouldn't have to changed anything he was saying. Instead, viewers had little to no idea how much time remained in the 2nd quarter, and many viewers were not aware of the score of the game for several minutes at a time in real time. That doesn't cut it.

Late in the second quarter, the "difficulties" got worse. The video feed went out completely forcing Fox to go with an over-the-phone version of Brennaman's play-by-play. Worse yet, even though Thom kept apologizing for the glitches, he continued along doing TV style play-by-play instead of going to a radio style knowing people could not see everything they usually do.

But there was more. During the last three minutes of the first half, in a tight game, Fox lost the feed entirely. No video or audio. With a longer first half than most other games, this feed was switched to the Fox NFL Today studio for their half time highlights, with Kurt Menefee telling viewers "Those of you watching Minnesota at Chicago - we'll get you back there as soon as we can". Viewers missed a Bears drive which led to a field goal giving them the lead.

Yet, when the live feed returned, all viewers got was a recap of the scoring play. We were not told how many plays were missed, or anything about key plays on the scoring drive. As if it was "too bad" and Fox couldn't be bothered. Then, along came halftime, and viewers got the "regular" NFL game highlights. They didn't even take any time to recap the scoring drive they missed, instead sticking with their usual format.

This was the case for viewers around the country, whether watching the local telecast in Chicago, on a Fox affiliate, or via Sunday Ticket.

Sorry, but this refusal to keep viewers better informed than they easily could have is by far worse than the technical glitch. Fans are entitled to better, considering all of the money it costs us all each month to watch these games.

Maybe they should stop spending so much time promoting their sports networks with mostly filler programming and concentrate on getting the big stuff right.


Meanwhile, it looks like CBS Radio Sports is doing a solid job with keeping interest in their New York City sports stations in a favorable light. It appears that even CBS Radio executives now realize that the Sports Network idea is not going to take off like they somehow thought. Their pipe dream of pulling local WFAN 660 programming off and moving it over to 101.9 FM so that they could stick their national programming on 660 would have been a huge disaster.

In order to make adding 101.9 a positive, as they see it, WFAN went ahead with what is believed to be $15 million per season to put the Yankees broadcasts on 660 (from CBS sister station 880 AM) starting next season. The press release went on to make it look like a big deal that the Yankees will have both an AM and an FM signal for their broadcasts, as if it was a horrible thing they haven't had this yet.

The real advantage that hyping the 101.9 version of WFAN is that it helps for local fans to know to tune into the FM signal during conflicts, since WFAN also carries the Giants and Devils broadcasts. This really means that WFAN will not have to farm out any of its local broadcasts. That is a nice feature for local fans, but hardly what CBS had in mind when they thought they could just put a national network out there and listeners would flock to it. The ratings for most of the CBS Radio Sports affiliates around the country have generally been poor all year.

CBS-TV has announced moving college basketball analyst Greg Anthony out of the studio and into its lead analyst role, working at games along with Jin Nantz starting with the upcoming season. Clark Kellogg will move into the studio analyst role on most days, but the word is that Kellogg will work at a few of the actual game telecasts as well.


WEST PALM BEACH: WUUB 106.3, licensed to nearby Jupiter, becomes ESPN 106.3, allowing WEFL 760 AM and its limited signal to change over to ESPN Deportes from ESPN Radio.

KELSO WA: KLOG 1490 dropped its music format last week and suddenly became ESPN 1490, now airing ESPN programming except for morning drive and regional play-by-play. John Mitchell and Kirc Rolland remain with "The Morning Show" and both a news and sports focus. The station continues to air Mariners baseball, NBA Portland Trailblazers, and University of Washington football and basketball games.

NFL Controlling Its Own Highlights?

September brings us even more instances of sports leagues and organizations gaining too much control over content which reaches the fans or uses modern technology in some form.
Now comes word that Sporting News Media has a multi-year contract directly through the NFL regarding distribution of NFL video highlights through several newspaper web sites using a specific video player. This online video player is seen through sites such as NYTimes.com, ChicagoTribune.com, Chron.com (Houston Chronicle) and MiamiHerald.com. Upon further review, the announcement about this goes on to reveal that SNM also has "deals" with the NBA and NHL for highlights distribution.

Having game highlights available through these and other sites is a wonderful service, actually. Yet, my question is why Sporting News Media needs an agreement direct with the NFL in order to provide this. The game highlights they "distribute" are games shown by TV partners Fox, CBS, NBC, and ESPN. Since these networks pay a hefty sum for the rights to air the games live, shouldn't those same networks be the ones making the "deal" to make their telecast highlights available?

