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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CBS/Turner Announce Plans for Future Coverage of NCAA Tourney

CBS Sports and Turner Sports today announced plans on how the networks will handle coverage of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship through 2024.

In 2014 and 2015 TBS will air the national semi-final games while CBS will retain coverage of the national championship final.  Beginning in 2016 TBS will air the semi-final and final games, alternating with CBS through 2024.

Beginning next year  coverage of the Regional Semi-finals and Regional Finals games will be split by TBS and CBS.  Earlier round coverage of the tournament will continue to be televised across four national television networks – CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV with the First Four airing exclusively on truTV.

“Since the inception of our partnership, I don’t think we could have envisioned such a seamless collaboration between our two companies both in front of and behind the cameras,” said David Levy, president of Sales, Distribution and Sports, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.  “Coming off another incredible year of strong ratings and exciting games, the popularity of the NCAA Tournament and Final Four continues to resonate with fans across the country.  We are thrilled to have the opportunity to televise the Final Four national semi-final games and two of the Elite Eight games on TBS beginning next year, and for the network to televise its first National Championship game in 2016.”

“From the beginning, our partnership with Turner Sports has exceeded every one of our expectations,” said Sean McManus, Chairman, CBS Sports.  “Today’s news represents another win-win arrangement that continues to help us extend the reach of this marquee property by combining the resources of our two organizations. As we have done since 1982, CBS is pleased to showcase the National Championship game in 2014 and 2015.”

Sports Media Weekly Podcast #26- Keith McSpurren, CoverItLive

Today marks the half-year anniversary of the Sports Media Weekly Podcast with our 26th edition.

Ken Fang at Fang’s Bites and I look at the announcer line-up for CBS’ coverage of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, changes afoot at ESPN Radio, and the media feud between ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons and former WWL’er and current NBC/MSNBC personality Keith Olbermann.

Our guest this week is Keith McSpurren, President of CoverItLive. CoverItLive is arguably the leader in providing websites with live blogging capability.  Keith talks about how he came up with the product and how media companies as small as SMJ and as large as ESPN use it.

Here is a piece I wrote on CoverItLive two and a half years ago.

Sports Media Weekly Podcast #13- Tim Franklin, National Sports Journalism Center

Welcome to the lucky 13th edition of the Sports Media Weekly Podcast…

Ken Fang at Fang’s Bites and I touch briefly on the Tiger Woods saga, how the NCAA may be looking to expand the men’s basketball tournament, the bevy of college football bowl games, and the demise of the MVN blogger network.

Our guest this week is Tim Franklin, Director of the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana University.  We talk to Tim about how the center is striving to be at the center of sports journalism education, its website featuring a trio of renowned writers, and how journalism schools like IU have responded to the Woods story and how ethics still plays a role in journalism curriculum…