Sports Media Watch presents thoughts on recent events in the industry, starting with a look the position of live sports in the war between the networks and the affiliates.
The biggest media story of the past week, for the second time this year, concerned late night television. But unlike Paramount’s decision to set an end date of the “Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Disney’s decision to suspend its late-night host Jimmy Kimmel (ultimately just for three shows) could not be brushed off as solely a financial decision.
The Kimmel suspension followed thinly-veiled threats by the FCC chairman against ABC and the network’s affiliated stations, many of which are owned by the local station giants Nexstar and Sinclair — both of whom pledged shortly after the chairman’s public statements to preempt Kimmel indefinitely. (Sinclair stuck by that stance Monday after ABC announced Kimmel’s return.)
But while the politics were more overt, the Kimmel controversy shares in common with Colbert’s cancellation a signal about of the state of broadcast television.
For CBS, the decision to cancel “The Late Show” entirely rather than turn it over to a new host was a sign that the network no longer intends to compete in late night. Perhaps it was more trouble than it was worth. The Kimmel situation could be an indication that broadcast television full-stop is more trouble than it is worth.
Because broadcast television occupies a public resource — the airwaves — it is subject to regulation in a way that cable and streaming are not. Under current FCC regulations, no company can own stations that reach a combined 39 percent of U.S. television homes, meaning that most of the stations viewers associate with ABC, CBS, NBC or FOX are owned by separate companies. Nexstar, the biggest station owner in the country, is currently lobbying to get that limit repealed.
One could argue that Nexstar (and Sinclair) owe much of their existence to these FCC regulations, which are loose enough to allow such companies to amass a significant block of stations, but restrictive enough to prevent the biggest media conglomerates from dominating the space.
Nexstar and Sinclair own enough ABC stations that when they both pledged to preempt Kimmel last week, Disney really had no choice but to pull his show from the air. Given that level of third-party control over its own content, who could blame Bob Iger if he returned to his summer 2023 stance that ABC may not be “core” to Disney?
That summer 2023 news cycle is worth recalling. Whatever shortcomings Iger has displayed over the past week — and one can be sure Bob Chapek is noting Iger’s total failure to keep Disney out of the culture wars — he is not generally known for spouting off recklessly about internal Disney business. Yet in a CNBC interview two years ago, he said that Disney’s linear networks, with the lone exception of ESPN, may not be core to the company. It is hard to imagine that was just a tossed off idle thought; that is more David Zaslav’s modus operandi than Bob Iger’s.
But rather quickly, Iger backed off the idea of selling the linear channels — certainly ABC, which may not have been ‘core’ to Disney, but certainly is core to ESPN’s many media rights deals. ESPN does not get a Super Bowl without ABC, probably does not get the old “SEC on CBS” game without ABC, does not keep the NBA Finals without ABC, maybe does not keep the College Football Playoff National Championship without pledging to simulcast it on ABC.
Sports is the tie that is keeping Disney, and presumably the other major media companies — Comcast, Fox Corporation and Paramount — bound to a broadcast television system that gives third-party station owners veto-power over network programming, to say nothing of the specter of increasingly capricious regulators.
But sports can also provide leverage. All sports on major broadcast television are now available on streaming services. While the broadcast networks are free with an antenna, there is no question that the future of media lies more in streaming than in the airwaves. For a college freshman interested in watching Ravens-Lions on Monday night, what do you think will be their easiest course of action? Opening the ESPN app or finding their local ABC affiliate?
More germane to this discussion is the simple fact that the networks have an incentive to reduce the presence of sports on broadcast television. Sports has always been crucial to building up new forms of media distribution, from cable networks to streaming services. There is a reason why most of Fox Sports’ MLB League Championship Series inventory airs on FS1, when far more viewers could watch on FOX. There is a reason why college football’s national champion has been crowned on ESPN for 15 straight years instead of on ABC (though that, again, is changing in the new deal that begins next season). In general, the leagues have been more interested in games airing on broadcast than the networks have been.
Disney has for the past three seasons aired many more “Monday Night Football” simulcasts on ABC than are required contractually, almost certainly at the behest of the NFL. ESPN for more than a decade was the exclusive home of “Monday Night Football”; now it gets a handful of cable-exclusive “MNF” games per season, and certainly not the best ones. Perhaps Disney, which after the events of last month is now clearly the most important of the NFL rights partners, might have a little extra pull with the league to keep more of those “MNF” games on cable in future seasons.
In an era of shameless deploying of leverage, sports are the ultimate difference maker. Maybe Disney could send a message of its own on Monday nights — Nice newscast you have, would be a shame if its lead-in was ‘Will Trent’ — all while strengthening the cable brand that means far more to its bottom-line than does ABC.