The fact that there is NFL control for these highlights should be a cause for concern. Suppose there is a negative incident of some sort, which for whatever reason is not positive publicity for the NFL. It could be anything ranging from a fight among players to a wardrobe malfunction to a coach or player saying something inappropriate to a mostly empty stadium.

To put it another way, there could be something very newsworthy to the major newspapers and their web sites. If the NFL has "control" over the highlights deal, do we know for sure that readers would be able to see such an incident unfold by visiting the very website that is there to "report" about it?

If such an incident happens, for example, on a Fox Sports NFL telecast, showing the "highlights" might not be positive for the league, but it would be positive for Fox Sports which would have been the only network to show that particular NFL game live, and would be credited for it.

However, if I'm understanding this "deal" correctly, this would be under NFL control and NOT the individual networks.

Also within the week, USA Today Sports Media Group announced a new "platform" they launced on NFL opening week which provides "real time" news and analysis of NFL games, called "The Q".

This is a mobile platform which Quickish (the technology company) hopes to expand to other sports, likely as a companion for televised game viewers.


Week 1 of the NFL season also saw Sports Illustrated starting its own online half hour weekly series which airs on Thursday mornings to preview the coming weekend's games. Although this is not a league control concept, it does mark SI's increasing use of technology to provide NFL related content, which, in this case, could be a good thing.

While this was going on, the NBA announced that the league is overseeing the installation of multiple "motion tracking" cameras into every NBA arena in time for the upcoming season. Initially, the purpose of these cameras is for individual team and league use, with these cameras focused on individual players and game officials to be used for evaluation purposes. The press release for this feature did mention that there is also likely to be a portion of this video available to fans, perhaps for instructional purposes, but that was not specified.

This concept is in conjunction with STATS Inc. (which tracks extensive player and team statistics for individual teams, player agents, and TV networks) and will include software to help teams with player performance analysis.

In this instance, it is not about positive or less-than-positive player performances which now may be caught on video. My question is why the NBA itself is involved in contracting for this. Again, what about the networks paying hefty rights fees? The NBA already has Turner Sports handling some of its more complex online content, as well as televising a national package of games.

Shouldn't the NBA be working with TNT or ESPN's resources about such a service? The fact that the league itself is bypassing its multi-million dollar existing partners to do what these partners do should be a concern. The league's focus should be on selling tickets, improving the appeal of the game, and all of the marketing it has become so efficient at over the years. Not doing what is essentially its own private telecasts.

To sum it up, there is something about pro sports leagues, and for that matter the NCAA to an extent, becoming technology and marketing entities ahead of governing bodies for their respective sports that makes me uncomfortable. Thoughts?


Back at all of the sports networks, this announcement about Big East Conference college basketball is a pretty funny reflection on two of them if you ask me.

CBS Sports and CBS Sports Network have acquired "up to" 30 Big East game telecasts, starting with the upcoming season, with 25 games airing on CBS Sports Network after this coming season's 18 telecasts. Why is this "funny"?

It is because CBS actually "acquired the rights" from Fox Sports! This is the same Fox Sports that just started not one, but TWO national networks even though most of the overflow sports programming it has acquired doesn't even start until 2014. So, instead of making use of its own facilities to show even more Big East games, they farm some telecasts out to CBS and collect the revenue instead. Probably means more of Bulgarian Tiddly Winks or whatever FS1 and FS2 are showing until the bigger sports they are adding show up. If they survive that long with such a small audience.

Chalk up still another sports radio network for former NFL QB Sean Salisbury, although he is running out of room. Formerly with ESPN Radio and CBS Radio, Salibury will be co-hosting "The War Room" with John Harris from 2 to 4 ET on weekdays. However, this is on Yahoo Sports Radio. At least Salisbury will have an audience in Dallas, where he continues his pre-game analysis for Fox Sports TV in the Dallas area prior to Cowboys games.

With the latest radio ratings being released late last week and this week, let's just say that play-by-play continues to rule the roost, especially in Ohio. Cincinatti's WLW 700 continues as that market's top rated overall radio station, increasing its ratings significantly this season as the Reds stay in contention. Before the season started, WCFN "The Fan" 100.3 debuted and showed with a 0.1 in both the June and July ratings. At the end of July, that station went back to music, and already jumped up to a 1.5 share since dumping sports talk. In Cleveland, WTAM, the flagship station for the Indians, showed higher ratings than April, while WKRK-FM "The Fan" dropped to less than one-third of the overall audience that news/talk WTAM now has.

