Watchdog

YES Network is not for sale, Sports Business Journal sez

2008-05-14T22:14:35Z

I don't totally understand all the business concepts here and I don't even know if you can call up the entire story if you're not a subscriber.

But the basic point is that despite widespread reports late last year - including by me - that pieces of the YES Network were for sale, they now are not.

So if you were saving up to make a bid, feel free to blow it on $8.50 bottles of Budweiser at Yankee Stadium. That's for 16 ounces. It's $9.50 for 20.

I digress.

Bill Simmons seems displeased with ESPN at this time

2008-05-14T20:07:36Z

Everyone has been wondering how Newsday will handle covering the Knicks and Rangers and thus risk being critical of our new bosses.

Then, out of leftfield, comes this from ESPN.com's biggest star, Bill Simmons, who evidently is not bashful about being critical of his bosses.

So here we have Deadspin interviewing the Sports Guy, a meeting of two of the biggest brands in Internet-based sports media.

It's a crazy, mixed up media world out there, and WatchDog is here for you, always ready to slobber over it.

What does ESPN have to say about all this?

"Bill is an exceptional talent with a unique voice that we're proud to bring to fans. In any creative environment that features talented people, there will inevitably be differences. As we have in the past, we'll continue to work through them."

Charley Steiner drives WatchDog to Le Batard-ville

2008-05-14T19:14:42Z

Charley Steiner just interviewed me on XM Satellite Radio. He fairly but aggressively engaged me in an interesting (I hope) debate about the existence of sports media columns in general and the approach some people in the job take to it in particular.

Eventually I (figuratively) threw up my hands and told him what I tell everyone:

That as much as I enjoy my current job I never have denied it is silly.

Arlen Specter does not consider Spygate closed

2008-05-14T19:00:09Z

I guess it's official now:

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Comcast) never, ever is going to stop torturing the NFL as punishment for keeping that Thursday-Saturday game package for itself rather than selling it to Comcast.

Or at least not until the NFL agrees to make "Sunday Ticket" available to Comcast and other cable companies.

Sigh.

Inter-generational tensions extend into 21st century

2008-05-14T17:42:21Z

I don't know what to make of this Dan Le Batard essay in The Big Lead, which comes not long after his mid-life-crisis (temporary, perhaps) farewell to the Miami Herald.

It's interesting. It's well written. It's long.

It's more serious than I am able to take myself. And it's just another variation on a story that has been repeating itself since those crazy kids who climbed out of the primordial ooze had the old folks they left behind shaking their heads.

I'll continue trying to keep one foot in the ooze and one on the beach overlooking it. And I'll try not to write any essays as long or serious as Le Batard's.

I now am going to write a newspaper article. Thanks for reading today.

Spike Lee shoots Lakers - with all 18 cameras on Kobe

2008-05-14T16:56:40Z

I suppose I should tell you more about the goings-on at the ESPN Upfront Tuesday. Frankly, it's all quite overwhelming and it was a challenge to keep all the stuff straight.

I do know that snowboard goddess Gretchen Bleiler was there as a celebrity schmoozer, as were Amani Toomer of Our Giants and Spike Lee.

Mr. Lee on His Knicks: "I was hoping Mark Jackson would get the job, but I'm going to give Mike D'Antoni a chance. You have to.''

Lee said he was spared much of the pain of Isiah Thomas' last campaign. He even was able to resell his pricey season tickets for the games he skipped.

"I missed half the season because I was in Italy shooting a film, so it worked out pretty good," he said.

Lee took 18 cameras to a Lakers game last month, all of them trained on Kobe Bryant. He is going to put together a film based on the footage for ESPN. "When we get it done, it's going to be a very unique vision of a basketball game."

Click below for a bunch of other stuff ESPN promoted during the presentation to ad buyers, other assorted TV industry types and a scruffy handful of business/media journalists.

1. As mentioned in an earlier post, SportsCenter will go live from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. starting Aug. 11, intentionally timed for during the Olympics, when there will be plenty of information to report early in the morning. (No video of the action, though. NBC owns that.)

