ABC and ESPN Slam Dunk New NBA Deal (Jan 2002)

The National Basketball Association, despite its ebbing popularity, wanted a higher rights fee from incumbent NBC-TV for the new contract that would cover six years after this season ended. NBC walked away, but Disney dug into its deep coffins to ink a new six year deal that gives the broadcast rights to ABC and its cable partner ESPN with another cable deal for TNT.

The total price tag of the six year deal between the three networks is about $4.6 billion, or $765 million annually. G.E.-owned NBC paid $2.46 billion for a four-year deal, or $615 million a year, that ends at the conclusion of this season's NBA.

ABC/ESPN will pony up $400 million of the annual $765 million price tag, with the remaining $365 million coming from AOL/TW. This $765 million a year compared with around $616 million annually from the previous four-year deals with NBC and AOL's Turner Sports, which expire at the end of this season.

ABC TV will televise 15 Sunday games, an expected five playoff games and the NBA finals. ESPN will have 75 regular season games, plus an additional playoff schedule. ESPN Radio will continue its existing relationship with the NBA.

AOL/Time Warner will get 52 games for its TNT cable network with an additional playoff schedule and the All-Star Game, and will form a new cable network, probably to be called AOL Sports, with the NBA which will get 96 regular season games and a very limited playoff schedule (two games).

The new deals will feature more than double the amount of regular season telecasts as the current ones.

Sports programming costs are already some of the most expensive for entertainment companies, suffering from one of the worst advertising markets in recent memory.

But NBC, without the level of cable network arsenal, could not compete with Disney, owner of ABC-TV, ABC Family, ESPN networks, ESPN Radio and its related dot.com sites in terms of cross-promoting and broadcasting the NBA.

NBC, which was outbid for the rights to a portion of National Football League games in 1998, said that heavy financial losses and declining ratings prevented it from bidding more for NBA broadcast rights.

``To pay any more than was offered would have been irresponsible,'' said NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol. ``If winning the rights to a property brings with it hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, what have you won? When faced with the prospect of heavy financial losses, we have consistently walked away and have done so again,'' he added.

National Wires (January 18, 2002)

Radio Daily News: http://www.radiodailynews.com

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Did Enron make an end run for Bush during the Florida recount?  (read)
Research shows that sex is good for the heart (read)

San Diego Radio Bytes (January 17, 2002)

Some excerpts:

When it comes to music for adults, snooze rules [as] two of the three most popular music stations in town play sleepy tunes ---- the soft rock of KyXy and the smooth jazz of KIFM. (editor's note: both stations' formats are misnamed. Call them something else)

But many in the radio industry still don't respect soft music, even though it rules the dial in many workplaces, Charlie Quinn said. "It doesn't have the same glamour or excitement level (as other formats)," he said. "At some companies, people don't see it as being as much fun."

Meanwhile, San Diego County listeners continued to be unimpressed by the distinctly unimpressive idea of putting classical music on the AM dial. Two classical stations ---- KFSD-AM and X-BACH ---- placed in 33rd and 34th place. Some listeners ---- who knows how many ---- prefer the commercial-free classical music of Mexico-based XLNC/90.7 FM, which isn't rated. (KPBS-FM, which is also not rated, airs classical music nighly after 7:30 most nights.)

National Wires (January 16, 2002)

Ad-insertion firm Hiwire has announced a series of ad-rep deals with a group of leading streaming media outlets. With these agreements (and largely due to Hiwire's exclusive deal with broadcast giant Clear Channel), Hiwire says they now have a "one billion-plus" annual ad inventory. The deals will make Hiwire an advertising sales representative for Live365.com, StreamAudio, SurferNETWORK, and Beethoven.com. "As our audience grows in unduplicated reach and quality we are able to create more meaningful packages for current and new advertisers," Hiwire VP/Ad Sales Bob Nagengast said in a press release. "Our new partners and recently expanded sales team shows advertisers real value and benefits." The agreements make Hiwire ad reps only and do not involve Hiwire ad-insertion technology. Interestingly, StreamAudio and SurferNETWORK are both actually competitors of Hiwire in the ad-insertion space.

Radio World: http://www.radioworld.com - Satellite Radio: Stephen Blum... XM Radio Goes to the Masses...Early Adopter Reports Retail Rollout Mixed While Listening Experience Great. Satellite broadcasting and retailing consultant Stephen Blum drove from his home off Californiaİs Monterey Peninsula to San Diego as XM Satellite Radio began its product rollout in retail locations in the southwest.... IBOC DAB...FCC Seeks Input On FM IBOC...WASHINGTON The FCC wants public comments on a report from the National Radio Systems Committee. The NRSC ecommends that Ibiquity Digital Corp.İs FM system be adopted as the in-band, on-channel digital radio system for FM in the United States... Complete stories at their website.

Fox will Close The X-Files in May (Jan 17, 2002)

IT'S ABOUT TIME!

Series creator Chris Carter decided to pull the plug on the show, whose ratings have been hurt this season by the departure of star David Duchovny and by tougher competition.

Carter hoped Duchovny would return as Special Agent Fox Mulder for the two-part series finale opposite Gillian Anderson's Agent Dana Scully. Both actors, whose mutual off-screen antipathy was well documented, are on board for a sequel to the 1998 ``X-Files'' feature.

Duchovny phased out his involvement in the series last season, and former ``Terminator 2'' co-star Robert Patrick was drafted in as Agent John Doggett.

``The X-Files'' premiered in September 1993 on the Fox network. Its cult hit status soon snowballed into mainstream success.

The Fall of Valerie Bertinelli

Let's face it. Bertinelli is no Susan Lucci or Sophia Loren; they both have more class than she does. I guess some people just don't age well. In Val's case, maybe she's not a regular person, rather, someone who's stuck up so high in some upper demo NBC realm that nobody can relate to her anymore.

She once was a pioneer in hair, ripping off the Farrah do in the 70's, a top teenage actress in my teenage days (though I thought older women such as Jaclyn Smith were far more appealling as I wasn't into teenage girls), and made four TV series that were at most not up to par scriptwise in quality. 21 years ago, Val was 20, and by popularity estimates, can't hold a candle to the widespread popularity of today's 20 year old Britney Spears, whose probably holding the record for the most popular 20 year old woman in history (just ahead of Alyssa Milano, Christina Applegate, and even Shannen Doherty!)

Now as Val's fame is fading into the sunset and her fans deserting her in droves, and the cost of website hosting rising all the time, webmasters are evaluating the long term costs of hosting a website of a star that is no longer drawing enough web surfers to earn it a place on the Net. Case in point: the Club Val website as part of the davesfunstuff cluster (the Clear Channel of personal web site collections).

It's only a matter of time before the website becomes unpopular enough for Tanny to do an Anne Robinson (whip me, beat me, punish me, Anne) and say to the Val website, "You ARE the Weakest Link. Goodbye." and revamp it into a website dedicated to basket weaving instructions.

San Diego Radio Bytes (January 16, 2002)

TV Consolidation Thought

It's a small media world after all.