The story of Ohio State University selling "media rights" for its sports programs in a $110,000,000 deal came and went on Monday as if it was just another sports and media story. IMG marketing, along with RadiOhio will have a 10 year deal to market Ohio State play-by-play, coaches shows, available TV games (as in those not on a national network or the Big Ten Network), and programs and related school print and online publications.
110 million dollars?? That is staggering. First, I thought about how risky I think this is for IMG, at least for the near future based on today's economic conditions. School spirit or not, I don't see major advertisers forking over the big bucks easily enough for extra radio and TV spots. I say "extra" because this is not a year-round and consistently scheduled opportunity. It is not as though a sponsor would have, for example, 2 hours of time every Saturday between 2 and 4 PM no matter what.
Next, I naturally wonder how much ticket prices for the games will drop, and how much tuition will drop, since the University will be receiving an "extra" $11,000,000 per year, not counting revenue such as more than 88,000 people buying tickets for each home football game. Of course, tuition won't drop and ticket prices will hold steady or rise during the next 11 years. That is my point here.
And then, in reading the Associated Press story about this, it reports Athletic Director Gene Smith saying "the arrangement will help maintain the financial stability of Ohio State's 36 sports".
Maintain? Did I miss something here? Is this kind of money necessary to "maintain" financial stability? Does this mean that if this contract hadn't come along, Ohio State might not have been able to continue its sports programs?
I don't think so, either. And that is my point. Sorry, but way too few people will benefit from this arrangement. Yet, other large schools will now start to command a similar arrangement, and this, too, will get out of control.
Yes, this is a media column. But I fail to see the benefit for electronic media from this agreement. Right now we have radio stations cutting corners at every opportunity when not creating opportunities to cut corners. We are seeing pro teams accepting revenue shares and doing their own audience research as they recognize that radio stations can no longer justify hefty rights fees.
Between ESPN/ABC and the Big Ten Network, any meaningful football or basketball game will be picked up. I don't see TV stations bidding against each other to be able to televise OSU whipping North Podunk State 72-3 in a non-conference game every September. And frankly, TV stations shouldn't have to. This is college sports. Or, at least it should be. This just doesn't seem right.
While this is going on with college sports, pro sports continue to become way too much marketing and less about competition and results. The teams continue to forget that all regular season games count equally in the standings. Yet, from one day to the next teams force us to endure different uniforms for the same teams, "premium" ticket prices against certain teams, and forcing even the most avid fan to have to search to find what station his or her favorite team is seen on that night.
The uniform thing is getting out of hand. Last week, the Chicago Bulls supposedly honored a Latino target promotion by wearing uniforms for a nationally televised game saying "Los Bulls" on them. Say what? Like they couldn't have shown a pre-game ceremony and a speech or two. Does it have to disrupt the game itself with a different uniform. This while practically every spring training telecast I have seen has both teams wearing dark jerseys and making it near impossible to tell which team is which. But the media goes along with this as if it is no big deal.
As a real kicker, the NFL wants to honor the 50th Anniversary of the American Football League this coming season. So here we go again. Believe it or not, the Houston Oilers will be honored by a team wearing the old Oilers jerseys for 3 regular season games. That team? The Tennessee Titans, which used to be the Houston Oilers. Tennessee has no connection to that, while the fans in Houston will see that and get further distanced from the Texans.
BALTIMORE: 105.7 The Fan in Baltimore got national publicity for its Orioles broadcasts over this past weekend. By not finishing what they started. The spring training game being broadcast by Joe Angel and Fred Manfra went into a rain delay after just 1 inning. After about 90 minutes, the game resumed and was finished. But fans never heard the remainder of the game. Management sent the announcing and production team back to the hotel, not wanting to wait out the delay. On Monday, the station finally apologized and admitted it was a management error, after Angel and Manfra were taken to task in the media as if they had themselves decided to give it up.
Congrats to Dick Enberg from the announcement that Enberg will receive the 2nd annual Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Broadcasting on May 6 in New York City.
Always great to see the baseball season get underway, and baseball fans welcome in the MLB Network and its extensive nightly coverage. MLB Network will be showing a live game each Thursday night (instead of the originally touted Saturday night telecast). The Network will originate 2 of its telecasts during April. On April 16, Bob Costas, Harold Reynolds, and Jim Kaat will call the Yankees vs. Cleveland in the opener at the new Yankee Stadium. On April 23, Matt Vasgersian and Joe Magrane will call the Dodgers vs. Astros game from Houston.
ESPN kicks the season off big time. In addition to the Sunday opener from Philadelphia, ESPN and ESPN2 combine to show 5 games on Monday, with these all Eastern time:
1:00: N.Y. Mets at Cincinnati, ESPN
2:00: Tampa Bay at Boston, ESPN2
4:00: N.Y. Yankees at Baltimore, ESPN
7:00: Chicago Cubs at Houston, ESPN2
9:00: Oakland at L.A. Angels, ESPN
However, games will be blacked out in the local markets. Sorry, but I still contend that us fans pay a lot of money for cable, which in turn pays these networks for programming, and we should not have any telecasts blacked out. If viewers prefer a national to a local telecast, then make the local telecasts more appealing.
On the football side, ESPN has moved another college telecast time for this fall. The Ole Miss vs. Memphis opener has been moved from the night of Saturday Sept. 5 to Sunday Sept. 6 at 2:30 PM local time. Yes - a Sunday afternoon NCAA football telecast in September. (Keep in mind that is the day before Labor Day and the week before the NFL openers.)
NEW YORK - WPEN 1050 has officially moved Brandon Tierney into the 10 AM to Noon hosting spot.
Ageless Warner Wolf is now doing double duty on Saturday mornings. Wolf is on from 6 to 8 AM on WEPN 1050, and then appears with Mark Simone on WABC 770 during the 8 to 9 AM hour. Fine, as long as Warner doesn't do a "like I said before" on Simone's show.
CHICAGO - WGN Radio has officially named Judd Sirott as its third member of the Cubs radio team. Sirott will handle pre and post-game duties as well as up to one inning of play-by-play each game to relieve Pat Hughes. Sirott is better known for his work on hockey, having previously done PBP for the NHL and for the minor league Chicago Wolves. He also handles studio segments during WGN's NHL Blackhawks broadcasts, which began on WGN this season. It is not yet known how Sirott will handle conflicts during Blackhawks playoff time, when WGN will have to move one of the broadcasts.
DALLAS - KTCK 1310 The Ticket dominated the local sports radio scene again during the February ratings. The Ticket literally had double the audience over ESPN 103.3 in the 25-54 age group from 6 AM to 7 PM.
HOUSTON - KBME 790 AM has extended its coverage of University of Houston football and basketball for another 3 years. Unlike the Ohio State deal, this is a more typical revenue share even though the school actually retains a portion of the broadcast inventory. KBME is expanding the football coverage to include broadcasting the spring game on April 18th. Tom Franklin continues as play-by-play voice for both sports,
DES MOINES - As we figured last week, the two broadcasters involved in the profanity filled argument which wound up on the air were both dismissed by KXNO. Being a Clearance Channel station, this rift provided an excuse to get rid of two more contracts, so they did. For Marty Tirrell, the matter was made worse when he also lost his weekly TV spot on KCCI-TV. Larry Cotlar, the other who was let go, still may or may not lose his gig as play-by-play voice for Drake University basketball. Cotlar does have time on his side, since the next hoops broadcast isn't until November.
PROVIDENCE - Congrats to George Duffy, the voice of the Rhode Island Reds hockey team for almost 40 years from the 40's into the 80's. At the age of 88, George is being inducted into the Rhode Island Radio Hall of Fame. Maybe we can all make Rhode Island one of the biggest states in the country for just one night in his honor.
Play ball!
Monday, March 30, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Sports Media Report - March 24th update
The NCAA Basketball Tournament continues this week and weekend, as popular as ever, and from a media standpoint, shows us why radio doesn't have anywhere the role it once did for sports fans. I have tried to come up with an idea for radio to make a difference during the tournament games, but so far have drawn a blank.
Quick - which radio station in your market is broadcasting the NCAA Tournament games (other than a local team's broadcast) this weekend? Chances are you had to stop and think, if you even knew for sure.
The reason is the other forms of electronic media have provided us with enough reasons to forget about radio while the games are going on, unless there is no other choice.
People with high end cell phone service or a Blackberry can get instant details (if not live coverage) in the palm of their hand. Those who had online access during last Thursday and Friday's daytime slate of games could have a refreshing scoreboard of all of the games - as a second option.
The online "March Madness On Demand" streaming of all of the games live was reportedly up more than 60% from last year. More and more can watch whatever game they most want to or switch back and forth and go with the best action of the moment. That is even better than the CBS-TV national telecast which would feature one game but switch around as action warranted.
And, yes, the CBS telecasts of all games and rotating of updated scores on the screen throughout.
Then there is radio. Doing....ummmm, ummmmmm, some game coverage and some scoreboard updates. A far cry from the days when hardly any games were televised while everything was live on the radio.
Interesting decision for WFOR Channel 4 Miami last Friday. The station did not air the NCAA Regional games being played locally in Miami, instead going with games they felt would be of greater interest to the local audience. This is fine, as long as it wasn't because of a blackout policy. And in this case, it wasn't. What makes this decision even better is that it was an honest choice, and not one because they couldn't show the local games if they wanted to.