2. The other big change to SportsCenter will come next April, when ESPN's L.A. studio opens and serves as the home of the 1 a.m. episode. Around that same time ESPN will make changes to its set and graphic look back in Bristol.

3. ESPN.com is planning a re-design, and also will add original digital video, featuring "Mayne Street,'' presumably amusing vignettes starring the ESPN personality.

4. Look for a promotional assault when former SI star Rick Reilly officially becomes contractually available June 1. Reilly will do all sorts of things, including a show called "ESPN Homecoming," in which he visits and interviews sports people in their home towns. First up: Charles Barkley, in October.

5. "Time Line," a "buddy" debate show of some kind, featuring three personalities debating sports stuff.

6. Disney's Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando will be re-branded as an ESPN sports experience of some sort.

7. "College Football Live" is going to go daily 12 months a year.

8. Thirty separate films, beginning in September, 2009, to celebrate ESPN's 30th birthday.

9. More high school coverage, including involvement with the high school sports mag "Rise."

10. Plus a lot of other stuff I forget now. Let's all be surprised together as ESPN continues to roll out content and systematically march closer to world domination.

The most amusing comment of Tuesday came when Bleiler discussed her interest in battling global warning, a particular concern for someone who makes her living on snow.

Said John Skipper, ESPN's executive VP for content, "That would be a bummer for you if everything melted."

HBO reports on unfortunate fates of slow race horses

2008-05-14T16:06:18Z

Let's put it this way: The segment on this week's "Real Sports" on the fates of thoroughbreds who no longer can get it done on the track is far more graphic than anything NBC chose not to show of Eight Belles' injury at the Kentucky Derby.

Yikes. It reruns at 8 p.m. Friday on HBO, as well as on various other HBO channels at various other times.

Time to become a vegetarian.

I've only bet on two major horse races: Alydar to win the 1978 Belmont and Funny Cide to win the 2003 Kentucky Derby.

Wagered $10 on both occasions. Came out ahead overall.

John Skipper wants you to watch ESPN in the a.m.

2008-05-14T15:07:52Z

In the post below, I type impressive quantities of words from Hannah Storm.

In this post, I do the same with her new boss, John Skipper, ESPN's grand poobah of content and one of the people with the most power over the sports stuff you see on TV.

Skipper is from North Carolina (and sounds like it), but he once lived in Huntington briefly. No, he was not a Newsday paper boy.

Click below for his comments after Tuesday's upfront.

On why it took so long to go to a live morning SportsCenter:

"Three or four months ago somebody brought it up. We decided to do it at that moment. There was no reason other than we never thought about it before. Maybe somebody else did, but I didn’t."

On the commitment of financial and other resources:

"At this point with people’s ability to get information whenever they want it, once we thought about it, of course we have to do it. It will be better. I don’t know how or why, but your ability to react to events and be live, it just seems like we should do it."

On competing with ESPN2 shows such as "Mike and Mike" and "First Take":

"We’re completely committed to competing with ourselves. I don’t understand why we wouldn’t put the best possible product on ESPN and ESPN2. If you look at what’s happened, the last three or four years our morning audience has grown but most of the growth has been Mike and Mike and First Take, so what we’ve decided to do is strike back. The empire strikes back. We’ll strike back with live SportsCenters.

"We want to reach over a million people on television in the morning; that’s one goal we have."

On the three blocks of new SportsCenters:

"Six to 9 will be mostly recap. Nine to 12 probably will begin to react a little to what does it mean going forward. From 12 to 3 I think you’ll be looking at press conferences, live events, things that happened."

On the larger mission, which includes other new programs coming this year and next:

"We want to have as many games as possible, we want to be as live as possible and we’re pretty much doing core sports as much as possible. I have an abstract technology thing we measure of how we’re doing. If you walk by a bar anywhere in the country and you see ESPN or ESPN2 on the screen, I want, even if our logo is not on the screen, for it to be clear what it is: ESPN.