It's not just limited to Ohio, however. In Kansas City, Royals' flagship KCSP 610 Sports went up a full ratings point in just one month, while the CBS Sports Radio affiliate again didn't even do a half a point.

MIAMI: WAXY 790 The Ticket will add an additional and exclusively local hour for Dan LeBatard starting on September 30th. Dan will be local to Miami from 3 to 4 PM and then his ESPN Radio show will air from 4 to 7 PM. In addition, the station has already begun its 7 to 10 PM show with Jorge Sedano and Mark Schlereth, known as "Sedano & Stink". Sedano is the former Program Director and host of WQAM.

ATLANTA: After two months since needing to replace the "Mayhem In the AM" morning show, WQXI The Zone 790 has introduced its new morning team of J.P. Peterson and (former Falcon) Alge Crumpler. Crumpler has served as an NFL analyst for The Zone in the past and also on Fox Channel 5 in previous seasons.

MINNEAPOLIS: The Ticket 105 FM, which has roughly 10% of the overall audience as KFAN, has decided to air what has been a live podcast from 6 to 7 PM. The podcast has been with Tom Barnard, who in real life hosts the KQRS "Morning Show", and Don Shelby, formerly of WCCO Radio. Barnard admitted that he is not getting any money from The Ticket, but is seeking the exposure to his daily podcast. As of this week, The Ticket, which actually consists of three limited range signals at 105.1, 105.3, and 105.7, has also begun an afternoon drive local program from 3 to 6 PM with Mike Morris and Bob Sansavere, giving the station its first local weekday programming.

The University of Minnesota has moved its football game for Saturday Sept. 21st against San Jose State to an 11 AM start so that it can be shown live via ESPN. Might be for more of a home field advantage than a media move when you consider it means a 9 AM start for the San Jose State fans and players. Let the jokes about "getting up for a big game" begin.

FARGO: Minnesota Vikings radio affiliate KRWK 101.9 FM decided to drop its talk format and become "Rock 102". Figuring that reaching the Vikings audience it attracts would be a good starting point, the station switched over following the Vikings' opening day game (on 9/8) and is spending this week playing 2,000 songs in a row. This is primed to last until this coming Sunday's (9/15) broadcast of the Vikings game against the Chicago Bears. I'm sure that Rock 102 didn't count on the Vikings losing their opener to the Detroit Lions and probably not having much of an audience sticking around by the time that debacle of a game ended.

Stop Insulting Sports Fans

With all of these sports channels, networks, and stations on TV and radio putting multiple competitors in front of us sports fans 24/7, you would think some of them would know not to insult what little audience they have.

NBC Sports Network has only one month to fill up air time until the NHL season starts and viewers begin to trickle back in. Their Labor Day morning certainly didn't help. Once again, as I have been pointing out, The Dan Patrick Show was not live on Labor Day. Heck, it was only after the first college football Saturday, the start of the final month of the MLB regular season, the start of Week 1 of the NFL season, and the start of the U.S. Open. Again, Dan Patrick can take all of the days off he wants. But, given the resources of NBC, there is NO excuse for not having a guest host on live. None.

But it gets worse. Unlike past re-runs of outdated Dan Patrick segments, this time there was no indication on the screen of an "Encore Presentation". This meant it took upwards of 30 seconds before a viewer could determine that they were being deceived by a repeat. Or, a viewer could have thought that NBC Sports Network was days behind with their sports information. Not telling us that a show is pre-recorded borders on misleading what few viewers there were.

Over at Fox Sports 1, the network's latest announcement is merely that they plan to televise a series of graded stakes horse races starting in 2014 with "up to" ten telecasts per year. I'd love to see the statistics on how many horse races, other than the Triple Crown, have won a ratings battle on 'any' network within the past five years.

Then again, this comes on the heels of the information that for Week 1 of FS1, the ratings estimates showed that the new network averaged only about 3,000 more viewers in prime time than when it was Speed Network, while ESPN averaged more than 12 times the total FS1 prime time audience. FS1 also trailed ESPN2, along with NFL and MLB Networks. The "Fox Sports Live" recap show averaged 6,000 fewer viewers than the network's nightly average. I know it is "early", but it seems that some of my fellow sports media reporters seem to think there is some big competition going on between FS1 and ESPN.


Some local team fans didn't get the best treatment either, such as fans of the Chicago White Sox. Granted, the White Sox season has been a disappointment, but that shouldn't mean "don't care" coverage either for those fans still interested.