LOS ANGELES: Congrats to Eric Collins, who will handle play-by-play of more than 30 Dodgers road telecasts for the coming season. These will be the telecasts that Vin Scully does not call, which are when the Dodgers play east of Colorado.
Collins has worked for ESPN, including some College World Series telecasts, along with NBC Olympic Baseball, among other assignments. He also filled in a couple of games on Chicago White Sox radio last year, and should have merited more consideration for a full-time role there ahead of Darrin Jackson. Collins will be joined by Steve Lyons as analyst. The position opened because of the decision for Charlie Steiner to remain on the radio starting this season rather than moving to TV when Scully is not with the team.
MIAMI - Another area station is going all sports within the next 30 days. And this is not a repeat of an earlier column. Now WINZ 940 will add to its Heat broadcasts at night with an assortment of network fare. Unless WINZ is serious about competing in the market place and goes after Sid Rosenberg or another high profile and local host.
The Ticket 790 is now expected to announce a replacement for Rosenberg by the end of March.
WFTL 640 continues with Sporting News Radio, its local morning show, and Larry Millan (formerly of 790 The Ticket) doing local weekend shows.
St. LOUIS - More of the radio version of musical chairs, but with positive results including Kevin Slaten moving back to afternoons. Slaten will move from middays into the 2 - 6 PM spot on KSLG 1380 within the next 30 days. The opening came when Bernie Miklasz decided to move to WXOS 101.1 FM, which began as a sports station at the start of this year.
SALT LAKE CITY - KALL 700 continues as the king of sports syndication as the Jim Rome show moves into the middday slot, aired live from 10 to 2. The station conintues to carry Dan Patrick and Chris Myers, among others. Local play-by-play includes pro soccer and U. of Utah football and basketball.
DES MOINES - It has been all over the news in the past few days about the profanity filled argument that went out over the air at KXNO 1460 this past Friday morning. Understandably broadcasters Marty Tirrell and Larry Cotlar have been suspended indefinitely. This means the removal of Cotlar's morning show and the afternoon drive show which Tirrell co-hosts (or co-hosted).
That is the "understandable" part. But what is not understandable is that in place of both shows is more network and syndicated programming. The result for Des Moines market listeners is that they lose local sports talk in drive time.That isn't fair to the sports fans in the area. As it goes in radio these days, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this isn't ultimately the end of local drive time talk, at least on KXNO.
The station is a Clearance Channel station, which leads me to belive that if the ratings finish anywhere within striking distance of the now suspended local shows, management will "decide" to continue with them. And if they don't, management will either examine what they can charge for ad time with the lower ratings vs. the operating costs of syndicated fare, or pull the plug on the format, as if low ratings are the reason.
If this were truly a "suspension" for the purpose of recovery, there would be local hosts filling in right away. Could be columnists, TV sportscasters, and/or special guests. For that matter, Clearance Channel would have the resources to assign a knowledgeable sports host from somewhere in the region to fill in for a few weeks. But that would cost money.
This is what local radio brings us, while TV, online, and mobile reporting reaches new heights while the sports games are being played.
Quick - which radio station in your market is broadcasting the NCAA Tournament games (other than a local team's broadcast) this weekend? Chances are you had to stop and think, if you even knew for sure.
The reason is the other forms of electronic media have provided us with enough reasons to forget about radio while the games are going on, unless there is no other choice.
People with high end cell phone service or a Blackberry can get instant details (if not live coverage) in the palm of their hand. Those who had online access during last Thursday and Friday's daytime slate of games could have a refreshing scoreboard of all of the games - as a second option.
The online "March Madness On Demand" streaming of all of the games live was reportedly up more than 60% from last year. More and more can watch whatever game they most want to or switch back and forth and go with the best action of the moment. That is even better than the CBS-TV national telecast which would feature one game but switch around as action warranted.
And, yes, the CBS telecasts of all games and rotating of updated scores on the screen throughout.
Then there is radio. Doing....ummmm, ummmmmm, some game coverage and some scoreboard updates. A far cry from the days when hardly any games were televised while everything was live on the radio.
Interesting decision for WFOR Channel 4 Miami last Friday. The station did not air the NCAA Regional games being played locally in Miami, instead going with games they felt would be of greater interest to the local audience. This is fine, as long as it wasn't because of a blackout policy. And in this case, it wasn't. What makes this decision even better is that it was an honest choice, and not one because they couldn't show the local games if they wanted to.
LOS ANGELES: Congrats to Eric Collins, who will handle play-by-play of more than 30 Dodgers road telecasts for the coming season. These will be the telecasts that Vin Scully does not call, which are when the Dodgers play east of Colorado.
Collins has worked for ESPN, including some College World Series telecasts, along with NBC Olympic Baseball, among other assignments. He also filled in a couple of games on Chicago White Sox radio last year, and should have merited more consideration for a full-time role there ahead of Darrin Jackson. Collins will be joined by Steve Lyons as analyst. The position opened because of the decision for Charlie Steiner to remain on the radio starting this season rather than moving to TV when Scully is not with the team.
MIAMI - Another area station is going all sports within the next 30 days. And this is not a repeat of an earlier column. Now WINZ 940 will add to its Heat broadcasts at night with an assortment of network fare. Unless WINZ is serious about competing in the market place and goes after Sid Rosenberg or another high profile and local host.
The Ticket 790 is now expected to announce a replacement for Rosenberg by the end of March.
WFTL 640 continues with Sporting News Radio, its local morning show, and Larry Millan (formerly of 790 The Ticket) doing local weekend shows.
St. LOUIS - More of the radio version of musical chairs, but with positive results including Kevin Slaten moving back to afternoons. Slaten will move from middays into the 2 - 6 PM spot on KSLG 1380 within the next 30 days. The opening came when Bernie Miklasz decided to move to WXOS 101.1 FM, which began as a sports station at the start of this year.
SALT LAKE CITY - KALL 700 continues as the king of sports syndication as the Jim Rome show moves into the middday slot, aired live from 10 to 2. The station conintues to carry Dan Patrick and Chris Myers, among others. Local play-by-play includes pro soccer and U. of Utah football and basketball.
DES MOINES - It has been all over the news in the past few days about the profanity filled argument that went out over the air at KXNO 1460 this past Friday morning. Understandably broadcasters Marty Tirrell and Larry Cotlar have been suspended indefinitely. This means the removal of Cotlar's morning show and the afternoon drive show which Tirrell co-hosts (or co-hosted).
That is the "understandable" part. But what is not understandable is that in place of both shows is more network and syndicated programming. The result for Des Moines market listeners is that they lose local sports talk in drive time.That isn't fair to the sports fans in the area. As it goes in radio these days, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this isn't ultimately the end of local drive time talk, at least on KXNO.
The station is a Clearance Channel station, which leads me to belive that if the ratings finish anywhere within striking distance of the now suspended local shows, management will "decide" to continue with them. And if they don't, management will either examine what they can charge for ad time with the lower ratings vs. the operating costs of syndicated fare, or pull the plug on the format, as if low ratings are the reason.
If this were truly a "suspension" for the purpose of recovery, there would be local hosts filling in right away. Could be columnists, TV sportscasters, and/or special guests. For that matter, Clearance Channel would have the resources to assign a knowledgeable sports host from somewhere in the region to fill in for a few weeks. But that would cost money.
This is what local radio brings us, while TV, online, and mobile reporting reaches new heights while the sports games are being played.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Sports Media Report - March 10th update.........
I'm glad to see others starting to complain about Sirius XM Satellite not making their MLB package available to all subscribers. There should be some outrage. The merger that took 18 months to finally be approved that was supposed to bring satellite radio subscribers MORE programming without a price increase. And less than a year after the merger, as a Sirius subscriber in my 4th year, I'm learning that I would have to pay extra to get the MLB package that XM subscribers have been getting. The same satellite company concerned about reduced car sales as if that is the only thing that drives subscriptions.
On the TV side, we commented last week about the Cleveland Cavaliers being the most watched local telecasts in the NBA, with San Antonio and Portland next on that list. The Houston Chronicle took it a step further and reported the baseball "most watched local team" leaders from the 2008 season. To the surprise of very very few, the local leader is the Red Sox. But it may also surprise you to learn that next on that list are St. Louis, Minneapolis (Twin cities), and Milwaukee. On the NFL side, for the recent NFL season, the local leaders wound up being Pittsburgh and Indianapolis.
NEW YORK: Max Kellerman has done his final broadcast on WEPN 1050, leaving the ESPN Radio station "by mutual agreement". Hard to believe Kellerman would "mutually agree" to this, unless he knows something we don't. Rumors are flying around the Apple. One has him joining Mike Francesa on WFAN as either a part-time or full-time partner. WEPN has added two hours of Colin Cowherd's ESPN Radio show to its afternoon lineup. The sooner Kellerman resurfaces on the air, the sooner I'll believe this was "by mutual agreement".
TAMPA: As the Rays are at the height of their popularity going into the 2009 season as defending American League champs, those roughly 10% of viewers without cable or satellite are now mostly out of luck when it comes to watching their team play. Other than four scheduled ESPN games and five Saturday games on Fox-TV, Fox Sports Net Florida will carry 150 games on cable this season. WXPX-TV 66 will no longer carry any games, a considerable drop from the 69 telecasts it had last season. At least the Rays have increased their radio affiliate count to 20, including flagship WDAE. The Rays were heard on only four radio stations total in 2006.
