In this edition, Keith Thibault of Sports Media Journal have a guest for the entire podcast and that is the always distinguished sports media writer Jim Williams of the Washington Examiner and Bleacher Report.
For this edition, we had Jim on to discuss the news of the week and that began with Erin Andrews’ departure from ESPN for a bigger role at Fox. Jim told Keith and I about his friendship with the Andrews family going back to when Jim worked with Erin’s father back in the 1980’s. He also made reference to ESPN not wanting bigger than the brand and Erin was getting bigger than ESPN’s brand. And we also talked about Erin’s entertainment projects.
Then we moved to the Olympics and NBC’s ever-expanding list of announcers for the London Games later this month. We looked at some of the names calling the events and Jim mentioned how half of the announcers will be calling their sports off a monitor in New York rather than being in London.
We then talked about the New York Times article written by Richard Sandomir on the MLB TV rights negotiations. Jim and I felt NBC will be a huge player for baseball and how MLB will get rich from TV money.
Our next topic was Wimbledon and ESPN’s live coverage of the event. Jim yearned for Radio Wimbledon which is no longer providing audio coverage of SW19. Jim and I made reference to ESPN’s live tennis as compared to NBC tape delayed coverage.
And our last subject was the move by the National Football League to push its late Sunday afternoon doubleheader to 4:25 p.m. ET. Jim said it was a good move to reduce the overlap from the 1 p.m. regional games. I said it would cause a few problems for CBS as it would have to drop its 10 p.m. ET show, the Mentalist on doubleheader Sundays to ensure affiliates’ late local news will begin on time. I also mentioned NBC’s Football Night in America’s first half-hour would be killed going opposite the late games.
There you have it. A very good podcast. I pretty much told you everything that happened so you don’t have to listen now. Actually, do listen. Find it on iTunes by searching for “Sports Media Journal” or you can listen right here.
