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All-Encompassing Sports TV Thread of Hate


LooseCannon

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don't know what happened to the post i just made:

 

I think NBC Sports is in decent shape, much more so than CBS Sports.

 

NBC has some good niches covered now (NASCAR, NHL, EPL) and I think I read they will have a post game show following Sunday night football.

 

Other than inventory left over from the College Sports channel, what does CBS Sports have other than a piece of the NCAA?

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That's a good point. Didn't even think about that. They're turning Speed into FS1, so I assume they're going to keep all of their current/future NASCAR rights there. Not sure if UFC is going there or will be held off for FS2, which is going to be FUEL re-branded.

 

I assume the future of all these new networks is just an avenue for more 'talking heads' stuff.

 

The whole CBS Sports, FS1 & 2, NBC Sports, ESPN thing just reeks of the 90's .com era. Lots of corporations just blindly throwing huge sums of money at television networks. Meanwhile, the market is clamoring for an a la carte/streaming system, which is the direct opposite of what all of the money is being put into.

 

The only thing keeping the bubble from bursting is how hard these TV networks are fighting to keep the status quo, and the fact that live TV/sports is going to be so much harder to stream (as opposed to HULU/Netflix binge-watching TV shows whenever).

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Oh gawd, I forgot about Comcast. For that partnership alone, I hope NBC Sports dies.

 

I got screwed out of being able to watch any Heat/Rockets games, when I lived in Houston, because I had DirecTV and Comcast wouldn't allow any other network to air the games.

 

Order Comcast so you can see all of the Rockets and Astros games!

 

What a selling point that was. A mid-level Western Conference NBA team and the worst team in baseball.

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fyi, NBC has the NASCAR back-end schedule starting in 2015. Fox has a ton of college football rights, including solid chunks of the Big 12 and Pac-12 packages. They have exclusive rights to the new Big East college hoops schedule. FS1 also has numerous studio shows already staffed and ready to roll, something that can't really be said about NBCSN and CBSSN. FS1 isn't going to fall flat on its face like some of you think, and it's not going to immediately challenge ESPN like others think. It's going to fall somewhere in the middle, and its success or failure will be based on the content. I'd be willing to bet money that by the end of the year, their averages are kicking the shit out of NBCSN and CBSSN (which is an absolute shithouse disaster of a network that I think I've watched once in three or four years).

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If you were wondering why Hugh Douglas wasn't on Numbers Never Lie on Monday, this is why...

 

Last Thursday, at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention and Career Fair, Hugh Douglas, the former Eagle and current NFL analyst for ESPN, was very drunk. A day later he would be both drunk and combative, and, as The Big Lead first reported, he and an ESPN colleague would nearly come to blows. But what went down on Friday had its roots in what happened on Thursday.

Douglas was at the Gaylord Palms Resort hotel, along with his Numbers Never Lie co-hosts, Michael Smith and Jemele Hill. Smith and Hill were speaking to "hundreds of conventioneers." Smith and Hill, both former print journalists, have been buddies for a while. They started doing a podcast a few months ago, in addition to their ESPN TV show. The podcast is called His & Hers with Michael Smith and Jemele Hill, and they were explaining to potential ESPN job recruits how it came to be. Just as they were wrapping up, Douglas approached them.

Two people told us that Douglas was drunk. Not tipsy. Wasted. We've also been told that Douglas has felt uncomfortable ever since Hill's addition to the show a few months back. Smith and Hill, after all, are old friends, and the show was now two journalists plus an ex-jock, with some loose talk that new hire Nate Silver might have some role on the show, too. A source speculates that Douglas, outnumbered by non-jocks, felt left out.

The rest is here at Deadspin.

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How many more of these 9 for 9 documentaries are left?

 

Assuming they are showing them in order (i have only seen a piece of the Sheryl Swoopes one so I dont know) - 3. That's assuming the WIKI is to be believed

 

There is one on Mary Decker (Slaney) and one on the 99 Womens soccer team and the final one appears to be on sex and sex appeal

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Yeah, there are three left. The ratings have been pretty terrible because A) they're airing in the middle of the summer, where they haven't aired a 30 for 30 in something like three years, B.) the lead-in is a two hour primetime SportsCenter that has seen its ratings fall in the tank over the last year, and C.) the subject matter hasn't exactly been something that drags in eyeballs. I'd imagine the US Soccer one will do the best numbers, but that's like saying that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.

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fyi, NBC has the NASCAR back-end schedule starting in 2015. Fox has a ton of college football rights, including solid chunks of the Big 12 and Pac-12 packages. They have exclusive rights to the new Big East college hoops schedule. FS1 also has numerous studio shows already staffed and ready to roll, something that can't really be said about NBCSN and CBSSN. FS1 isn't going to fall flat on its face like some of you think, and it's not going to immediately challenge ESPN like others think. It's going to fall somewhere in the middle, and its success or failure will be based on the content. I'd be willing to bet money that by the end of the year, their averages are kicking the shit out of NBCSN and CBSSN (which is an absolute shithouse disaster of a network that I think I've watched once in three or four years).