SAN DIEGO: Sports fans watching XETV Channel 6 newscasts are going to be disappointed. The station just fired Sports Director C.S. Keys, anchor Andrea Nakano, and a producer. The independent station had lost its affiliation with Fox Sports last year, and now no longer airs any live sports at other times of the day and week. As an eventual result in these economic times, the station has taken that a step further and now eliminated sports reports too.
By the way, the Fox-TV affiliate in San Diego also does not have a scheduled sports report on its 10:00 PM weeknight news. That is even more strange, given that this station carries some Padres games on Fox Saturday regional and a couple of Chargers games each fall also via Fox.
On the radio side, there is already concern about Padres broadcasts for the new season having sufficient signal coverage. XX Sports 1090 has its issues in some of the market. Sister station 1700 AM will also carry the games, but reports say the 1700 AM signal still doesn't cover all of the East County either. Let alone fans with older radios at home that don't even get 1700 and others that don't know that 1700 AM is carrying the games.
On the TV side, Mark Neely began as play-by-play voice of the Padres with his first of 5 spring training telecasts last week. He replaces Matt Vasgersian who left for an anchor position at the new MLB Network. The Padres will have at least 150 games televised locally this season.
XTRA Sports 1360 is carrying some San Diego State baseball this spring. Craig Elsten and Chris Ello have the call for 15 broadcasts total. These games are now all that both Elsten and Ello do for XTRA now.
SEATTLE: Former Seahawks QB Brock Huard (who also played at the U. of Washington) will be one of the sports talk hosts when KIRO 710 AM turns all sports in 3 more weeks. Huard will have an occasional football conflict with ESPN (TV), but continues as part of the Seahawks radio coverage. His exact air times have not yet been announced. KIRO will carry some ESPN Radio programming along with play-by-play of both the Mariners and Seahawks. Upon changing over to sports radio, the (current) news/talk format of KIRO will move to 97.3 FM.
BALTIMORE: WNST has let Casey Willett go after more than five years, and shortly after Rob Long and the Fighting Ungers (sportscasters - not the name of a rock group) go as well. Willett actually broke the story himself when his post on Facebook predated the station announcement.
GRAND RAPIDS: Another TV Sports Director let go. This time WXMI-TV has let go of Brent Ashcroft less than a month before his contract was due to expire. Ashcroft had been with the station more than 10 years, since the start of its news department.
BUFFALO: The Buffalo Bisons might lead AAA Baseball in media coverage for this season. The Mets' AAA affiliate will have 37 games televised on Time Warner SportsNet, with 10 of them being road contests. WWKB 1520 continues to air all 144 games plus any post-season.
MONTGOMERY: Looks like winning is everything for WIQR 1410 which is licensed to Prattville. After years of carrying the Atlanta Braves games, the recent lack of success by the Braves directly led (according to quotes from the station owner Greg Meadows) to the Braves broadcasts being dropped. WIQR has just become one of the newly added affiliates of the American League Champion Tampa Bay Rays.
On the TV side, we commented last week about the Cleveland Cavaliers being the most watched local telecasts in the NBA, with San Antonio and Portland next on that list. The Houston Chronicle took it a step further and reported the baseball "most watched local team" leaders from the 2008 season. To the surprise of very very few, the local leader is the Red Sox. But it may also surprise you to learn that next on that list are St. Louis, Minneapolis (Twin cities), and Milwaukee. On the NFL side, for the recent NFL season, the local leaders wound up being Pittsburgh and Indianapolis.
NEW YORK: Max Kellerman has done his final broadcast on WEPN 1050, leaving the ESPN Radio station "by mutual agreement". Hard to believe Kellerman would "mutually agree" to this, unless he knows something we don't. Rumors are flying around the Apple. One has him joining Mike Francesa on WFAN as either a part-time or full-time partner. WEPN has added two hours of Colin Cowherd's ESPN Radio show to its afternoon lineup. The sooner Kellerman resurfaces on the air, the sooner I'll believe this was "by mutual agreement".
TAMPA: As the Rays are at the height of their popularity going into the 2009 season as defending American League champs, those roughly 10% of viewers without cable or satellite are now mostly out of luck when it comes to watching their team play. Other than four scheduled ESPN games and five Saturday games on Fox-TV, Fox Sports Net Florida will carry 150 games on cable this season. WXPX-TV 66 will no longer carry any games, a considerable drop from the 69 telecasts it had last season. At least the Rays have increased their radio affiliate count to 20, including flagship WDAE. The Rays were heard on only four radio stations total in 2006.
SAN DIEGO: Sports fans watching XETV Channel 6 newscasts are going to be disappointed. The station just fired Sports Director C.S. Keys, anchor Andrea Nakano, and a producer. The independent station had lost its affiliation with Fox Sports last year, and now no longer airs any live sports at other times of the day and week. As an eventual result in these economic times, the station has taken that a step further and now eliminated sports reports too.
By the way, the Fox-TV affiliate in San Diego also does not have a scheduled sports report on its 10:00 PM weeknight news. That is even more strange, given that this station carries some Padres games on Fox Saturday regional and a couple of Chargers games each fall also via Fox.
On the radio side, there is already concern about Padres broadcasts for the new season having sufficient signal coverage. XX Sports 1090 has its issues in some of the market. Sister station 1700 AM will also carry the games, but reports say the 1700 AM signal still doesn't cover all of the East County either. Let alone fans with older radios at home that don't even get 1700 and others that don't know that 1700 AM is carrying the games.
On the TV side, Mark Neely began as play-by-play voice of the Padres with his first of 5 spring training telecasts last week. He replaces Matt Vasgersian who left for an anchor position at the new MLB Network. The Padres will have at least 150 games televised locally this season.
XTRA Sports 1360 is carrying some San Diego State baseball this spring. Craig Elsten and Chris Ello have the call for 15 broadcasts total. These games are now all that both Elsten and Ello do for XTRA now.
SEATTLE: Former Seahawks QB Brock Huard (who also played at the U. of Washington) will be one of the sports talk hosts when KIRO 710 AM turns all sports in 3 more weeks. Huard will have an occasional football conflict with ESPN (TV), but continues as part of the Seahawks radio coverage. His exact air times have not yet been announced. KIRO will carry some ESPN Radio programming along with play-by-play of both the Mariners and Seahawks. Upon changing over to sports radio, the (current) news/talk format of KIRO will move to 97.3 FM.
BALTIMORE: WNST has let Casey Willett go after more than five years, and shortly after Rob Long and the Fighting Ungers (sportscasters - not the name of a rock group) go as well. Willett actually broke the story himself when his post on Facebook predated the station announcement.
GRAND RAPIDS: Another TV Sports Director let go. This time WXMI-TV has let go of Brent Ashcroft less than a month before his contract was due to expire. Ashcroft had been with the station more than 10 years, since the start of its news department.
BUFFALO: The Buffalo Bisons might lead AAA Baseball in media coverage for this season. The Mets' AAA affiliate will have 37 games televised on Time Warner SportsNet, with 10 of them being road contests. WWKB 1520 continues to air all 144 games plus any post-season.
MONTGOMERY: Looks like winning is everything for WIQR 1410 which is licensed to Prattville. After years of carrying the Atlanta Braves games, the recent lack of success by the Braves directly led (according to quotes from the station owner Greg Meadows) to the Braves broadcasts being dropped. WIQR has just become one of the newly added affiliates of the American League Champion Tampa Bay Rays.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Sports Media Report - March 3rd update..........
The impact of the new MLB Network is just starting, but already NBA-TV is reacting. The new baseball network is making great strides toward keeping baseball fans away from ESPN during the season. Their "MLB Tonight" has debuted to enhance its spring training coverage, but the 6 to 7 hours per night of live studio coverage while the games are being played could make many fans forget the excellent "Baseball Tonight".
MLB Network began in January in more than 50,000,000 homes as part of expanded basic on many cable systems. After a couple of years of being buried on a more expensive sports tier by many cable networks, now all of a sudden NBA-TV wants to do something about that.
Sports Business Journal reports that NBA-TV is close to a deal with Comcast to move the channel to digital basic and thus gain simliar billing to MLB-TV. With only Comcast in the fold (if this happens), the estimate is that as many as 7,000,000 more subscribers would be added. In many cases, once one cable system negotiates such a deal, others will follow. The hope is that this is being done now to be ready for the 2009-10 NBA season.
NBA-TV does a great job of carrying games on many nights when neither TNT, ESPN, ABC-TV, or WGN America do not carry national games. This includes a Tuesday night game voted upon by fans.
As one who constantly complains, and wishes more sports fans would, that since we pay a lot of money for cable we as viewers should not be subject to blackout restrictions for games, it is great to see the possibility of more games made available to us.
This after last Friday's MLB-TV Network telecast of the Cardinals vs. Mets exhibition game was blacked out by DirecTV in the St. Louis market, when it wasn't supposed to be. The fact that it could have been is infuriating. It would have been had there been a Cardinals telecast. My point continues that for the hefty amount we pay for cable TV, we should have as many choices as possible. If I want to watch a national or other team's feed of a game, I should have the right to do so. Yet, it's not like DirecTV or the cable system refunds subscribers' money for the day even though they messed up.
Speaking of the NBA and its TV packages, Cleveland has emerged as the NBA's best local TV market. Their ratings have more than doubled since last season as LeBron James leads the Cavs to new heights, so to speak. San Antonio is 2nd (and was 1st for last season).
