We’ve got a few things for you.
First, John Ourand in today’s edition of Sports Business Daily reports that Time Warner Cable has offered to put the NFL Network’s eight late season Thursday and Saturday night games on Pay Per View. Ourand writes that in a letter sent to the NFL Network, Time Warner offers a plan that would allow the NFL to set the prices and collect all revenues. The NFL has called this a gimmick. Time Warner wants to put the NFL Network on a sports tier, but the NFL is resisting this move. Time Warner says the NFL is “denying public access to games that were once available on broadcast or other more widely distributed networks. The NFL moved these games over to the NFL Network simply so they could extract more money from viewers. This is no different than when the NFL entered into an agreement to offer out of market games exclusively over DirecTV.” Because Sports Business Daily is a subscription-based service, I can’t link to the story, but that’s the gist of it. We’ll hear more of this down the road, I’m sure.
Fox is crowing about the ratings for Game 6 and 7 of the American League Championship Series this past weekend and for good reason. Both games were on top of the network ratings heap both nights. And on Sunday, Game 7 of Boston and Cleveland even topped ABC and NBC’s Sunday Night Football. John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable says the NFL overrun and ALCS Game 7 helped Fox to stomp the competition last night. And Nellie Andreeva writes that NBC did pretty decently with Sunday Night Football.
Newsday’s Neil Best has a couple of breaking news stories regarding former New York Yankee manager Joe Torre in his blog. First, he’ll be a guest on Late Night with David Letterman next Monday. Second, Bob Costas will have the first sit down interview with Torre tomorrow on HBO’s Real Sports (of which we’ll have a real-time review here). And Best has a story on Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly making it official that he’s moving to ESPN.
This is ESPN’s story on its website on the Reilly announcement.
ESPN wants you to know it will have “multi-platform coverage” of the Breeders’ Cup Championships.
Speaking of ESPN, NASCAR fans are very passionate about their sport. Mess with the sport and the fans will mess with you. Since returning to NASCAR this year, ESPN has come under scrutiny for its telecasts. Motorsports TV critic John Daly has struck a chord with his latest entry on his “Daly Planet” blog called “ESPN Needs To Admit NASCAR Problems” written after yesterday’s Subway 500 in Martinsville. And Daly and his readers have some suggestions for ESPN on how to improve the falling ratings for NASCAR.
Jim Williams of the DC/Baltimore Examiner writes that Dan Patrick is back on the air in DC.
CNBC’s Darren Rovell has a story on Taco Bell’s latest World Series promotion to give away a free taco.
If you missed last night’s NBC’s Football Night in America, here are some quotes from the show. And here’s what was said on CBS’ The NFL Today yesterday. Finally, CBS offers the quotes from Saturday’s College Football Today show.
The Huntsville (AL) Times reports that CBS has selected the LSU-Alabama game on November 3.
And that’s it for today. Coming up will be Primetime Viewing Picks, Videos of the Week and maybe an evening update.
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