 

I'm still surprised CBS has a sports network. How many viewers do they even get, 28? It has to get less viewers than G4. I have the second highest tier with Directv and I think I came across it once somewhere in the 600s or 700s. That's typically where the multiple CSN channels are at, and I think Fuel is in there as well. I think we'll know how serious providers are about FS1 or NBCSN depending on where each channel is placed. On my Directv, all of the ESPN channels are in the low 200s, which is where all of the other major cable networks reside. It would be very, very interesting if FS1 wound up as channel 209, while the 5 ESPN channels occupy 204 - 208.

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Side question that Global made me realize

 

Does ESPN Classic not broadcast in HD? Or is it a matter of my Comcast not carrying it?

 

I mean I can see it not being in HD considering most of the footage isn't shot in HD but just wondering

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Whatever college football and UFC that was being shown on FX will wind up on Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2 will just keep doing the UFC they're doing now, I reckon. I can see Fox Sports 1 making a play for something like NBC's coverage of the NHL, but that's hardly a game-breaker.

 

I wonder why there's not more major sports on the major channels nightly - over the past 18 months or so, I've taken a shine to the NBA. There's games on Thursdays on TNT, generally, with games sometimes on ESPN on Wednesdays and Fridays. Now NBATV has plenty of games on - from looking at the TV schedule for next season, I may have to break down and get my cable company's sports tier to get NBATV - but it would seem like one of the major networks like ESPN or Turner or Fox Sports 1 could get a deal where they could broadcast NBA games 5-6 nights a week - what else do they have to do? Same with Major League Baseball - is it just cost-prohibitive for ESPN to have a national game of the night during baseball season?

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Here's a piece a coworker wrote about CBS Sports Network and the awful rights it has. What a shitshow.

 

re: FS1 on DirecTV. I'd assume it would be the same channel number as Speed, which I believe is somewhere in the 600s along with BTN, Fuel, CBS Sports, etc. If they're lucky, they can get it slid up into the 200s like NBCSN did awhile back. First ~two weeks of FS1 programming located here, A lot of nice college football that first weekend.

 

NHL has a deal with NBC through 2021. Don't even think about that going anywhere.

 

re: more games on TV. Networks bid on contracts like anyone else bids on contracts. Let's use MLB as an example. ESPN has Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday rights. They are paying $700 *million* per year for those rights. What if they want to add...say, Friday Night Baseball too? Increase that contract by $200 million minimum per year. Same thing happens with NBA. There's typically at least one game on national TV every day though, considering ESPN's three days, Fox's one day, and MLB Network showcases/simulcasts. I'd wager the NBA has the same thing thanks to simulcasts on NBA TV, but I don't watch and have no fucking idea.

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If you were wondering why Hugh Douglas wasn't on Numbers Never Lie on Monday, this is why...

 

Last Thursday, at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention and Career Fair, Hugh Douglas, the former Eagle and current NFL analyst for ESPN, was very drunk. A day later he would be both drunk and combative, and, as The Big Lead first reported, he and an ESPN colleague would nearly come to blows. But what went down on Friday had its roots in what happened on Thursday.

Douglas was at the Gaylord Palms Resort hotel, along with his Numbers Never Lie co-hosts, Michael Smith and Jemele Hill. Smith and Hill were speaking to "hundreds of conventioneers." Smith and Hill, both former print journalists, have been buddies for a while. They started doing a podcast a few months ago, in addition to their ESPN TV show. The podcast is called His & Hers with Michael Smith and Jemele Hill, and they were explaining to potential ESPN job recruits how it came to be. Just as they were wrapping up, Douglas approached them.

Two people told us that Douglas was drunk. Not tipsy. Wasted. We've also been told that Douglas has felt uncomfortable ever since Hill's addition to the show a few months back. Smith and Hill, after all, are old friends, and the show was now two journalists plus an ex-jock, with some loose talk that new hire Nate Silver might have some role on the show, too. A source speculates that Douglas, outnumbered by non-jocks, felt left out.

The rest is here at Deadspin.

I have no problem with Mike or Jemele Hill, but Hugh Douglas is the ONLY reason to even have your television on ESPN2 at that time of day. The ratings for NNL aren't too hot to begin with so I can't imagine who would stick around for just those two.

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ESPN and the ACC re-upped last May, and Notre Dame made the jump in September. The ACC's media rights never really were up for grabs, and I really don't think NBC had any idea of the shitshow that would happen with the Big East at that time. EPL and NASCAR will give them a shitload of content for the fall, though.

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NHL has a deal with NBC through 2021. Don't even think about that going anywhere.

 

Great foresight on that deal too, Bettman - $2Billion for ten years. Christ. That breaks down to $200Million per year / 30 teams = $6,666,666.66 per year (come on - he's just making it blatantly obvious).

 

That barely covers the salary of ONE star player, and he negotiated that debacle two years before the biggest sports television war is about to start - all but assuring that his league won't sniff an extra dollar of that free TV straight-cash homey.

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If you wanna hear something *really* fucked up, Fox just won the rights to the golf US Open starting in 2015. Fox? Golf? ZUH?!

Let's go to the 18th tower with Gus Johnson and John Daly.

 

 

In my post for AA about this, i said that Fox needs to keep Gus and Buck far away from this. I think they will, but they've got plenty of time to decide things. 

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