The Dallas Mavericks have suffered on the tube, as well as on the court, this season. Their local ratings are down a reported 25% (through the All-Star Game) for the season. The Oklahoma City Thunder, into their first season in a new city and among the NBA attendance leaders, have ratings more than 40% under the league average for local TV. Most of their games are shown on Fox Sports Oklahoma, with ratings of telecasts on KSBI-TV averaging a mere 1.0 according to The Oklahoman.
NEW YORK: The simulcast of Mike Francesa and his afternoon WFAN Radio show on YES-TV will continue as a new multi-year contract extension has been announced. In addition, YES will continue to air Francesa's NFL Now during the fall on Sundays from 9 AM until Noon. NFL Now has been a part of the WFAN schedule since 1987. Francesa has been on YES since it began 7 years ago this month.
Francesa hasn't gone without controversy in the past couple of weeks. The Washington Post carried the story about the supposed 45 minute conversation with Mike and Mets third baseman David Wright to clear the air. Wright reportedly refused to appear on the show last week due to past criticsm. Even though WFAN is the Mets' flagship station, Francesa is a Yankees fan. Then again, the Yankees games are on sister station WCBS.
LOS ANGELES: Speaking of getting to see additional games, a thumbs up to the Dodgers for providing live video streams on Dodgers.com of several spring training games - starting this week. From a fan standpoint, this is more like it. Spring training games are there to help get fans interested in the upcoming season, yet the number of radio broadcasts has dipped over the years for many teams. Seeing them is even better. A nice innovation from one of the teams which even into the 90's offered among the fewest TV games of any team, despite their success at the gate.
The live streams begin (this) Weds. March 4 vs. rival San Francisco, and include the White Sox on Thursday (5th), vs. Seattle on the 7th, Arizona on the 10th, Texas on Mar. 13, Chicago Cubs on March 17, Colorado on March 19, and then pick up again on March 27 (K.C.), 29 (San Diego) and 30th (Oakland).
DALLAS - The January ratings have 1310 The Ticket remaining on top of the Metroplex sports talk heap, but ESPN 103.3 has narrowed the gap to start the year. The Fan 105.3 FM is a distant third of the three in the 25-54 age group. But you have to take notice that the combined rating for the three stations in the 25-54 demographic amounts to just under 10% of the entire listening audience. Not many markets are getting that kind of penetration from sports radio stations.
BOSTON: ESPN 890 has decided to increase the ESPN presence on weekdays as the station is leaving more and more local sports to WEEI. 890 has already taken Mike Salk and Bob Halloran off of middays. Colin Cowherd will expand from 10 AM to 2 PM starting on March 16th following Mike & Mike. Local programming will continue with "The Lew and Mike Show" from 4 to 7 PM.
MINNEAPOLIS: Talk about cutbacks. FSN Minnesota televised the University of Minnesota's hockey game from Colardo College in Colorado Springs last weekend. But that isn't the cutback. What the channel forgot to inform viewers is that announcers Frank Mazzocco and Doug Woog were not at the game either. As a live audio feed of the crowd served as background, the announcers were actually at the Minneapolis studios watching on monitors. I have heard certain teams accused of "phoning in" a game, but this??
St. LOUIS: Bernie Miklasz has a new co-host on his KSLG sport talk show. Brian McKenna, fired in the fall by KFNS, started as co-host this week.
BUFFALO: WGR has changed tradition and will carry some NBA Playoff games from ESPN Radio starting next month.
College hoop fans in the Buffalo area got some good news as Time Warner Cable added The Big
Ten Network to its digital package.
HOUSTON - Congrats to KRIV-TV Sports Director Mark Berman on being named 2008 Texas Sportscaster of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. Berman is the first Houston sportscaster in 20 years to receive this honor.
Meanwhile, January ratings show KGOW 1560 as the sports radio leader in the morning in the 25-54 demographic, with KILT 610 the sports leader during the midday and afternoon drive times.
SIOUX CITY: KWSN 1230 is dropping its ESPN Radio affiliation, including Mike & Mike and Colin Cowherd. The station is going with Fox Sports and is expected to add Dan Patrick's show as well as Jim Rome and Tony Bruno.
MLB Network began in January in more than 50,000,000 homes as part of expanded basic on many cable systems. After a couple of years of being buried on a more expensive sports tier by many cable networks, now all of a sudden NBA-TV wants to do something about that.
Sports Business Journal reports that NBA-TV is close to a deal with Comcast to move the channel to digital basic and thus gain simliar billing to MLB-TV. With only Comcast in the fold (if this happens), the estimate is that as many as 7,000,000 more subscribers would be added. In many cases, once one cable system negotiates such a deal, others will follow. The hope is that this is being done now to be ready for the 2009-10 NBA season.
NBA-TV does a great job of carrying games on many nights when neither TNT, ESPN, ABC-TV, or WGN America do not carry national games. This includes a Tuesday night game voted upon by fans.
As one who constantly complains, and wishes more sports fans would, that since we pay a lot of money for cable we as viewers should not be subject to blackout restrictions for games, it is great to see the possibility of more games made available to us.
This after last Friday's MLB-TV Network telecast of the Cardinals vs. Mets exhibition game was blacked out by DirecTV in the St. Louis market, when it wasn't supposed to be. The fact that it could have been is infuriating. It would have been had there been a Cardinals telecast. My point continues that for the hefty amount we pay for cable TV, we should have as many choices as possible. If I want to watch a national or other team's feed of a game, I should have the right to do so. Yet, it's not like DirecTV or the cable system refunds subscribers' money for the day even though they messed up.
Speaking of the NBA and its TV packages, Cleveland has emerged as the NBA's best local TV market. Their ratings have more than doubled since last season as LeBron James leads the Cavs to new heights, so to speak. San Antonio is 2nd (and was 1st for last season).
The Dallas Mavericks have suffered on the tube, as well as on the court, this season. Their local ratings are down a reported 25% (through the All-Star Game) for the season. The Oklahoma City Thunder, into their first season in a new city and among the NBA attendance leaders, have ratings more than 40% under the league average for local TV. Most of their games are shown on Fox Sports Oklahoma, with ratings of telecasts on KSBI-TV averaging a mere 1.0 according to The Oklahoman.
NEW YORK: The simulcast of Mike Francesa and his afternoon WFAN Radio show on YES-TV will continue as a new multi-year contract extension has been announced. In addition, YES will continue to air Francesa's NFL Now during the fall on Sundays from 9 AM until Noon. NFL Now has been a part of the WFAN schedule since 1987. Francesa has been on YES since it began 7 years ago this month.
Francesa hasn't gone without controversy in the past couple of weeks. The Washington Post carried the story about the supposed 45 minute conversation with Mike and Mets third baseman David Wright to clear the air. Wright reportedly refused to appear on the show last week due to past criticsm. Even though WFAN is the Mets' flagship station, Francesa is a Yankees fan. Then again, the Yankees games are on sister station WCBS.
LOS ANGELES: Speaking of getting to see additional games, a thumbs up to the Dodgers for providing live video streams on Dodgers.com of several spring training games - starting this week. From a fan standpoint, this is more like it. Spring training games are there to help get fans interested in the upcoming season, yet the number of radio broadcasts has dipped over the years for many teams. Seeing them is even better. A nice innovation from one of the teams which even into the 90's offered among the fewest TV games of any team, despite their success at the gate.
The live streams begin (this) Weds. March 4 vs. rival San Francisco, and include the White Sox on Thursday (5th), vs. Seattle on the 7th, Arizona on the 10th, Texas on Mar. 13, Chicago Cubs on March 17, Colorado on March 19, and then pick up again on March 27 (K.C.), 29 (San Diego) and 30th (Oakland).
DALLAS - The January ratings have 1310 The Ticket remaining on top of the Metroplex sports talk heap, but ESPN 103.3 has narrowed the gap to start the year. The Fan 105.3 FM is a distant third of the three in the 25-54 age group. But you have to take notice that the combined rating for the three stations in the 25-54 demographic amounts to just under 10% of the entire listening audience. Not many markets are getting that kind of penetration from sports radio stations.
BOSTON: ESPN 890 has decided to increase the ESPN presence on weekdays as the station is leaving more and more local sports to WEEI. 890 has already taken Mike Salk and Bob Halloran off of middays. Colin Cowherd will expand from 10 AM to 2 PM starting on March 16th following Mike & Mike. Local programming will continue with "The Lew and Mike Show" from 4 to 7 PM.
MINNEAPOLIS: Talk about cutbacks. FSN Minnesota televised the University of Minnesota's hockey game from Colardo College in Colorado Springs last weekend. But that isn't the cutback. What the channel forgot to inform viewers is that announcers Frank Mazzocco and Doug Woog were not at the game either. As a live audio feed of the crowd served as background, the announcers were actually at the Minneapolis studios watching on monitors. I have heard certain teams accused of "phoning in" a game, but this??
St. LOUIS: Bernie Miklasz has a new co-host on his KSLG sport talk show. Brian McKenna, fired in the fall by KFNS, started as co-host this week.
BUFFALO: WGR has changed tradition and will carry some NBA Playoff games from ESPN Radio starting next month.
College hoop fans in the Buffalo area got some good news as Time Warner Cable added The Big
Ten Network to its digital package.