On Saturday (8/31), the team's radio station, WSCR The Score 670, decided to air the Northern Illinois vs. Iowa football game which began 3  1/2 hours before the scheduled first pitch of the White Sox at Boston broadcast. As can happen with college football, especially with a Big Ten team involved, the game ran longer than planned. The top of the first inning did not air on WSCR. In what seems typical these days, when the broadcast was joined in time for the bottom of the first, listeners were NOT told of what happened in the top of the first inning. So much for people who listen and keep score of the game. Keep in mind this is the leading sports radio station in Chicago, and one which has a studio host for pre-game, post-game, and even an update during its White Sox broadcasts, but they did not bother to recap what the audience missed.

Then, on Monday (9/2) the White Sox game from New York was rain delayed for more than 90 minutes. This time, on the TV side, Comcast SportsNet Chicago (owned with NBC) went to "other programming". After a pro basketball related show, and an update on the rain delay, viewers were shown a pro surfing competition which had aired on NBC Sports.

Let's try this again. CSN Chicago had a local baseball telecast delayed by rain. Yet, they supposedly did not have anything baseball related they could show? It is bad enough that an all sports network doesn't give the announcers the opportunity to conduct one or more interviews during the rain delay. (I'm confident that they could have found someone at Yankee Stadium to talk with.) It is even worse that they don't show baseball related content to baseball fans. But surfing?

This game did resume after the rain delay and was finished. Do they really think that viewers stayed around through a surfing competition to see it?

Put all of these incidents and announcements together. Convince me that these networks and stations care about the fans they are supposed to serve. What makes it worse, in the case of the TV networks, is that upstart networks such as NBC Sports Network and FS1 are expecting fans and "non-fans" to support them by inflating our monthly cable/satellite costs even more. We deserve a lot better than this.

Same for the advertisers, who once upon a time fully supported the costs for the networks to show us these events. Hopefully some of them will protest being charged for time when the audience they are trying to reach are being shown the door.

Meanwhile, a couple of other network announcements. Chris Mad Dog Russo will be appearing on MLB Network with his own show that will also run on MLB Radio Network on satellite.

NFL games will air in the UK via Absolute Radio on Sunday nights and for the post-season starting with the Green Bay at San Francisco broadcast this coming Sunday. This package will also include the two NFL games to be played in London. Airing at 9 PM London time, these will be "double header" games in the U.S. and not the Sunday Night Football games due to the time difference. Absolute Radio programs rock music.


NEW YORK: WFAN 660 has extended its contract to air the NHL New Jersey Devils games, making this upcoming season its 9th of doing so. Matt Loughlin and Sherry Ross return as the play-by-play team.

BOSTON: As expected, Jerry Remy will not return to the Red Sox telecasts for the remainder of the 2013 regular season on NESN. Remy is on leave following the unfortunate news that his son was arrested and charged with murder. NESN did publicly convey support for Remy, who was quoted as saying he "hopes to return" to the Red Sox broadcast booth for 2014.

CHICAGO: Former Bears defensive end Alex Brown has joined WSCR The Score 670 as an NFL analyst, replacing former Bears standout Dan Hampton in that role. Brown will appear on Sunday mornings leading into the NFL games along with Monday morning show and Friday afternoon show appearances throughout the coming regular season and post season.

At the same time, Bears' Center Roberto Garza will appear each Monday morning (or Tuesdays when the Bears play on Monday night) on country music station WUSN 99.5 to analyze the just played game.

Both WSCR and WUSN are part of the CBS Radio group, while sister station WBBM 780 continues to broadcast the Bears games and related coaches programming.

PORTLAND: The NBA Trailblazers are being moved to KPOJ Fox Sports Radio 620 starting with the coming season. This is a move from sister talk station KEX, and returns the Blazers to an all-sports station. Brian Wheeler and Antonio Harvey will remain as the play-by-play team.

TAMPA: WHFS 98.7 continues to struggle, especially with nights when they go up against the actual games without play-by-play. The station has decided to let "part-time" staff share the 7 PM time slot, and has bumped "Fabulous Sports Babe" Nanci Donnellan from that slot to weekends. When you consider that the Rays are not exactly a top attendance team despite their excellent season, it is hard to see where their potential audience actually would one from. One also has to wonder how part-timers will increase the night-time ratings.

ALBANY: For some reason, it actually took more than two weeks for WTMM 104.5 ESPN to dismiss hosts Mike Lindsley and Brian Cady. The pair had aired what proved to be a hoax interview with an impersonator of former Yankees outfielder Shane Spencer who claimed evidence of drug use among the Yankees. It wasn't discovered to be a hoax until the next day when the "real" Spencer found out about the quotes attributed to him and was forced to deny any involvement. Two weeks?

