Let’s do your linkage for you today.
The USA Today Game On! blog has Tiger Woods’ statement on his return to golf at The Masters.
Mike McCarthy of USA Today says Tiger’s return to The Masters is likely going to set ratings records.
USA Today’s Michael Hiestand looks at The Masters going 3-D this year and also lists some of the TV ratings from the weekend.
Once again, I’ll give you Richard Deitsch’s interview in Sports Illustrated with CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus who said Tiger’s return would rival the interest in Barack Obama’s inauguration.
The man who broke the Tiger return to The Masters was Robert Lusetich at Fox Sports.com. He had it last week.
Writing for the Indiana University National Sports Journalism Center, Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times has high hopes for the ESPN-produced Saturday afternoon block on ABC.
The Hollywood Reporter picks up an Associated Press story on the sentencing of Michael Barrett, the man convicted of stalking Erin Andrews.
Linda Deutsch of the AP has Erin’s angry reaction to the sentencing.
Alex Weprin of Broadcasting & Cable says both the New York Giants and New York Jets will play at home during the same weekend in Week 1 of the NFL season to open the new New Jersey football stadium.
Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News explores Versus’ return to DirecTV yesterday.
Mike writes that Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia has purchased the great Philly-centric blog, the 700 Level. More on that later.
Mike has word that CBS College Sports will pick up two NCAA Tournament games.
Toni Fitzgerald of Media Life Magazine says the online advertising for the NCAA Tournament continues to rise for CBS.
Diego Vasquez of Media Life talks about the lower productivity during the 1st two rounds of the NCAA Tournament with one particular CEO.
ESPN’s Jay Bilas went on Charlie Rose’s PBS show to talk about the NCAA Tournament.
To Richard Sandomir of the New York Times who writes about NCAA March Madness on Demand and The Masters going 3-D.
Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News comes up with a faulty conspiracy theory that the NCAA Selection Committee put Duke as a number one seed in the NCAA Tournament to maximize TV ratings. The NCAA may come up with some strange decisions, but putting a team in a certain slot to maximize ratings is not one of them.
Ken Schott of the Schenectady Gazette says this weekend’s ECAC Hockey Tournament will be picked up by two national channels.
And Ken has the NCAA Tournament 1st round schedule for a local radio station.
Keith Groller in the Allentown (PA) Morning Call says the NCAA Tournament would be better served going to ESPN which with I disagree. It’s better to have it on CBS and then have ESPN cover it and help promote the tournament through the coverage.
Jim Williams of the Washington Examiner talks about Comcast carrying The Masters in 3-D.
Ed Sherman in Crain’s Chicago Business is not a fan of expanding the NCAA Tournament.
Brad Allis of the Tucson Citizen says Arizona Wildcats may not have made the NCAA Tournament, but they still garnered plenty of national attention from ESPN and other media sources.
William Houston in Truth & Rumours discusses whether CTV is interested in airing the Olympics after Vancouver.
The Big Lead provides a coverage map of CBS’ games of the NCAA Tournament.
Some college basketball ratings news from Sports Media Watch.
First, the ratings for the NCAA Tournament Selection Show on CBS were flat with last year.
The SEC Championship’s wild finish did well for ABC.
CBS did not fare well with the Conference USA and the Atlantic 10 Championships.
The Pac-10 Championship ratings fell on CBS to their lowest levels in eight years.
But CBS saw a slight uptick for the Big 10 Championship.
Steve Lepore at Puck The Media says it appears the ratings for Sunday’s NHL game on NBC will decrease.
As mentioned earlier, the Philadelphia-based blog, The 700 Level, was purchased by Comcast SportsNet. Congratulations to Enrico Campitelli, Jr. for the new partnership. I’ve always enjoyed reading The 700 Level and look forward to
seeing great things from the blog.
Len Berman has his Top 5 stories of the day.
Sox & Dawgs has the hot chicks of the 2010 NCAA Women’s Tournament.
We’ll end there for now.