HOUSTON - Congrats to KRIV-TV Sports Director Mark Berman on being named 2008 Texas Sportscaster of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. Berman is the first Houston sportscaster in 20 years to receive this honor.
Meanwhile, January ratings show KGOW 1560 as the sports radio leader in the morning in the 25-54 demographic, with KILT 610 the sports leader during the midday and afternoon drive times.
SIOUX CITY: KWSN 1230 is dropping its ESPN Radio affiliation, including Mike & Mike and Colin Cowherd. The station is going with Fox Sports and is expected to add Dan Patrick's show as well as Jim Rome and Tony Bruno.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Sports Media Report - February 24th update.........
Could we have both sports figures and broadcasters looking at their watches while live on the air? Last Wednesday's (Feb. 18) college hoops game between North Carolina and NC State just might lead to a clock company becoming a corporate sponsor for a sports team. It could be quite the marketing tie-in.
What brought this on? During his post-game press conference, an emotional North Carolina coach Roy Williams used the f-word in answer to a question about his team's full court press (or lack thereof) in the just concluded game against N.C. State. Understandable, except that both the Tar Heels and Wolfpack Radio Networks, broadcasting live on numerous stations (including several duplicate markets) each carried this response live on the air.
Yet, we are not hearing or reading about possible fines of groups of radio stations which aired this. At least not yet. The reason? It is not because this could be considered a live news story. And it is not because the Coach immediately apologized, likely knowing his comments might have been (and indeed were) live on the air. It seems that Coach Williams made his comment after 10:00 PM, which is considered part of the "Safe Harbor" period by the FCC.
Personally, my hope is that the decision makers about carrying these press conferences live will keep in mind that this was a post-game press conference and not something that slipped through during an actual game. There have been a share of live 'language mishaps' during game action.
Considering the delay of a post-game press conference, which some radio and TV stations already do just for this reason, needs to be treated differently from delaying any game action.
It will be interesting to see if anyone else keeps the "Safe Harbor" situation in mind in the near future, especially if this incident continues to sneak through without a major reaction.
This brought back a memory of the late 80's when the "Safe Harbor" first went into effect between Midnight and 6:00 AM. I was living in Los Angeles and listening to KLSX in its days as a classic rock station. Phil Hendrie was then a late night music host. One night, he slipped up reading an announcement and said "Ooops. I'll get my (s-word) together". I was shocked, but then looked at my watch and it was four minutes past Midnight. And I never heard or read another word about that incident - and that was from the announcer on the air.
But in this instance, I have to believe the coach's incident aired live because both networks were airing this, and I'm sure neither wanted to wait until possibly after the other started to air it because of the duplication of markets. Yet, a few minutes earlier, and the FCC could have issued up millions in fines.
It's "Play Ball" big time starting this week for the exciting new MLB Network. In addition to one hour shows devoted to each team airing over the next 4 weeks, the Network has announced a full slate of spring training telecasts, most of them live, starting with two games on the first day of exhibition games. (The tentative schedule is shown below.)
SAN FRANCISCO - Oakland A's fans might have a tougher challenge than the A's themselves when the regular season starts. The A's games have moved to stations which are not strong signals. Now Comcast SportsNet and DirecTV still have not worked out their greed. Or should I say, financial differences. Of course, thousands of fans could lose out.
This season, as many as 145 of the A's games are to be shown on CSN. However, negotiations are continuing for the regional DirecTV feed, which as of this writing, is not settled. While Comcast
SportsNet and DirecTV officials have begun the usual public mudslinging that has become a part of the sports on TV landscape over the past couple of years, an estimated 300,000+ households might not have access to the A's games.
This, while the A's get millions from Comcast SportsNet for the rights to practically all of their games. And while many fans will have difficulty hearing or seeing the games. And this after the San Francisco Giants, with an expanded cable package of 134 games and only 20 games on KPIX Channel 11 (plus national telecasts) will have at least 159 out of 162 games televised.
For the sake of Bay Area baseball fans who are finally getting a major assortment of TV games, let's hope this does get resolved. It is not a given. Comcast's CSN Northwest in the Portland area has the Blazers' NBA telecasts, and those are still not available on that area's DirectTV, now almost 2/3 into this NBA season.
For those with digital cable in the Bay Area, Giants and A's games will be available for replay the next day at no additional charge.
NATIONAL - Maybe this information will alert sports radio stations which continue to carry delayed sports talk shows. This is a separate battle from the local vs. syndicated discussion. Sports stations in markets as large as Los Angeles and Chicago continue to air sports shows delayed by hours which sometimes results in outdated stories on the air.
Now comes word from ESPN that since going to live SportsCenter and related programming into the late morning and early afternoon its viewership is up anywhere from 10% to 20% so far. Sports fans want it "now".
PITTSBURGH - New Pirates play-by-play voice Tim Neverett makes his debut on Wednesday (Feb. 25) calling the Pirates exhibition opener against the Phillies on flagship WPGB 104.7 FM and the Pirates Radio Network. Greg Brown will also continue with play-by-play, with analysis from Steve Blass, Bob Walk, and John Wehner. Pirates radio will carry 16 spring training games, a higher total than most teams this season. FSN Pittsburgh will carry 125 regular season and 2 spring training games.
BOSTON - WEEI Sports Radio programming continues to go regional. Cape Cod's 96.3 FM will carry WEEI sports beginning April 1st, and will change its call letters to WEII. The Hyannis station will continue its music format through March.
BALTIMORE / D.C.: The rumor mill is churning about WJFK 106.7 in Washington possibly changing from "guy talk" to sports talk to compete with ESPN 980. I have to wonder about that, considering that nearby Baltimore has four - count 'em, four - sports stations, after CBS changed the former WHFS to sports WJZ-FM.
Here's hoping for a speedy recovery to WBAL afternoon host Ron Smith after emergency heart surgery on Feb. 14th. Same for WRC Channel 4 sports reporter Dan Hellie, recovering from a shoulder separation suffered in a ski accident last week.
No replacement named yet at D.C.'s WTTG Channel 5 for a weekend sports anchor postion. Dave Benz is leaving to join Comcast SportsNet Bay Area in San Francisco. Benz had previously anchored for FSN Rocky Mountain in the Denver area.
DENVER - Speaking of Denver, Mile High Sports 1510 AM is adding a weekly NASCAR radio show, "Hansen's Race Central" with Kurt Hansen. However, with some NASCAR events on Saturdays, a Sunday morning slot wouldn't be a fit every weekend. The show will air at the unusual but "fresh" time of 10 AM to Noon on Fridays. If race fans remember or are able to tune in, they will get timely information.
WHEELING: Sorry to learn of the passing of George Kellas, who passed away last week (Feb. 19) from cancer at the age of 53. Kellas was a sports anchor for eight years at WTOV-TV and for 12 years at WTRF-TV. Most recently, George hosted a show on KKKX 1600 AM since 2004.
MLB NETWORK SPRING TRAINING BROADCAST SCHEDULE
*Indicates live broadcast
All times ET and subject to change
February 25 3:00 p.m.* San Francisco Giants @ Cleveland Indians
7:00 p.m.* Boston Red Sox @ Minnesota Twins
February 26 4:00 p.m. Arizona Diamondbacks @ Cleveland Indians
February 27 1:00 p.m.* St. Louis Cardinals @ New York Mets
5:00 p.m. San Diego Padres @ Cleveland Indians
February 28 1:00 p.m.* Tampa Bay Rays @ Philadelphia Phillies
5:00 p.m. Minnesota Twins @ New York Yankees
March 1 1:00 p.m.* Boston Red Sox @ Minnesota Twins
5:00 p.m. Chicago White Sox @ Los Angeles Dodgers
9:00 p.m. Houston Astros @ New York Mets
March 3 1:00 p.m.* USA @ New York Yankees (WBC Exhibition)
5:00 p.m. Canada @ Toronto Blue Jays (WBC Exhibition)
March 4 9:00 p.m.* Australia @ Seattle Mariners (WBC Exhibition)
March 5 4:00 p.m.* Chicago White Sox @ Chicago Cubs
March 6 1:00 p.m.* Washington Nationals @ Baltimore Orioles
March 7 3:00 p.m.* Oakland Athletics @ San Diego Padres
March 9 1:00 p.m.* Baltimore Orioles @ New York Mets
March 14 4:00 p.m.* Texas Rangers @ Chicago White Sox
March 15 1:00 p.m.* St. Louis Cardinals @ Philadelphia Phillies
8:30 p.m. Kansas City Royals @ San Francisco Giants
March 16 1:00 p.m.* St. Louis Cardinals @ Detroit Tigers
7:00 p.m.* Tampa Bay Rays @ Pittsburgh Pirates
March 17 1:00 p.m.* Minnesota Twins @ Boston Red Sox
March 18 1:00 p.m.* Atlanta Braves @ New York Mets
March 19 1:00 p.m.* St. Louis Cardinals @ Tampa Bay Rays
7:00 p.m.* Boston Red Sox @ Cincinnati Reds
March 20 1:00 p.m.* Cincinnati Reds @ Houston Astros
5:00 p.m. San Diego Padres @ Chicago Cubs
9:00 p.m.* Los Angeles Dodgers @ Kansas City Royals
March 21 1:00 p.m.* Boston Red Sox @ Florida Marlins
5:00 p.m. Chicago Cubs @ Chicago White Sox
March 22 1:00 p.m.* New York Yankees @ Tampa Bay Rays
5:00 p.m. Cleveland Indians @ Colorado Rockies
March 23 1:00 p.m.* Florida Marlins @ Houston Astros
5:00 p.m. Milwaukee Brewers @ Colorado Rockies
March 24 1:00 p.m.* New York Mets @ Houston Astros
7:00 p.m.* Boston Red Sox @ New York Yankees
March 25 1:00 p.m.* Detroit Tigers @ New York Mets
7:00 p.m.* Atlanta Braves @ Washington Nationals
March 26 4:00 p.m.* Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim @ Cleveland Indians
10:30 p.m.* Chicago Cubs @ San Francisco Giants
March 27 1:00 p.m.* Detroit Tigers @ Atlanta Braves
9:00 p.m.* Milwaukee Brewers @ Texas Rangers
March 28 1:00 p.m.* Philadelphia Phillies @ Pittsburgh Pirates
5:00 p.m. Chicago Cubs @ Colorado Rockies
9:00 p.m. New York Yankees @ Atlanta Braves
March 29 1:00 p.m.* Atlanta Braves @ Detroit Tigers
5:00 p.m. Kansas City Royals @ Seattle Mariners
March 30 1:00 p.m.* Tampa Bay Rays @ Minnesota Twins
7:00 p.m.* San Diego Padres @ Cleveland Indians
March 31 4:00 p.m.* Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim @ Chicago Cubs
10:00 p.m.* Milwaukee Brewers @ San Diego Padres
April 1 1:00 p.m.* Florida Marlins @ Baltimore Orioles
5:00 p.m. Texas Rangers @ Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
9:00 p.m. Arizona Diamondbacks @ Milwaukee Brewers
April 2 3:00 p.m.* Chicago White Sox @ Milwaukee Brewers
10:00 p.m.* Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim @ Los Angeles Dodgers
April 3 7:00 p.m.* Chicago Cubs @ New York Yankees
April 4 1:00 p.m.* Boston Red Sox @ New York Mets
6:00 p.m.* Baltimore Orioles @ Washington Nationals
10:00 p.m.* Milwaukee Brewers @ Los Angeles Dodgers
What brought this on? During his post-game press conference, an emotional North Carolina coach Roy Williams used the f-word in answer to a question about his team's full court press (or lack thereof) in the just concluded game against N.C. State. Understandable, except that both the Tar Heels and Wolfpack Radio Networks, broadcasting live on numerous stations (including several duplicate markets) each carried this response live on the air.
