- ESPN was duped earlier this week. On Monday, the day before the decisive Game 7 between the Rangers and Capitals, ESPN reported that Capitals players Mike Green and Donald Brashear would be suspended for the game. While Brashear was indeed suspended, the report turned out to be a fabrication — someone posing as a Washington Post reporter called ESPN’s news desk with the story. ESPN retracted the story in less than a half hour. An ESPN spokesman told USA Today, “We didn’t follow our own fact-checking procedures and mistakenly reported the story. We apologize for the error.”
- NBC hopes to attract more non-sports viewers to its coverage of this weekend’s Kentucky Derby. According to Sports Business Journal, NBC will promote the Derby on a variety of networks, including Bravo and CNBC. Derby-related segments will air on The Today Show and Access Hollywood, and the aforementioned Bravo network will feature a female-skewing Derby special and coverage of Kentucky Oaks Day.
- Sports Business Daily reports that NBC will declare May 5-July 7 as NBC Sports Championship Season. The two-month period includes NBC coverage of the Stanley Cup Finals, the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, the French Open and Wimbledon, and the Players’ Championship and U.S. Open. As part of the effort, NBC will “[rebrand] its logo in certain print ads to reflect the seven championships it plans to broadcast.”
News: March Madness expansion, Russell Wilson, Nexstar and more
The NCAA basketball tournaments are officially expanding to 76 teams; Russell Wilson is mulling between playing football and starting...
