Let’s give you a quickie links thing today as I have a lot of errands to run (Christmas shopping, you may have heard of it).
Starting with Jerry Garcia of the San Antonio Express-News says the NFL Network and the cable companies continue to be Scrooge or the Grinch, whichever you prefer, during this holiday season.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Dan Caesar writes that St. Louis resident Bob Costas gets some New Year’s Day duties hosting the NHL Winter Classic for NBC. If you are one of the few that has the NFL Network, you may have seen Costas hosting the number retirement ceremony for the Rams’ Marshall Faulk on Thursday.
Jefferson George of the Charlotte Observer writes the usual story of the NFL Network not being available outside of the 75 mile radius of Charlotte for tonight’s Dallas-Carolina game. Ray Buck of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram says a local station is coming through so Cowboys fans can watch tonight’s game.
Dan Frommer of the Silicon Valley Insider blog says the NFL Network is charging higher ad rates for next week’s Patriots-Giants game and is practically on its hands and knees trying to get the game on a wider distribution. Over to the Boston Herald and business writer Jay Fitzgerald who writes that many fans outside of Boston are going to be angry if they can’t watch next week’s game. Mike Donoghue of the Burlington (VT) Free Press says the NFL has refused to allow a local TV station to pick up the NFL Network’s feed despite the state’s congressional delegation making a request. John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable reports that Hartford (CT) station WFSB thinks it can carry Saturday’s game and is clearing its schedule just in case. Good luck. Boston station WCVB will pick up the game for the local market.
Pete Barth of the Sheboygan (WI) Press says it’s time to end the dispute so fans can watch the NFL and Big Ten.
Somehow I missed this story yesterday. Adam Thompson of the Wall Street Journal talks about ESPN’s recent raiding of the print world and signing reporters for its various platforms. But Jack Shafer of Slate.com says this is not a recent trend and it actually goes back more than ten years.
Adam Kuriloff and Erik Matsuzewski of Bloomberg says the NFL’s TV ratings are up this season thanks to the Patriots’ pursuit of perfection.
TV Week’s Chris Pursell has your NFL Week 16 Broadcast Preview in his Pressbox blog.
David Kiley of BusinessWeek magazine writes how the poor Notre Dame season contributed to NBC’s ad revenue slump.
Jim Williams of the DC/Baltimore Examiner writes in his Watch This! blog that today is a big day for TV sports viewing including college basketball, bowls and capped off by the Dallas-Carolina game.
And we must cap off the links with news about Philadelphia news anchor Alycia Lane. If you go into the May archives when I relaunched this site, Alycia was one of the reasons why I got back into this, so I continue to cover the latest news on her whenever it breaks. TMZ.com and Perez Hilton have Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. I have Alycia Lane. Anyway, Page Six in the New York Post reports that Playboy has allegedly offered money to Ms. Lane to pose nude. That would supersede the bikini pictures that she sent to Rich Eisen we’ve been seeking since May. Of course, that would end any last semblance of creditability she had left. But youneverknow. And the Philadelphia Inquirer has an editorial comparing Lane’s latest incident to the Mel Gibson anti-Semetic rant last year.
Coming up sometime this weekend, the NFL Picks for Week 16 plus the Amazing Race Asia recap for Episode 5 and the Amazing Race 12 recap for Episode 7. Keep it here.