Yet, we are not hearing or reading about possible fines of groups of radio stations which aired this. At least not yet. The reason? It is not because this could be considered a live news story. And it is not because the Coach immediately apologized, likely knowing his comments might have been (and indeed were) live on the air. It seems that Coach Williams made his comment after 10:00 PM, which is considered part of the "Safe Harbor" period by the FCC.
Personally, my hope is that the decision makers about carrying these press conferences live will keep in mind that this was a post-game press conference and not something that slipped through during an actual game. There have been a share of live 'language mishaps' during game action.
Considering the delay of a post-game press conference, which some radio and TV stations already do just for this reason, needs to be treated differently from delaying any game action.
It will be interesting to see if anyone else keeps the "Safe Harbor" situation in mind in the near future, especially if this incident continues to sneak through without a major reaction.
This brought back a memory of the late 80's when the "Safe Harbor" first went into effect between Midnight and 6:00 AM. I was living in Los Angeles and listening to KLSX in its days as a classic rock station. Phil Hendrie was then a late night music host. One night, he slipped up reading an announcement and said "Ooops. I'll get my (s-word) together". I was shocked, but then looked at my watch and it was four minutes past Midnight. And I never heard or read another word about that incident - and that was from the announcer on the air.
But in this instance, I have to believe the coach's incident aired live because both networks were airing this, and I'm sure neither wanted to wait until possibly after the other started to air it because of the duplication of markets. Yet, a few minutes earlier, and the FCC could have issued up millions in fines.
It's "Play Ball" big time starting this week for the exciting new MLB Network. In addition to one hour shows devoted to each team airing over the next 4 weeks, the Network has announced a full slate of spring training telecasts, most of them live, starting with two games on the first day of exhibition games. (The tentative schedule is shown below.)
SAN FRANCISCO - Oakland A's fans might have a tougher challenge than the A's themselves when the regular season starts. The A's games have moved to stations which are not strong signals. Now Comcast SportsNet and DirecTV still have not worked out their greed. Or should I say, financial differences. Of course, thousands of fans could lose out.
This season, as many as 145 of the A's games are to be shown on CSN. However, negotiations are continuing for the regional DirecTV feed, which as of this writing, is not settled. While Comcast
SportsNet and DirecTV officials have begun the usual public mudslinging that has become a part of the sports on TV landscape over the past couple of years, an estimated 300,000+ households might not have access to the A's games.
This, while the A's get millions from Comcast SportsNet for the rights to practically all of their games. And while many fans will have difficulty hearing or seeing the games. And this after the San Francisco Giants, with an expanded cable package of 134 games and only 20 games on KPIX Channel 11 (plus national telecasts) will have at least 159 out of 162 games televised.
For the sake of Bay Area baseball fans who are finally getting a major assortment of TV games, let's hope this does get resolved. It is not a given. Comcast's CSN Northwest in the Portland area has the Blazers' NBA telecasts, and those are still not available on that area's DirectTV, now almost 2/3 into this NBA season.
For those with digital cable in the Bay Area, Giants and A's games will be available for replay the next day at no additional charge.
NATIONAL - Maybe this information will alert sports radio stations which continue to carry delayed sports talk shows. This is a separate battle from the local vs. syndicated discussion. Sports stations in markets as large as Los Angeles and Chicago continue to air sports shows delayed by hours which sometimes results in outdated stories on the air.
Now comes word from ESPN that since going to live SportsCenter and related programming into the late morning and early afternoon its viewership is up anywhere from 10% to 20% so far. Sports fans want it "now".
PITTSBURGH - New Pirates play-by-play voice Tim Neverett makes his debut on Wednesday (Feb. 25) calling the Pirates exhibition opener against the Phillies on flagship WPGB 104.7 FM and the Pirates Radio Network. Greg Brown will also continue with play-by-play, with analysis from Steve Blass, Bob Walk, and John Wehner. Pirates radio will carry 16 spring training games, a higher total than most teams this season. FSN Pittsburgh will carry 125 regular season and 2 spring training games.
BOSTON - WEEI Sports Radio programming continues to go regional. Cape Cod's 96.3 FM will carry WEEI sports beginning April 1st, and will change its call letters to WEII. The Hyannis station will continue its music format through March.
BALTIMORE / D.C.: The rumor mill is churning about WJFK 106.7 in Washington possibly changing from "guy talk" to sports talk to compete with ESPN 980. I have to wonder about that, considering that nearby Baltimore has four - count 'em, four - sports stations, after CBS changed the former WHFS to sports WJZ-FM.
Here's hoping for a speedy recovery to WBAL afternoon host Ron Smith after emergency heart surgery on Feb. 14th. Same for WRC Channel 4 sports reporter Dan Hellie, recovering from a shoulder separation suffered in a ski accident last week.
No replacement named yet at D.C.'s WTTG Channel 5 for a weekend sports anchor postion. Dave Benz is leaving to join Comcast SportsNet Bay Area in San Francisco. Benz had previously anchored for FSN Rocky Mountain in the Denver area.
DENVER - Speaking of Denver, Mile High Sports 1510 AM is adding a weekly NASCAR radio show, "Hansen's Race Central" with Kurt Hansen. However, with some NASCAR events on Saturdays, a Sunday morning slot wouldn't be a fit every weekend. The show will air at the unusual but "fresh" time of 10 AM to Noon on Fridays. If race fans remember or are able to tune in, they will get timely information.
WHEELING: Sorry to learn of the passing of George Kellas, who passed away last week (Feb. 19) from cancer at the age of 53. Kellas was a sports anchor for eight years at WTOV-TV and for 12 years at WTRF-TV. Most recently, George hosted a show on KKKX 1600 AM since 2004.