DES MOINES: Good to see local TV stations using their secondary stations to add to the sports mix! WOI channel 5.2 will air the Northern Iowa vs. Drake football game this Saturday (9/7) afternoon, with the station already announcing its plan to show at least one more Northern Iowa game this season and probably some basketball games as well. The station also plans to air some SEC "overflow" football games this season, since the SEC makes some available to out-of-area TV stations. Further up the dial, WHO channel 13.3 plans on airing some ACC football this season.

FONTANA CA: KCAA 1050, located in Southern California's Inland Empire area, has added the Brian Arrington "Coach B" Show as of this week, airing it at 8 AM each Sunday. Arrington is a local youth football coach. Why is this significant? Because this show, which started on Sunday (9/1) becomes the ONLY locally produced show on the NBC Sports station. Yikes.

BATON ROUGE: Just in time for football season, WNXX ESPN 104.5 is now being simulcast on nearby KYPY 104.9, licensed to Donaldson LA, which has dropped its music format.

Should The League Have The Media Power?

There has been even more evidence over the past few days of sports leagues and organizations gaining too much control, especially when it comes to media. Before long, this will become still another means to price the major sports out of the reach of potentially millions of casual fans, because now even more sources want more than their fair share of pieces of the pie.

Within the past week, Sports Business Journal unveiled that NASCAR is looking at facilitating an earlier than scheduled change of its TV network coverage. As you may be aware, in recent weeks Fox Sports and NBC Sports Network, both in need of live and better quality programming to fill air time, secured long-term rights to NASCAR from 2015 to 2024 which (already) total more than 8 BILLION dollars for NASCAR.  According to the SBJ story, ESPN and Turner Sports are now both willing to bail out early on their "current" NASCAR packages. What makes this worth watching is that NASCAR itself is reportedly becoming involved to facilitate this possible change. Seems to me this should be between, say, ESPN and NBC and Turner and Fox, or vise versa, and should not be public knowledge at this point in time. For example, ESPN recently "sold", or "licensed" as they put it, the rights to a group of college football telecasts it didn't care about to CBS Sports Network to help it (CBS) fill up air time. However, it is possible that NASCAR has, by contract, the ability to step in if this situation were to arise. If that is the case, it seems to give NASCAR additional power over major media, and that is not necessarily a good thing.

Also over this past week, MLB Advanced Media (a part of Major League Baseball) announced it has acquired the distribution rights to an upcoming major concert in New York City, which has absoutely nothing to do with baseball. In reading the Press Release to announce this, it comes out that MLB Advanced Media already owns some of the technical distribution for Glenn Beck's online channel, a major airline's in-flight TV service, and ESPN3's live streams of events.

By the way, it is not just "some concert". Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, John Mayer and the Kings of Leon are among the acts booked to participate.

In this instance, the fact that MLB now owns a variety of media distribution opportunities, which are NOT specific to its own product, means that some of the billions of dollars it takes in from broadcast rights are being used to directly compete with some of the media companies it provides product to.

If ESPN, for example, started its own baseball league, don't you think that MLB would be objecting like crazy? If that would be the case, why are the sports being allowed to compete with those that feed them?

But it doesn't stop there.

Also within the past week, the technology news site, All Things D, broke a story about Google and the NFL holding meetings to raise the possibility of Google coordinating for live streaming of the NFL Sunday Ticket package beginning with the 2015 season (after the DirecTV package runs out end of the 2014 season).

According to this story, if Google were to obtain a possible one BILLION dollar or more per year deal with the NFL for online distribution, it would not necessarily mean that DirecTV could not still retain the "TV rights" for Sunday Ticket.

Think about this. Reading between the lines, this tells us that the NFL could potentially double their league revenue for the same live action distribution rights, while putting streaming up against the TV networks already paying billions for those rights. It would appear that the TV networks would not even have a say, at least for the short term.

Sure, the concept of being able to watch the game of your choice online and not need to have DirecTV has appeal for the NFL fans at the moment. But that is not the point here.

Put all of these recent and current stories together. We have the NFL, MLB, and NASCAR each handling negotiations for multiple billions of dollars in revenue for years to come. After all these years of generating significant revenue from broadcast rights, merchandising, ticket sales, and, as best said, the games (or events) themselves.

Instead, these leagues and organizations are seizing the power. These right fees already mean additional dollars every month on the majority of cable/satellite costs (whether you are a fan or not). Sports ticket prices continue to rise on average every year so that teams supposedly can "meet" personnel and stadium costs.

