The Washington Post will send reporters to cover the upcoming Olympic Games, though not many, as the future of its sports department remains unclear. Plus: ESPN will simulcast Brooks Koepka’s return to the PGA Tour in its first such telecast in 20 years; NFL executive Hans Schroeder praises the league’s Monday night Wild Card window as it heads into free agency; and more.
Washington Post to send skeleton crew to Olympics as future of sports department uncertain
A week after informing staff that it would not send any reporters to cover next month’s Winter Olympics in Italy, The Washington Post has reversed course and now plans to send four, according to multiple reports Monday. That is still a considerable reduction from the original plan; Benjamin Mullin and Erik Wemple of the The New York Times reported last week that the Post had secured 14 credentials for the event, in line with the usual contingent of 10-20 reporters it sends to Olympic Games. (It sent 26 to cover the Summer Olympics in Paris two years ago.)
Per that Times report, the Post is believed to have already spent more than $80,000 on flights, housing and office space for the Olympics.
Given its status as one of the nation’s venerable sports departments, counting among its alumni ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon and the likes of Thomas Boswell, Christine Brennan, Kevin Blackistone, Mike Wise and many other familiar names, the decision to sit out the Olympics was highly controversial. It also came amidst reports that the Post is gearing up for layoffs that, per Dylan Byers of Puck, could include the shuttering of the sports division. According to former Post columnist Paul Fahri Monday, the “biggest cuts” are expected to be to the foreign and sports departments.
The Post, which was purchased by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in 2013, has already engaged in multiple rounds of cost-cutting in recent years.
ESPN to simulcast Koepka’s return in first PGA Tour window since 2006
The ESPN flagship network will simulcast the PGA Tour Live “Main Feed” coverage of the PGA Tour Torrey Pines tournament from Noon-3 PM ET Thursday and Friday, it was announced Monday — marking the first time since losing rights after the 2006 season that ESPN has carried live PGA Tour coverage on one of its linear cable networks. Coverage will also be available on Hulu and Disney+.
While ESPN cable networks carry coverage of the Masters and PGA Championship, those are not operated by the PGA Tour (the PGA Championship is operated by the PGA of America, a separate organization). Though the ESPN linear networks do not have rights to PGA Tour events, the ESPN+ streaming service has held rights to the streaming-exclusive PGA Tour Live feeds — including the main feed, featured groups and featured holes — since 2022.
The Torrey Pines tournament marks the return to PGA Tour golf of major champion Brooks Kopeka, who spent the past three years on the LIV Golf tour. The Main Feed will include “uninterrupted coverage” of Kopeka’s group, according to Josh Carpenter of Sports Business Journal. Kopeka is expected to play alongside Max Homa and Ludvig Aberg.
News of the decision was announced on “The Pat McAfee Show,” which will be bumped to ESPN2 by the simulcasts.
NFL’s Schroeder praises Monday Wild Card window ahead of potential talks
NFL EVP/media distribution Hans Schroeder praised the league’s Monday night Wild Card window as a “great way to put our games into windows where people can watch them” in an interview with Sports Business Journal’s Austin Karp on “The Sports Media Podcast” last week. The Monday night window debuted in the 2022 season, replacing an early Saturday afternoon slot the prior year. “A lot more people can watch Monday night than they can watch Saturday at 1:00 when you get to that time of year,” Schroeder noted.
The Monday night Wild Card game averaged 29.1 million viewers this season and has never dipped below 23 million, while the Saturday afternoon window it replaced (Colts-Bills on CBS in 2021) drew just over 20 million, albeit coming off a low-rated COVID-affected season that took place in a different era of Nielsen measurement.
The Monday game has aired on “Monday Night Football” broadcaster ESPN each year, an association that Schroeder said “made sense.” But while ESPN has rights to “Monday Night Football” regular season games and a Wild Card playoff game, the network’s rights to the specific Monday night Wild Card window were negotiated separately in a deal that recently expired. Schroeder said the league will “talk to Disney” but added that he is sure there will be other interested parties. Schroeder: “People see that window and the attractiveness of it.”
It is unclear how freely the NFL would be able to shop around the window, as all Wild Card inventory would seem to be spoken for. NBC, CBS and FOX rotate the right to carry two Wild Card games per year, with NBC having that option next season. Otherwise, each of the league’s five primary partners (NBC, CBS, FOX, ESPN/ABC and Prime Video) have one Wild Card game per year.
Plus: ACC Championship, NBA schedule changes, Jason Kelce, NBC 4K
- The ACC football championship game is moving to Noon ET, it was announced Monday, marking the first time since 2020 — and just the second since 2008 — that the game will not take place in primetime. The title game will fill a vacancy left by the Big 12 title game, which is moving this season from the Noon ET Saturday window to Friday night. Relocating to Noon ET will allow the ACC Championship to avoid head-to-head competition with the Big Ten title game, which usually airs in primetime. This past season, the Big Ten title game averaged nearly five times the audience of its ACC counterpart, dominating the head-to-head 18.33 to 3.88 million. By comparison, the Big 12 championship averaged 8.99 million in its virtually unopposed Noon window.
- NBC has dropped its February 24 NBA “Coast 2 Coast Tuesday” window due to news coverage that night, with the scheduled games — Knicks-Cavaliers and Timberwolves-Blazers — moving exclusively to Peacock in a traditional 7:30/10 PM ET doubleheader. NBC will have a replacement window at some point in the season. ESPN/ABC is also working with the NBA to find a replacement for its postponed Warriors-Timberwolves game on Saturday; while ESPN carried a last-minute production of Celtics-Bulls on its app Saturday night (with Mike Breen and Tim Legler on the call), that was as a contingency plan in case Lakers-Mavericks was postponed due to weather and had nothing to do with the postponement in Minneapolis.
- ESPN NFL analyst Jason Kelce will serve as a “special correspondent” on ESPN’s coverage of Sunday’s NHL Stadium Series game from Tampa Bay’s Raymond James Stadium, the network announced Monday. Kelce, who played his final NFL game at the same stadium, will be one of eight on-camera talent on-site from the game — along with the studio team of Steve Levy, Mark Messier and P.K. Subban and a game crew of Sean McDonough, Ray Ferraro, Kevin Weekes and Emily Kaplan.
- NBC announced Monday that it will present both the Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl and Winter Olympics in 4K HDR on February 8, an initiative that it is calling “4K All Day.” The 4K feeds will be available across all 17 hours of coverage on both on the Peacock streaming service and the NBC broadcast network.