MLB NETWORK SPRING TRAINING BROADCAST SCHEDULE
*Indicates live broadcast
All times ET and subject to change
February 25 3:00 p.m.* San Francisco Giants @ Cleveland Indians
7:00 p.m.* Boston Red Sox @ Minnesota Twins
February 26 4:00 p.m. Arizona Diamondbacks @ Cleveland Indians
February 27 1:00 p.m.* St. Louis Cardinals @ New York Mets
5:00 p.m. San Diego Padres @ Cleveland Indians
February 28 1:00 p.m.* Tampa Bay Rays @ Philadelphia Phillies
5:00 p.m. Minnesota Twins @ New York Yankees
March 1 1:00 p.m.* Boston Red Sox @ Minnesota Twins
5:00 p.m. Chicago White Sox @ Los Angeles Dodgers
9:00 p.m. Houston Astros @ New York Mets
March 3 1:00 p.m.* USA @ New York Yankees (WBC Exhibition)
5:00 p.m. Canada @ Toronto Blue Jays (WBC Exhibition)
March 4 9:00 p.m.* Australia @ Seattle Mariners (WBC Exhibition)
March 5 4:00 p.m.* Chicago White Sox @ Chicago Cubs
March 6 1:00 p.m.* Washington Nationals @ Baltimore Orioles
March 7 3:00 p.m.* Oakland Athletics @ San Diego Padres
March 9 1:00 p.m.* Baltimore Orioles @ New York Mets
March 14 4:00 p.m.* Texas Rangers @ Chicago White Sox
March 15 1:00 p.m.* St. Louis Cardinals @ Philadelphia Phillies
8:30 p.m. Kansas City Royals @ San Francisco Giants
March 16 1:00 p.m.* St. Louis Cardinals @ Detroit Tigers
7:00 p.m.* Tampa Bay Rays @ Pittsburgh Pirates
March 17 1:00 p.m.* Minnesota Twins @ Boston Red Sox
March 18 1:00 p.m.* Atlanta Braves @ New York Mets
March 19 1:00 p.m.* St. Louis Cardinals @ Tampa Bay Rays
7:00 p.m.* Boston Red Sox @ Cincinnati Reds
March 20 1:00 p.m.* Cincinnati Reds @ Houston Astros
5:00 p.m. San Diego Padres @ Chicago Cubs
9:00 p.m.* Los Angeles Dodgers @ Kansas City Royals
March 21 1:00 p.m.* Boston Red Sox @ Florida Marlins
5:00 p.m. Chicago Cubs @ Chicago White Sox
March 22 1:00 p.m.* New York Yankees @ Tampa Bay Rays
5:00 p.m. Cleveland Indians @ Colorado Rockies
March 23 1:00 p.m.* Florida Marlins @ Houston Astros
5:00 p.m. Milwaukee Brewers @ Colorado Rockies
March 24 1:00 p.m.* New York Mets @ Houston Astros
7:00 p.m.* Boston Red Sox @ New York Yankees
March 25 1:00 p.m.* Detroit Tigers @ New York Mets
7:00 p.m.* Atlanta Braves @ Washington Nationals
March 26 4:00 p.m.* Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim @ Cleveland Indians
10:30 p.m.* Chicago Cubs @ San Francisco Giants
March 27 1:00 p.m.* Detroit Tigers @ Atlanta Braves
9:00 p.m.* Milwaukee Brewers @ Texas Rangers
March 28 1:00 p.m.* Philadelphia Phillies @ Pittsburgh Pirates
5:00 p.m. Chicago Cubs @ Colorado Rockies
9:00 p.m. New York Yankees @ Atlanta Braves
March 29 1:00 p.m.* Atlanta Braves @ Detroit Tigers
5:00 p.m. Kansas City Royals @ Seattle Mariners
March 30 1:00 p.m.* Tampa Bay Rays @ Minnesota Twins
7:00 p.m.* San Diego Padres @ Cleveland Indians
March 31 4:00 p.m.* Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim @ Chicago Cubs
10:00 p.m.* Milwaukee Brewers @ San Diego Padres
April 1 1:00 p.m.* Florida Marlins @ Baltimore Orioles
5:00 p.m. Texas Rangers @ Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
9:00 p.m. Arizona Diamondbacks @ Milwaukee Brewers
April 2 3:00 p.m.* Chicago White Sox @ Milwaukee Brewers
10:00 p.m.* Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim @ Los Angeles Dodgers
April 3 7:00 p.m.* Chicago Cubs @ New York Yankees
April 4 1:00 p.m.* Boston Red Sox @ New York Mets
6:00 p.m.* Baltimore Orioles @ Washington Nationals
10:00 p.m.* Milwaukee Brewers @ Los Angeles Dodgers
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Sports Media Update - Feb. 9th..............
MLB-TV made news in its own way on Saturday as the A-Rod story was breaking in terms of working toward establishing itself as a news organization for all things baseball.
First, I am pleasantly surprised that they would tackle the A-Rod story in full. I'm not sure anyone would have questioned it if they didn't, as they could have brushed the story aside or played it down, being a Major League Baseball source. This was not exactly the most positive of stories about the game.
On one hand, breaking in to their scheduled "classic" programming lineup for more than 3 hours seems a bit over-dramatic. But on the other hand, doing so is setting the table for viewers to tune them in when baseball news, positive or negative, is breaking.
On the other, the story coming out was over something which occurred more than 5 years ago and could have broken at any time. It's not as if something specific happened on Saturday morning to make this story any more immediate. But that is not important to this commentary.
The timing for MLB-TV was actually quite good for a major baseball story to break when it did. ESPN and ESPN2 were into their all day slates of college hoops. Same with other regional sports channels. But that made me an example of why MLB-TV did what they did.
I happened to see the scroll about A-Rod on a news channel shortly after the "story" broke. I flipped over to ESPN and saw the bottom line scroll during their college hoops game, and the same for ESPN2. Thinking I might get more details on the bottom scroll on MLB-TV, I switched over. To my amazement, there was a live studio crew with Matt Vasgersian, Harold Reynolds, and Dan Plesac among those reporters in the studio and on the air live with reactions.
They kept at it for a couple hours, and paved the way for Bob Costas to interview the Sports Illustrated reporter live.
Again, this actually was not an "immediate" story since it took 5 years to break, but it showed a lot of baseball fans that MLB-TV is the place to go for breaking baseball news. Another homerun from our newest major sports network.
Meanwhile, MLB has announced and is now promoting their live streaming package for the upcoming season, and how for $129.95 fans can see "unlimited access to live and on-demand streams of every regular season game". However, later in the description we are reminded that "blackout restrictions apply". This drives me nuts.
It has been and remains my belief that there should be much more of a public outcry about sports blackouts. There should be NO blackouts of sports telecasts in the local markets. If I want to watch the opposing team or network feed of my game of most interest, I should be able to do that. If the home team telecast suffers that badly because of a "no blackout" policy, then they need to change announcers or improve their local coverage to draw the fans back.
The teams and their covering stations seem to overlook the fact that I, as a cable (or satellite) subscriber am PAYING to watch the channels that are being blacked out. Worse yet, fans who don't care about sports are having to pay for these sports channels they don't even want. A team on a competing station or network (even for those 3 hours) should not have the right to dictate what channels I can or can't see. Thus, I'm among those "blacking out" any thought of buying the MLB package.
On top of that, there is more aggravation for some baseball fans trying to follow their favorite team through the media each day. It is bad enough that in some cities fans need to check the daily TV schedules to find what channel will have their favorite team that day. There is the "over-the-air" package, the cable package, and national games from ESPN and FOX.
In Chicago, the White Sox appeared on no less than seven - count 'em - seven TV channels again last season. (That's WGN and WCIU-TV in a shared over-the-air package, Comcast SportsNet, Comcast SportsNet Plus, ESPN, ESPN2, and the local Fox-TV station.)
But now, local radio is getting into the act, and it is a complete strikeout for Texas Rangers fans. Their radio package is being split between weekday and weekend games. The Fan 105.3 FM will carry the Monday through Friday games, while Saturday and Sunday "continue" on KRLD 1080 AM. Adding to this, the spring training broadcasts will also be split up, as The Fan carries 15 of the spring games with KRLD handling 3 of them.
Eric Nadel will be back for his 31st season in the radio booth, now joined by Dave Barnett.
So let's get this straight for the Rangers fans out there. Say there is a 4 game Thursday through Sunday series. On TV, the Thursday game could be on cable, the Friday game over-the-air, the Saturday game on FOX-TV, and a Sunday game could be a night game on ESPN. That would be 4 TV channels for each of the 4 games. (And if you have paid your $129 for MLB streaming and live too close to Dallas, you would not get the telecasts at all.) On the radio side, the first two games will be on FM, the last 2 games on AM. Got it. This could be the newest rage since fantasy leagues. Find the broadcasts. Worse yet, another way that radio adds a challenge to its listeners.
In Los Angeles, rumors persist that KFWB 980 will carry some of the Angels weeknight games, perhaps right along with KLAA 830 AM to increase the signal coverage. At least that could be on two stations with the same broadcast, but nothing is definite yet.
Wonder how many fans will have time to buy tickets to see their favorite team when they have to make an everyday effort to find where the game is being broadcast and telecast.
TAMPA - The Rays come off their first ever appearance in the World Series and what do they do? They take all of their telecasts for the coming season and put them all on cable via FSN. The only "over-the-air" games will be those shown regionally on Fox-TV. So far, Fox has scheduled 5 Rays games, with only one against a division opponent (May 9 vs. Boston), meaning no over-the-air telecasts vs. the Yankees.
Tampa was also the site of NFL broadcast meetings surrounding the Super Bowl week. But Sports Business Journal reports no progress regarding the national radio rights for the coming season. Westwood One, ESPN, and Sporting News Radio are reportedly still in the running, but each has its reasons and restrictions for not having a deal in place yet.
KANSAS CITY - Same story in Kansas City, and the Royals need all the favorable coverage they can get. Yet, it has been announed that Fox Sports Kansas City will show 140 games this season.
Ryan Lefebvre continues with play-by-play with Paul Splittorff as analyst and Frank White handling a selection of telecasts.
DETROIT - The NBA Pistons will be changing radio outlets starting in the fall. WXYT The Ticket 97.1 FM will begin a multi-year deal as flagship station on the Pistons Network, replacing WDFN.
This change is made despite the number of conflicts that will bump the Pistons broadcasts to another station. The Ticket already has Tigers baseball and Lions football. WWJ 950 AM is expected to air the conflicting Pistons broadcasts, which will continue to be handled by George Blaha and Mark Champion. It surprises me that the Pistons would agree to this, knowing their games will now be bumped. If the Tigers have a good season (normally I would include the Lions in this comment, but I'm not that hypothetical), a percentage of fans would stick with the Tigers game and not tune over to hear the Pistons.
