It’s been a busy Tuesday.
People have been hired, fired and re-hired. I already talked about Sean Salisbury leaving ESPN. The blogosphere is abuzz about Salisbury.
However, there were other personnel moves today. Before Sean Salisbury became the personnel move of the day, ESPN announced it had hired Cris Carter, formerly of HBO, as a studio analyst. Did his hiring lead to Salisbury’s departure? I’m not sure, but at first, people including Newsday’s Neil Best were wondering if this would affect Emmit Smith (it did not). Justin Terranova of the New York Post says ESPN traded former Vikings. So Carter is in at the Worldwide Leader while Salisbury is out. Was this in direct correlation? You decide.
While ESPN was making multiple personnel moves, TNT was close to locking up its star studio analyst, Charles Barkley to a multi-year, seven figure contract. The Sports Media Watch links to a story from John Ourand of Sports Business Daily (who’s been breaking stories left and right this week) about Barkley who will also make appearances on the Turner Sports-operated NBA TV.
Paulsen of Sports Media Watch also has the final weekend ratings.
CNBC’s Darren Rovell looks at NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s salary.
Glenn Dickson of Broadcasting & Cable writes that ESPN has made a deal with The Masters to show its tournament coverage on multiple platforms including ESPN360.
Going back to the NFL Network vs. Comcast dispute, earlier today, the New York State Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling allowing the cable provider to put the channel on a sports tier, lowering potential subscribers. John Ryan of the San Jose Mercury News says wake him up when this thing is over. Paritosh Bansal of Reuters says the dispute has now been sent back to court. Bob Fernandez of the Philadelphia Inquirer says this is a setback for Comcast.
The Sporting News picks up an Associated Press story which has Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo calling the Big Ten Network, “a PR nightmare.” That’s not good.
That’s it for tonight.