With all of the money these leagues and organizations are ALREADY generating, shouldn't they be concentrating on keeping their sport within financial reach of its fans who made them what they are today? Sure doesn't look like it. We should all be concerned.

BOSTON: Shortly after the important Program Director change at WEEI came word that WEEI (and sister WRKO) will no longer carry the Celtics games effective immediately. No word yet, as of press time, regarding the "new" flagship station.

Speculation has begun that rival WBZ-FM Sports Hub could go after the games, even though it already airs the Bruins games, and use its sister stations to handle conflicting broadcasts. Doing so would figure to be a solid move for The Sports Hub, since it would then capture both audiences (Bruins & Celtics) for the station.

At the moment, the Bruins are the bigger story than the Celtics, coming off making it to the Stanley Cup Finals only a few weeks ago, while the Celtics are in rebuild mode with a new coach and less familiar starting lineup.

From here, WEEI letting go is as questionable of a move as changing Program Directors. I'm sure they (WEEI) will tell you that not having either the Celtics or the Bruins "frees up" the ability to provide unbiased coverage. If, however, WBZ-FM does add the Celtics to the mix, it means that "all" fans will be tuning in to Sports Hub for play-by-play and surrounding coverage. The hardcore Celtics who has been listening to WEEI for its coverage of the team would be given reasons to listen to its big competitor that it didn't have before. (The Sports Hub came into existence during the just ended stint of WEEI and WRKO holding the rights to the Celtics.)

Or, it could be interesting to see if a station or group other than CBS (owners of Sports Hub) come along and grab the Celtics' rights. Either way, it helps to take away from WEEI, and at a time when they can least afford it. Either way, the good news is that Sean Grande and Cedrick Maxwell will return for their 12th season as the radio broadcast team.

CHICAGO: Comcast SportsNet Chicago has added Jen Lada as a full-time anchor and reporter. In addition, CSN Chicago has brought in Tony Rice, who was the QB of Notre Dame's 1988 championship team, as its Notre Dame football beat reporter. CSN Chicago will also start airing full replays of Notre Dame home game telecasts later that Saturday night (or overnight). Amazing how this happens since NBC, which owns CSN, airs the home games live and NBC Sports Network is adding expanded pre-game coverage for this season.

Have a great Labor Day - and college football kickoff!

Competition For The Same Audience

The sports media bandwagon has been in high gear over the past few days, as stations and networks continue to look for more ways to compete with each other instead of leading the way.

In Boston, the local radio battle between WEEI and WBZ-FM Sports Hub could be taking another twist, based on last week's ouster of Jason Wolfe from the VP of Programming and Operations position he most recently held during his 22-year stint with WEEI. WEEI has seen its ratings on the decline while rival WBZ-FM Sports Hub has made significant (compared with WEEI) gains.

What gets me about this announcement was the comment from WEEI management that it is time for "new ideas" at WEEI. Perhaps moving Glenn Ordway from afternoons early this year, and the move to an emphasis on the FM frequency before that were not "new" enough. Kevin Winter came and went in the midday. WEEI made these changes in an attempt to stir ratings, and they didn't work.

Those were "new" ideas.

Over the past three months, The Sports Hub hasn't had much movement in the overall ratings either. This indicates that WEEI is not necessarily losing its audience to the competition. At least they haven't tinkered with Dennis & Callahan's morning show. This could all be a part of the problem which plagues TV even more, which is that there is simply too much competition for the sports audience, and only so many hours in the day. Sorry, but it's hard to believe that anyone could do any better than Jason Wolfe to maintain a presence for WEEI in the months to come. But, as they say in sports, that's why the play it out on the field.


Also on the radio side, sort of, is the announcement from Sirius XM about expanding its contract to carry all MLB broadcasts to now run through 2021. This announcement also makes a big deal that Sirius subscribers can now also receive these broadcasts, which were only on XM all of this time.

Seems to me that Sirius and XM merged years ago. This "move" should have taken place years ago but didn't until now. The "announcement" also conveniently overlooks how some "basic" Sirius subscribers still need to upgrade their package in order to receive these broadcasts. I can understand Sirius XM making it look like this is some kind of innovation and "new" service to cover up this delay and smooth over the fact that some of the subscribers are still left out.

What I don't understand is the large number of media reports about this failed to point this out. And there's more. The cost to "upgrade" for the basic Sirius subscribers so that they can receive this MLB package is more per year than the cost of the basic "At Bat" app for phones from MLB. And "At Bat" provides both the home and away broadcasts via phone, whereas many Sirius XM channels cannot even be accessed by phone.

