- ESPN has moved its Monday Night Football graphics package to its NBA coverage.
- ESPN is using ABC’s NBA game theme from the past two years on its NBA coverage. The theme will remain as ABC’s as well (see: ESPN on ABC)
- According to The Sports Business Daily, the NHL and NBC are close to a contract extension through 2009-10. The reason for the extension is to help NBC promote ice hockey at the 2010 Winter Olympics.
- TBS will air the entire Major League Baseball Division Series, as well as one League Championship Series, every year until at least 2013.
- World Series ratings by game: 8.0, 11.6, 10.2, 10.4, 10.3. The average audience of appx. 15 million viewers is only two million more than the avg. audience for the NBA Finals. That is the smallest gap between the World Series and the NBA Finals since 2002.
- SportsCenter last night (Nov. 1, 06) was sponsored exclusively and only by Nike.
- ESPN2 will air no NBA regular season games this season; ABC will air 19, down from 20 last year. ABC, despite reports that Saturday night games were a possibility, will air NBA games only on Sundays (sans Christmas), and only at 1:00 or 3:30 p.m. Despite extremely low ratings each year going up against the NCAA Tournament, ABC will continue airing NBA games during those two weeks.
YouTube, Netflix, reportedly expected to split NFL’s new package
The seemingly conflicting reporting on whether YouTube or Netflix would end up with the new five-game NFL rights package...
