Major League Baseball is in negotiations with a new, as-yet-unknown partner for the Sunday morning package previously owned by Peacock. Plus: Nexstar’s CW will begin its NASCAR Xfinity Series tenure months ahead of schedule in September; O.J. Simpson has died.
MLB in negotiations with new partner for Sunday morning package
Major League Baseball is in negotiations with an “unnamed platform” to carry the Sunday morning package that has aired on Peacock the past two seasons, The Athletic reported Thursday. MLB had been in negotiations with Peacock on a renewal, but the sides hit a stalemate. Per the report, Peacock parent company Comcast was only willing to renew for less than the $30 million/year it had been paying.
Though the MLB season is already more than a week old, the new deal would begin this year. The Sunday morning package began in late April last year and May two years ago.
CW to begin NASCAR Xfinity Series tenure early in September
Nexstar-owned CW, which becomes the exclusive home of the NASCAR Xfinity Series starting next season, will carry the final eight races of the current season starting September 20, it was announced Thursday. NBC, which owns rights to those races as part of the current NASCAR media rights deal, will produce the telecasts and use its announcing team of Rick Allen, Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte.
The move frees up three October Saturdays on the NBC broadcast network — October 5 (Talladega), October 19 (Las Vegas) and October 26 (Homestead-Miami) — during the heart of the college football season.
O.J. Simpson dies
O.J. Simpson, the running back, actor and television analyst who will be primarily remembered as the lone suspect in a 1994 double murder, died Wednesday at age 76. His family, which announced the news Thursday, said the cause was cancer.
Between his Hall of Fame football career and 1995 murder trial, Simpson was ubiquitous in media as an actor, pitchman and football analyst. He served as a game analyst for ABC’s Monday Night Football in 1983, bookended by multiple stints with NBC Sports. He was an NBC NFL analyst at the time of his arrest.
A revered cultural figure before his arrest (a 1983 article described him as “one of the most popular professional athletes of all time”) and reviled pariah afterward, Simpson was acquitted of murder but later served nine years for an unrelated 2007 robbery.
Simpson’s June 1994 slow speed chase is part of sports media lore as it preempted NBC’s live coverage of Game 5 of the NBA Finals.