HOUSTON - It is getting to the point where a broadcaster can't say much of anything without a total review. During last week's Rockets game vs. Chicago, Rockets TV analyst (and former NBA great) Clyde Drexler witnessed another slam dunk by Yao Ming of the Rockets over Andres Nocioni of the Bulls, and commented "That's like clubbing baby seals. There is nothing Nocioni can do."
The next day, a Rockets team official was quoted as "having spoken with Clyde regarding his statement during Tuesday night's game". Maybe Clyde's choice of words weren't the greatest, but that was his reaction. What, are the PETA people protesting to the station? Did "Save The Seals" demand air time? Who the heck was being offended? This was not anything racist or vindictive. It was a description that doesn't fit with the usual sports cliche. If this keeps up, those fans who can find the channel a game is being televised or broadcast on will hear "Yes, Ming got another dunk" for the exciting analysis.
The "Longhorn Nation" show now airs each Monday at 6:00 PM on KGOW 1560, while the station now airs its Texas A&M Aggies show on Thursdays at 6, and the University of Houston "Cougars Tonight" at that time each Friday.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL - For those NCAA Football fans who like to plan ahead, some prime games are already being lined up for the fall.
ESPN will handle the Ohio State vs. Southern Cal game at 8 PM ET on September 12th. The Colorado at West Virginia game has been moved to Thursday night Oct. 1st for ESPN. You may recall that WVU lost in overtime at Colorado on a Thursday night game this past September.
And, the Colorado vs. Oklahoma State game has been moved from its originally scheduled Nov. 21 Saturday game up two days. ESPN will have this matchup on Thursday Nov. 19th at 7:45 ET.
First, I am pleasantly surprised that they would tackle the A-Rod story in full. I'm not sure anyone would have questioned it if they didn't, as they could have brushed the story aside or played it down, being a Major League Baseball source. This was not exactly the most positive of stories about the game.
On one hand, breaking in to their scheduled "classic" programming lineup for more than 3 hours seems a bit over-dramatic. But on the other hand, doing so is setting the table for viewers to tune them in when baseball news, positive or negative, is breaking.
On the other, the story coming out was over something which occurred more than 5 years ago and could have broken at any time. It's not as if something specific happened on Saturday morning to make this story any more immediate. But that is not important to this commentary.
The timing for MLB-TV was actually quite good for a major baseball story to break when it did. ESPN and ESPN2 were into their all day slates of college hoops. Same with other regional sports channels. But that made me an example of why MLB-TV did what they did.
I happened to see the scroll about A-Rod on a news channel shortly after the "story" broke. I flipped over to ESPN and saw the bottom line scroll during their college hoops game, and the same for ESPN2. Thinking I might get more details on the bottom scroll on MLB-TV, I switched over. To my amazement, there was a live studio crew with Matt Vasgersian, Harold Reynolds, and Dan Plesac among those reporters in the studio and on the air live with reactions.
They kept at it for a couple hours, and paved the way for Bob Costas to interview the Sports Illustrated reporter live.
Again, this actually was not an "immediate" story since it took 5 years to break, but it showed a lot of baseball fans that MLB-TV is the place to go for breaking baseball news. Another homerun from our newest major sports network.
Meanwhile, MLB has announced and is now promoting their live streaming package for the upcoming season, and how for $129.95 fans can see "unlimited access to live and on-demand streams of every regular season game". However, later in the description we are reminded that "blackout restrictions apply". This drives me nuts.
It has been and remains my belief that there should be much more of a public outcry about sports blackouts. There should be NO blackouts of sports telecasts in the local markets. If I want to watch the opposing team or network feed of my game of most interest, I should be able to do that. If the home team telecast suffers that badly because of a "no blackout" policy, then they need to change announcers or improve their local coverage to draw the fans back.
The teams and their covering stations seem to overlook the fact that I, as a cable (or satellite) subscriber am PAYING to watch the channels that are being blacked out. Worse yet, fans who don't care about sports are having to pay for these sports channels they don't even want. A team on a competing station or network (even for those 3 hours) should not have the right to dictate what channels I can or can't see. Thus, I'm among those "blacking out" any thought of buying the MLB package.
On top of that, there is more aggravation for some baseball fans trying to follow their favorite team through the media each day. It is bad enough that in some cities fans need to check the daily TV schedules to find what channel will have their favorite team that day. There is the "over-the-air" package, the cable package, and national games from ESPN and FOX.
In Chicago, the White Sox appeared on no less than seven - count 'em - seven TV channels again last season. (That's WGN and WCIU-TV in a shared over-the-air package, Comcast SportsNet, Comcast SportsNet Plus, ESPN, ESPN2, and the local Fox-TV station.)
But now, local radio is getting into the act, and it is a complete strikeout for Texas Rangers fans. Their radio package is being split between weekday and weekend games. The Fan 105.3 FM will carry the Monday through Friday games, while Saturday and Sunday "continue" on KRLD 1080 AM. Adding to this, the spring training broadcasts will also be split up, as The Fan carries 15 of the spring games with KRLD handling 3 of them.
Eric Nadel will be back for his 31st season in the radio booth, now joined by Dave Barnett.
So let's get this straight for the Rangers fans out there. Say there is a 4 game Thursday through Sunday series. On TV, the Thursday game could be on cable, the Friday game over-the-air, the Saturday game on FOX-TV, and a Sunday game could be a night game on ESPN. That would be 4 TV channels for each of the 4 games. (And if you have paid your $129 for MLB streaming and live too close to Dallas, you would not get the telecasts at all.) On the radio side, the first two games will be on FM, the last 2 games on AM. Got it. This could be the newest rage since fantasy leagues. Find the broadcasts. Worse yet, another way that radio adds a challenge to its listeners.
In Los Angeles, rumors persist that KFWB 980 will carry some of the Angels weeknight games, perhaps right along with KLAA 830 AM to increase the signal coverage. At least that could be on two stations with the same broadcast, but nothing is definite yet.
Wonder how many fans will have time to buy tickets to see their favorite team when they have to make an everyday effort to find where the game is being broadcast and telecast.
TAMPA - The Rays come off their first ever appearance in the World Series and what do they do? They take all of their telecasts for the coming season and put them all on cable via FSN. The only "over-the-air" games will be those shown regionally on Fox-TV. So far, Fox has scheduled 5 Rays games, with only one against a division opponent (May 9 vs. Boston), meaning no over-the-air telecasts vs. the Yankees.
Tampa was also the site of NFL broadcast meetings surrounding the Super Bowl week. But Sports Business Journal reports no progress regarding the national radio rights for the coming season. Westwood One, ESPN, and Sporting News Radio are reportedly still in the running, but each has its reasons and restrictions for not having a deal in place yet.
KANSAS CITY - Same story in Kansas City, and the Royals need all the favorable coverage they can get. Yet, it has been announed that Fox Sports Kansas City will show 140 games this season.
Ryan Lefebvre continues with play-by-play with Paul Splittorff as analyst and Frank White handling a selection of telecasts.
DETROIT - The NBA Pistons will be changing radio outlets starting in the fall. WXYT The Ticket 97.1 FM will begin a multi-year deal as flagship station on the Pistons Network, replacing WDFN.
This change is made despite the number of conflicts that will bump the Pistons broadcasts to another station. The Ticket already has Tigers baseball and Lions football. WWJ 950 AM is expected to air the conflicting Pistons broadcasts, which will continue to be handled by George Blaha and Mark Champion. It surprises me that the Pistons would agree to this, knowing their games will now be bumped. If the Tigers have a good season (normally I would include the Lions in this comment, but I'm not that hypothetical), a percentage of fans would stick with the Tigers game and not tune over to hear the Pistons.
HOUSTON - It is getting to the point where a broadcaster can't say much of anything without a total review. During last week's Rockets game vs. Chicago, Rockets TV analyst (and former NBA great) Clyde Drexler witnessed another slam dunk by Yao Ming of the Rockets over Andres Nocioni of the Bulls, and commented "That's like clubbing baby seals. There is nothing Nocioni can do."
The next day, a Rockets team official was quoted as "having spoken with Clyde regarding his statement during Tuesday night's game". Maybe Clyde's choice of words weren't the greatest, but that was his reaction. What, are the PETA people protesting to the station? Did "Save The Seals" demand air time? Who the heck was being offended? This was not anything racist or vindictive. It was a description that doesn't fit with the usual sports cliche. If this keeps up, those fans who can find the channel a game is being televised or broadcast on will hear "Yes, Ming got another dunk" for the exciting analysis.
The "Longhorn Nation" show now airs each Monday at 6:00 PM on KGOW 1560, while the station now airs its Texas A&M Aggies show on Thursdays at 6, and the University of Houston "Cougars Tonight" at that time each Friday.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL - For those NCAA Football fans who like to plan ahead, some prime games are already being lined up for the fall.
ESPN will handle the Ohio State vs. Southern Cal game at 8 PM ET on September 12th. The Colorado at West Virginia game has been moved to Thursday night Oct. 1st for ESPN. You may recall that WVU lost in overtime at Colorado on a Thursday night game this past September.
And, the Colorado vs. Oklahoma State game has been moved from its originally scheduled Nov. 21 Saturday game up two days. ESPN will have this matchup on Thursday Nov. 19th at 7:45 ET.
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