"In the old magazine business we used to say you should be able to open a magazine to any page and know what magazine you’re in because it has a specific personality and theme and tone."

Hannah Storm's daughters like their NCAA brackets

2008-05-14T14:38:00Z

Hannah Storm looks in this picture as if she is silently pleading to the camera, "Please, get me out of here and back to sports."

Now she is. ESPN has hired her to host three of the nine new hours of live SportsCenters that will be seen from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. starting Aug. 11.

I'm too lazy to write a coherent story on this subject, as Deistch did today.

So I'm just going to throw massive quantities of unedited quotes against the wall from Ms. Storm after Tuesday's ESPN Upfront and let you sort it out.

Click below for all that.

On moving to ESPN:

"It was a mutual convergence of events. It was amazing timing. ESPN had this idea in their minds of what they wanted to do with SportsCenter in the mornings at the same time I was freed of the CBS 'Early Show.'

"Virtually every day somebody from somewhere in the country would walk up and say, 'Do you miss sports?' And honestly the answer was, I really did. I was in it for 20 years, completely passionate about it, grew up around it. There’s nothing that matches the adrenaline and excitement of a sporting event and the way it’s a reflection or microcosm of what people go through with their achievements and dedication and failures.

"I always have found it fascinating on that level, too, so I had to honestly say I really did miss it and I’m so excited to get back to my roots, really excited."

On the commute from her home in Greenwich to Bristol:

"What is Bristol close to? I guess Hartford." (Storm said because of the commute and the fact she will write most of her own material, she will have to get up at around 4:30 a.m. even though she will not be on TV until 9.)

On the approach from 9 to noon:

"It’s not just everything that happened the night before, but a lot of breaking news, previewing what’s going to happen that night, water cooler issues, press conferences. I kind of like rocking and rolling a lot so I think in those three hours there will be a lot starting to cook and percolate."

On the show's expected audience:

"I imagine my audience is heavily male. It certainly was last time I was in sports. And then the sort of funny thing is I stepped into the morning show world where it was all women and a lot of them didn’t know me, and a lot of men sort of wondered where I went. So I have this really interesting dual set of people who know who I am.

"It’d be great to bring them together in some respects. I think that would be nice. I obviously feel sports is something for everybody. I have three daughters and they’re very much into sports. They are in fifth grade, fourth grade and first grade and they can all fill out an NCAA bracket.

"They're really excited I’m part of the Disney family, that’s the big deal. You know, the other Hannah. That’s the one they’re fascinated with." (That would be Hannah Montana, of course).

On whether she has followed sports closely of late:

"Obviously when I was with the Early Show I had to delve really heavily into politics, pop culture, music and the news. So in that sense there are only 24 hours in a day so at times depending on the news cycle I was very much into news.

"However for my free time, it was all about sports. For instance even though I was as a newscaster, let's go back a year, just for fun I went to the Notre Dame-USC game, I went to the Florida-Tennessee game, I went to the Super Bowl, I went to the U.S. Open, I went and sat in 20 degree temperatures to see the Red Sox play the Yankees, and I was at the Final Four, and none of that was for work. Well, the Super Bowl was for work for CBS.

"So that gives you an idea how much I paid attention to it. Plus, my husband [Dan Hicks] is at NBC Sports and he’s a golf host. So we talk about sports constantly. I’m pretty well rounded as a sportscaster or a newscaster. That's what you want to be to be a really good journalist anyway. You should know about all the things people are talking about and how sports fits into that panorama."

Former Newsday scribe Tony Kornheiser leaves Post

2008-05-14T14:22:51Z

Tony Kornheiser officially is done (for now) as a full-time newspaper man, having accepted a buyout from the Washington Post.

Here is the news, via his radio show, via DC Sports Bog, via Deadspin.

Tony's wistfulness is understandable, and there is a local connection here, of course, for a kid from Lynbrook who began his professional career at Newsday, inspired by Stan Isaacs, who later founded Newsday's TV Sports column.

