You’re linkage once again so let’s provide some now. I am putting together a Videos of Week for Sunday morning so look for that if you get up around 8 a.m. Eastern time tomorrow.
ESPN Ombudsman Don Ohlmeyer writes his last column in his role of overseer and apologizes for his lack of writing.
Nellie Andreeva of Deadline.com reports that CBS is picking up two sitcoms based on two ESPN personalities, one extremely annoying, the other not so much.
Michael Malone of Broadcasting & Cable writes that DirecTV wants to settle a dispute with Northwest Broadcasting that is keeping several local channels off the satellite provider and preventing subscribers from possibly seeing the Super Bowl.
Milton Kent from Fanhouse says ESPN’s Stuart Scott will undergo chemotherapy after having cancerous tissue removed. Our best to Stuart.
Milton says Fox’s Terry Bradshaw will be tickled pink if he gets to hand the Super Bowl Trophy to his old team, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Lucia Moses from Mediaweek says after a two year absence, Sports Illustrated is bringing back its Super Bowl party in Dallas.
The Nielsen Ratings Wire blog looks into the factors that are causing the NFL’s TV ratings to increase at an astounding rate.
Bill Cromwell of Media Life Magazine says Comcast has a long road ahead to pull NBC out of its current doldrums.
One quick aside. You may have noticed that as of yesterday, I recommended a non-sports NBC program in the Weekend Viewing Picks for the first time in about a year. Now that Jeff Zucker is gone from running the network into the ground, I have ended my primetime and late night boycott of NBC. I had only put NBC sports programs in the Viewing Picks since the Conan debacle last year. If I feel an NBC program is worthy of being recommended, I will place it in the Picks. Right now, absolutely none of NBC’s primetime lineup (The Cape? A Minute To Win It? Perfect Couples? What the hell are those?) appeals to me. We’ll see if the upcoming programs are of any quality. For now, baby steps for NBC. And no, please don’t sell me on “Friday Night Lights”. That has no appeal to me whatsoever.
Back to the links.
Toni Fitzgerald of Media Life says there is plenty of buzz over the Super Bowl ads again this year.
E.J. Schultz of Advertising Age says Snickers is hoping comedienne Roseanne will do in this year’s Super Bowl what Betty White did for the candy bar in last year’s Super Bowl ad. I’ll be honest. Everyone loves Betty White. Roseanne doesn’t have that same appeal.
Ken Wheaton of Ad Age has one of the two silly Go Daddy.com Super Bowl ads.
Wayne Friedman of MediaPost writes that the NHL is not only seeing higher TV ratings, but is also seeing more revenue from corporate sponsorships.
Tanya Irwin of MediaPost’s Marketing Daily notes that the NFL is teaming up with Visa to produce an exclusive Twitter feed for the Super Bowl.
One story that surfaced earlier this week and I wasn’t able to get to it. This comes from Allan Brettman of The Oregonian who points out the conflict of interest of ESPN’s Erin Andrews endorsing Reebok after reporting in the BCS about some problems about Nike shoes.
Katie Thomas of the New York Times now picks up the story and further explores the problems this brings.
Don’t forget last year when ESPN’s Jenn Brown was going to be the spokesperson for Icehouse beer and after Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch pointed out the conflict of interest, the deal was nixed.
Barry Horn of the Dallas Morning News writes that Fox’s Terry Bradshaw will be excited if he hands the Vince Lombardi Trophy to the Green Bay Packers.
Dan Caesar of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes that Midwest radio powerhouse KMOX is expanding its sports coverage.
Tom Hoffarth at the Los Angeles Daily News looks at the Best and Worst of SoCal’s analysts.
Tom has his extensive media notes.
Dan Fogarty at SportsGrid provides the very funny postmatch comments by Li Na after the Australian Open women’s final.
Sports Media Watch notes that NASCAR will have later start times for its late season races.
Steve Lepore of Puck the Media has the ten most watched and least watched NHL games on Versus thus far this season.
We’ll end it there for now.
