Sports Media Weekly No. 173- Brian Berger, Sports Business Radio

It’s been an interesting sports media week and we have it covered on Sports Media Weekly.

Joining Ken Fang of Fang’s Bites and me for the program this week is Brian Berger of Sports Business Radio.

We begin the program looking at the appearance late this afternoon of Alex Rodriguez on the Mike Francesa radio program on WFAN in New York.  Rodriguez sought the sympathetic ear of Francesa after storming out of his hearing today with an arbitrator over his 211 game suspension issued by Major League Baseball earlier this year.  Brian, who also works as a media consultant for athletes, chimes in on whether Rodriguez’ strategy will pay off for him in the court of public opinion.

Over to the the NFL next and Ken’s piece on Awful Announcing on the flex options that await the league’s media partners when the new television contracts take effect next year.

We then move to the news that CBS NFL game analyst Dan Dierdorf will be retiring at the end of the current NFL season after 30 years televising games for CBS and ABC.

College basketball may be seeing quite the change in coverage at the NCAA Final Four beginning next year as Turner Sports takes over televising the national semi-final games.  John Ourand at Sports Business Journal  has the details.

We wrap the news segment by looking at the news by NBC that Bob Costas will be adding late night hosting duties to his primetime gig at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

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Sports Media Digest- April 2, 2013

Mike Francesa Signs Contract Extension with WFAN/CBS Radio–  WFAN in New York and CBS Radio have announced that longtime afternoon drive radio host Mike Francesa has signed a contract extension that will keep him at the station through 2017.  Francesa will also bring his long running Sunday morning “The NFL Now” show toCBS Sports Radio beginning this fall.  The program is broadcast live on WFAN from 9:00AM-12:00Noon, ET and will be available to more than 250 affiliate radio stations nationwide.

More People Continue to View NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Online–  Turner Sports, which maintains the March Madness Live site where viewers can watch the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament online, reports the project has garnered 45 million live streams, up a staggering 158% over 2012 to date.  12.6 million hours of combined live viewing has been consumed, an all-time high.

Tiger, NCAA Tourney on this Week’s Sports Illustrated Covers–  This week’s edition of Sports Illustrated looks at the resurgence of Tiger Woods as well as previewing this week’s Final Four.  There are three covers for the week:

Sports Media Weekly Podcast #22- Neil Best, Newsday

Neil Best Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet in the Northeast shall keep us from producing the Sports Media Weekly Podcast.

I am joined by Ken Fang from Fang’s Bites and our special guest, Neil Best, sports media and business columnist at Newsday.

The three of us lead off the week’s discussion on the record ratings for Super Bowl XLIV, the ads from the game, and whether the success of the NFL will motivate the league and the player’s association to come up with a new deal before a suspected lockout in 2011.

Other topics on the agenda include the news that ESPN is renaming its ESPN360 product to ESPN 3…How will Neil cover the sports media news coming out of the Vancouver Olympics…whether WFAN’s Mike Francesa is still an effective sports radio force…and how regional sports networks like YES and SNY plan to make a journalistic impact on the New York media market.

And yes, we do spend some time with Neil talking about the early effects of Newsday’s decision to place their online content behind the paywall…