On the TV side, CBS Sports Network is adding its own competition, partially to fill up air time and more likely to add to what is already there.

They have added American Athletic Conference football and basketball telecasts starting this year. The basketball telecasts figure to have more appeal, with the likes of U. of Louisville, U. of Cincinnati, South Florida, and Memphis included in this package. However, in order to get these games, CBS-SN also needs to show some women's games. This package is actually a sub-license from ESPN, so it's really nothing "new" for viewers. Because of this, ESPN generates "licensing revenue" while being able to show other games it can sell, and reduce its number of women's basketball telecasts. (I'm not knocking the caliber or rallying against women's basketball, but the ratings for those telecasts show a lack of demand.)

CBS-SN has also decided that the fans need still another expanded NFL pre-game show on Sunday mornings. As a result of this, Sunday Sept. 8th (week 1) they will be on from 9 AM to 1 PM ET with still another pre-game show. This one goes head-to-head with the NFL Network, with the later part on against ESPN and the final hour against Fox and, well, CBS. Adam Schein has been named as hot, with NFL Today analysts and on-site announcers expected to participate. This even includes James Brown. This show has been named "That Other Pregame Show". And I'm not joking. At least not yet. Heck, let's just do the same exact thing, but for four times as long, and see what happens.

NFL Monday QB will air on CBS-SN on Mondays at 6:30 PM ET, with Schein also hosting, and analysts to include Phil Sims, Rich Gannon, and Steve Beuerlein.

This from the network which is bringing us a bunch of college football telecasts this season. They are bringing us matchups such as Morgan State vs. Army (Aug. 30); Winston-Salem State at UNC-Pembroke (Sept. 5); Delaware at Navy (Sept. 14); West Alabama at Florida Tech (Sept. 19); and Harding at Southern Arkansas (Oct. 3). And to think that part of our cable/satellite monthly cost goes to help bring this all to us.

Then again, Fox Sports 1 comes at us with national college football telecasts such as Nicholls State at Oregon (Aug. 31);  Louisiana-Layfayette at Kansas State (Sept. 7); and VA Tech at East Carolina (Sept. 14) within the next month. Yet, to read some media reports this week, you could think that Fox Sports 1 has already established itself as an important presence in the lineup of available sports networks.

As we get ready for college football to begin, ESPN/ABC has announced it will use the same broadcast pairings as last season. (As if this was worthy of being an announcement?) Nonetheless, Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit return for Saturday Night Football for their 8th season together, while Brad Nessler and Todd Blackledge will handle the #2 game for their 5th consecutive season.

The ESPN2 game on Saturday nights will again have Mark Jones and Brock Huard, while Clay Matvick and Matt Sinchcomb come back for season two on the featured ESPNU game. The Thursday College Football Primetime games will be called by Rece Davis, Jesse Palmer, and David Pollack.


CHICAGO: WMVP ESPN 1000 has renewed "The Jay Cutler Show" for its second season, although the show is being moved to afternoon drive. Cutler will be heard on Mondays from 5 - 6 PM CT following Sunday Bears games, and on Tuesdays following the Bears two scheduled appearances on Monday Night Football. What makes Cutler's show unique from other NFL quarterback (and/or star player) shows is that Cutler, to his credit, appears live and in person each week, including those done from a restaurant or venue including a live audience in person.

WIND-AM 560 adds a two hour pre-game show from 10 AM to Noon CT on Sundays (NFL kickoff is at Noon local time), hosted by Fox Sports Radio's Mike North, the former morning host at WSCR The Score. Yes, it is a station which does not air any NFL games airing a 2-hour pre-game show on Sundays against all of the TV shows, and often against Bears pre-game programming.


STATE COLLEGE PA: Penn State Football's radio team of Steve Jones and Jack Ham has been signed to an extension for at least three more seasons. The pair has teamed up to provide the play-by-play for the past 13 seasons on what is currently a 60-station network. Jones has also called PSU basketball for 30 years.


COLLEGE PARK MD: The University of Maryland Football Network has added former QB Scott McBrien to its radio broadcasts in time for the upcoming season. However, at least to start, McBrien will merely serve as sideline reporter. Johnny Holliday and Tim Strachan will continue as the main broadcast team.


OKLAHOMA CITY: KRXO 107.7 has dropped its music format and has gone all sports, now known as "The Franchise 107.7". Play-by-play will include Oklahoma University sports and and network fed NFL games.