Perhaps that would not be enough to prevent the Nexstars and Sinclairs of the world from making life difficult for the networks. But it could be a start. Disney for years scheduled ABC for the minimum number of NBA games permitted by its contract, even in seasons when the league’s viewership was at post-Jordan highs. What if ABC were to take the same approach with its SEC contract, which merely requires one game a week on the broadcast network? Georgia-Tennessee got 12.6 million viewers on ABC earlier this month, surely it could have still gotten around eight, nine, maybe even ten million had it aired on ESPN.
These are of course highly unlikely measures for Disney to take. To begin with, it would be foolish to jeopardize one’s relationship with the NFL or SEC just to spite the local affiliates. But it is worth remembering that the presence of sports on broadcast television comes at the expense of the cable and streaming platforms that could use the kind of marquee, must-have programming that in many cases now is airing on over-the-air TV. And in cable and streaming, there are no affiliates and there is no FCC jurisdiction.
For now, the networks are steadily eating away at the broadcast television product even as they are scheduling more and more games over-the-air. Yes, live sports inventory is returning to broadcast television, both locally and nationally — but it is true now more than ever that a sports fan never has to engage with their local affiliate in order to watch the big game. Every ABC sporting event is available with the ESPN app. Every NBC sporting event is available with Peacock. Every FOX sporting event is available with Fox One. Every CBS sporting event is available with Paramount+.
Interestingly enough, the exception among the group is Nexstar-owned CW, whose biggest sporting events — college football games and NASCAR Xfinity Series races — have thus far not been airing live on its app.
Ultimately, it behooves all involved to have a cooperative relationship. But make no mistake, in the standoff between regulators, the affiliates and the networks, it is the affiliates who are in the most danger. No, the networks are not going to take their (foot)ball and go home. But the business of broadcast television comes with burdensome headaches, and ultimately is staying afloat largely because of network sports. If the affiliates are going to make it painful for the networks to stay in broadcast television, it would not take much for the networks to pull back just enough live sports content to return the favor.
Plus: College Gameday, Sunday Night Baseball, SMW Podcast
Speaking of the FCC, it is the case that the agency has no jurisdiction over cable television, which may help explain why ESPN’s “College Gameday” had so much uncensored cursing on Saturday. From Nick Saban to Matthew Tkachuk to the entire Miami crowd, the show sounded like an FX original series. And for the big finish, Pat McAfee stripped down to high dive into a pool.
How much of this was beyond the pale will depend on your sensibilities, but it certainly was a departure for “Gameday,” which even at its most colorful in the Lee Corso era generally avoided expletives or any skin.
But times are changing. It is not unusual to hear coarse language from the highest of places. And when TNT signed off “Inside the NBA” back in May, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith did not hesitate to drop a couple of the harshest expletives.
Speaking of TNT’s NBA farewell, it is worth noting that ESPN’s final “Sunday Night Baseball” game did not carry nearly as much pathos. There was no montage showing all the talent from past years, akin to what TNT showed at the end of its game telecast. There was no acknowledgement at all of the near certainty that “Sunday Night Baseball” is moving elsewhere next season.
Perhaps there are a few reasons. To begin with, while Rob Manfred all-but-confirmed the details — even highlighting the fact that Sunday Night Baseball will air at least partly on broadcast television next season — none of these deals are official. Plus, the Sunday night finale was not ESPN’s final telecast of the season, as the network has another regular season game Wednesday night and the full Wild Card playoffs. Finally, ESPN is expected to retain rights for next season, just not on Sundays. So no need for an emotional farewell.
Nevertheless, “Sunday Night Baseball” was significant in and of itself. Yes, ESPN will have more games this season and next. But this is a franchise that ESPN aired nearly every week of every baseball season for four decades, and for a time it was truly a ‘game of the week.’ Jon Miller and Joe Morgan were as close to an institution as any broadcast team ESPN has ever employed. If one read between the lines, it was easy to tell that Karl Ravech was signaling the end of an era — but this series deserved at least the kind of sendoff TNT gave its game crew in May, with Kevin Harlan narrating over images of announcers past and present.
Speaking of Kevin Harlan, the CBS, Westwood One and soon-to-be-Amazon Prime play-by-play voice was the latest guest on the Sports Media Watch Podcast. In addition to breaking news of his reduced NBA schedule for Prime Video, and detailing the craft of radio play-by-play, Harlan also discussed his career journey — from turning down a chance to become the voice of the Michael Jordan Bulls to what led him to leave FOX for CBS.
Preceding Harlan’s appearance on the podcast, CBS Sports host James Brown was another recent guest — discussing, among other things, the 50th anniversary of “The NFL Today.”