But none of this is a surprise. When I spoke to Tony before his "Monday Night Football" debut in 2006, he made it quite clear his work with the Post henceforth would be very limited, and that mostly he was through with newspapers, no matter his nostalgic connection to them.

Paraphrasing, Kornheiser told me he felt he had nothing left to write, at least in that media form.

Al Michaels still free to watch NBC on Thursday nights

2008-05-14T14:06:03Z

Speaking of The New York Times (see post below), it offered a small story today on the fact the NFL Network's attempt to land Al Michaels as its play-by-play man had run into a dead end.

The story indirectly confirmed the 12th of my 52 posts on May 1, in which I reported Michaels was on the NFL Network's wish list, a scooplet that was greeted with skepticism in some quarters.

Michaels always was a longshot, because he enjoys his current lifestyle and adding a new gig was going to be a tough sell.

What now? I have nothing against Tom Hammond, a solid pro who would be a big improvement over Bryant Gumbel. But the NFL should consider a younger announcer with which it can grow and who can become its face and voice.

I hereby nominate someone whose name has been bandied about by NFL Net types and who would be an excellent choice: Bob Papa.

WatchDog's mother blasts 'disgraceful' cereal prices!

2008-05-14T13:37:06Z

My late, sainted mother was quoted in The New York Times hammering the cereal industry for its "disgraceful" prices . . . in the summer of 1993.

It was enough to get her into the first paragraph.

Today I joined her in the Times archives for eternity, but I was far less quotable, and thus relegated to the last paragraph.

Much more of my wit and wisdom is available in Newsday's archives, of course.

I do not recall Newsday ever quoting my mother, but she was a loyal subscriber for 25 years, so it's all good.

Antonio Pierce pokes fun at Pokes' Terrell Owens

2008-05-14T12:02:10Z

This is almost as good as Tom Brady dissing the Jets (see post below).

Giants linebacker and Howard Stern show intern Antonio Pierce had this to say Tuesday on FSN's "Best Damn Sports Show Period" on the subject of Terrell Owens' sitcom debut Wednesday night on Flavor Flav's "Under One Roof":

"We gave him his first audition. After our game, he was crying and boo-hooing. We started his career. He should thank us.”

Tom Brady respects NY blue team, not NY green team

2008-05-14T11:49:00Z

Holy Bundchen!

Here I was, minding my own business, getting ready to link to Scott's Shots for an update on the Boston Herald's belated apology for making Glauber do extra work the day before Super Bowl XLII, when an even juicier tidbit emerges.

Check out the audio, via Scott's Shots, of Brady appearing "The Big Show" on WEEI in Boston (about eight minutes in) and describing his respect for the Giants, in contrast to his lack of respect for a team that wears green and has four letters in its name.

Yikes! Sept. 14 can't get here soon enough.

(Brady also has a lot to say about how and why the Giants won the big game, if you're interested in that sort of thing.)

SportsCenter to go live from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Aug. 11

2008-05-13T19:55:54Z

I am overcome with guilt about not blogging today. Sorry.

I was at the ESPN Upfront early this morning, after which I had a nice chat with Hannah Storm.

The biggest news to come out of the event is the new, live morning and early afternoon SportsCenters that will debut Aug. 11.

There will be nine separate, one-hour shows from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., with co-anchors working three-hour shifts, including Storm from 9 to noon.

Much more on that and other ESPN plans in the blog Wednesday and the paper Friday.

I had lunch with Deitsch and two ESPN p.r. honchos who shall remain nameless to protect them and me from blogosphere ridicule. Ms. Storm was going to join us but understandably blew us off at the last minute. She has an image to protect.

(End of name-dropping segment.)

Then I walked to the Garden for the Mike D'Antoni news conference and to bask in the warm embrace of my soon-to-be employers.

The funniest moment was Donnie Walsh calling the new coach Mike "D'Antonio," a sure sign he has been listening too much to WFAN's afternoon show.

Anyway, the World's Most Famous Arena truly is a wonderful, magical place.

Did I mention how much I enjoy the poker, boxing and infomercials on MSG Plus?