MONTEREY CA: KYZZ 97.9 has dropped ESPN Radio. In fact, it dropped sports and went to music.

The Oddest Sports Media Week

Those fans who constantly disagree with the coach or manager of their favorite team will understand this week in Sports Media just the same. Some, well, odd decision making going on these days by station and network executives.

St. LOUIS: Just as quickly as it started, Kevin Slaten and Jack Clark are already gone from their afternoon drive sports show on WGNU 920. On Friday (8/9), Clark was on the air claiming that Albert Pujols had used performance enhancing drugs during his time with the Cardinals. Upon Pujols' emphatic denial hours later, the InsideStL.com group (buying the time for the show on KGNU) announced that Clark, along with co-host Kevin Slaten, were both sent packing. This even though Slaten was not involved in the specific claim that Clark made.

NEW YORK: It seems that now sports telecasts are getting into the "clutter" business. It is bad enough that regular programming on many networks is filled with endless and distracting clutter on the lower screen promoting other shows. Those watching KNBC-TV 4's NFL exhibition telecast between the Giants and Steelers on Saturday (8/10) had to deal with an oil company logo for much of the telecast. Worse yet, it was ABOVE the score box at the bottom. As if all of the advertising visible on practically every camera shot during the games isn't enough. What a distrubing trend, if this is indeed a new trend. Now that the "over-the-air" local TV stations are charging for subscribers, the viewers shouldn't have to endure still more on-screen distractions.

On a separate NY note, congrats to Bobby Lewis, the 40+ year director of both Knicks and Rangers telecasts for MSG Network, on his retirement.

ATLANTA: 92.9 The Game is taking a controversial measure in trying to gain an audience. Not satisfied with getting the play-by-play rights to the Hawks games starting for this season, the station wanted college football for its Saturday afternoon lineup. Since the U. of Georgia and GA Tech are aired elsewhere, The Game has decided to air University of Alabama football each week.

It will be the regular Alabama broadcast with Eli Gold and Phil Savage. One thing for sure. By the end of the upcoming season, The Game will have an idea of what percentage of its current audience are hardcore U. of Georgia fans. Hard to believe they would be interested in local programming on a "rivalry" station.

Usually, carrying a "rival" football game would be something a low-signal station at 1600 on the AM dial would do for lack of anything else.

DETROIT: The success of The Ticket over the past couple of years has led to WMGC 105.1 dropping its music format and turning all sports as of this week (8/12). The station is adding Drew Lane as afternoon drive host. At least for now, the station is airing ESPN national programming mornings and middays, although plans are supposedly in the works to add more local programming.

Why not START with more local programming? If mornings and middays are treated as a "throwaway" to start, why would people flock to the new station?

What makes this interesting is that WMGC is looking to compete with The Ticket, which is a CBS Sports Radio station. Detroit is one of the very few markets where CBS Sports Radio has any kind of impact. Of course, there has been no serious sports radio competition. Makes me wonder if (and that is IF) WMGC actually puts up some viable and local competition just how CBS Radio Sports would hold up in Detroit.

You'll notice that in most cases, the only CBS Radio Sports stations doing anything worthwhile in local ratings is where they have an edge over the competition, such as in Detroit.

Speaking of Michigan, the upcoming start of Michigan football means the start of the 33rd and final season for radio voice Frank Beckmann. To put that in perspective, Beckmann replaced the legendary Bob Ufer at the start of the 1981 season. Ufer called the games for 40 years prior to that. Therefore, everyone of us under the age of 70 have had no more than TWO voices calling Michigan football in our lives.

As of now, Beckmann plans to continue his "general" talk show middays on WJR Detroit.

DENVER: KJAC 105.5, which will be airing Colorado State football and basketball starting this fall, has added Jim Rome's syndicated show to the midday mix. Normally, this is not worth comment.

What makes this story so interesting is that last Tuesday (8/6) the Rome Show aired on The Zone 1600, as it had been. Then, as of Wednesday (8/7), the show moved, with no announcement, over to KJAC and its stronger signal. The Zone 1600 simply brought in another syndicated sports show.


And finally, there is the debut of Fox Sports 1 this coming Saturday. Other media and reporters act like this is a big deal and as though this network will be "competing" with ESPN.

While FS1 does have some impressive NFL analysts lined up, it's not as though they have any significant live content on the docket in the immediate future. It's hard to get excited about "overflow" events that other networks didn't want and still more discussion and analysis. Let alone FS2 also scheduled to start up.

Look at how little CBS and NBC Radio Sports has done this year. No reason to get excited about FS1 or FS2 just yet.
 

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.