Saturday Links

Two great ALDS games last night, both ended in dramatic fashion. TBS was on top of it all with its pictures and stats. Decent job and with all the early round games on TBS, there’s some nice harmony for the studio to make switches and show updates. Good job by Turner Sports.

Let’s get to some links today.

Starting with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dan Caesar writes that baseball fans wanting to find the LDS on the radio are shortchanged due to weak signals.

Barry Horn of the Dallas Morning News says former Cowboys coach Bill Parcells is good and actually shows a sense of humor on the ESPN set.

Over to the San Antonio Express-News where Jerry Garcia asks sports readers to take a moment out of their viewing to watch “Friday Night Lights” on NBC.

Completing our Texas Trifecta, Ray Buck of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram catches up with ESPN’s Ron Jaworski.

Also from the Star-Telegram, Wendell Barnhouse writes about former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer and politico James Carville teaming up for a college football show on XM Satellite Radio (I kid you not).

For Dish Network subscribers frustrated you can’t get TBS HD, Steven Musil of CNET.com reports that the satellite provider finally added it last night. Phil Swann of TV Predictions.com confirms this.

Ed Sherman of the Chicago Tribune writes that Cubs fans turned off their TV’s right about the time the Diamondbacks took control of Game 2 resulting in a lower rating than Game 1. Dusty Saunders in the Rocky Mountain News says TBS gets a mixed grade for its coverage of the Phillies-Rockies series, offering praise to NESN’s Don Orsillo. Jim Williams of the DC/Baltimore Examiner writes in his Watch This! blog that Cal Ripken got off to a slow start in the TBS studio, but is progressing nicely. Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News says through the first six games of the LDS, ratings have been the highest on TBS in five years. I’ve been waiting for this editorial, the Reading (PA) Eagle says the late starting times for the Phillies-Rockies games this weekend shows that MLB doesn’t care about Phildelphia fans. Most people aren’t working this holiday weekend so it’s ok. I would have a beef if the games were on late on weeknights.

Good article in today’s New York Times Business Section by Joe Nocera looking at the battle of the cable companies vs. the NFL Network and Big Ten Network and why both channels are trying to avoid the dreaded sports tier.

Steve Kroner of the San Francisco Chronicle previews ESPN’s Outside the Lines documentary on Jim Jones, Jr. I’m definitely going to try and catch this on Sunday. Tom Jones of the St. Petersburg (FL) Times has a sneak peek as well.

We reported on this earlier, but the Hollywood Reporter picks up the story that Yahoo Sports beat ESPN.com in August for most visited sports website.

Some notes from the Sports Media Watch blog. First, I’ve never seen a TV rating of 0.0, but Versus came pretty damn close last week for the NHL Opener in London. The second story is on Fox garnering the lowest ratings for its MLB regular season package since NBC had it in 1987. And we get Paulsen’s ratings predictions for this holiday weekend.

I was so engrossed with the Red Sox game last night that I didn’t make a post Friday night and wanted to include the following links:

Neil Best of Newsday… we interrupt this blog entry to say we love Charissa Thompson, sideline reporter for the Big Ten Network. Bangs in her eyes. We’re officially smitten….. Ok, back to your links. Neil Best of Newsday says Cablevision in New York has added the NHL Center Ice package. For those of you hoping to see Mixed Martial Arts on HBO, you can forget about that now, Neil reported first that talks between UFC and HBO broke down and both sides have walked away from the table.

Dan Rafael of ESPN.com has more on the UFC/HBO non-deal.

Sports Business reporter extraordinaire Darren Rovell reports on his CNBC blog that despite a guilty plea, Nike will not seek to get its endorsement money back from sprinter Marion Jones who admitted to taking steroids before the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

That’s a lot of links for a Saturday. I’ll be out tonight so I’ll give NFL Picks later.