California’s attorney general is expected to ask Paramount to divest “some” cable networks if it wants to end the legal fight over its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Plus: ESPN’s return to “Sunday Night Baseball” will be a one and done as the Little League Classic shifts nights; Charter’s CEO is looking for “solutions” to the company’s relationship with the Lakers and Dodgers; and more.
California AG expected to ask Ellison to divest some cable networks
Paramount CEO David Ellison and California attorney general Rob Bonta are expected to hold preliminary settlement talks Monday in which the latter is expected to request Paramount divest “some” cable channels in order to win his approval for the company’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, Joe Flint and Jessica Toonkel of The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
The report did not specify which cable channels Bonta would request be divested. Most of the scrutiny of the proposed Paramount-WBD merger has concerned CNN and potential changes to its programming, and comparably little has been said of the TNT Sports networks TNT, TBS and truTV, save for references to the size of the combined CBS-TNT sports portfolio.
Beyond CNN and TNT Sports, which originated with Turner Broadcasting, Warner Bros. Discovery owns a suite of cable channels from the Discovery side of the combination — including Discovery itself, HGTV, Food Network and TLC. That is on top of the cable networks Paramount already owns, like MTV and Nickelodeon. Depending on whether Bonta has specific networks in mind, it is possible that Paramount could comply while still holding onto the CNN and TNT networks.
Paramount has agreed to pause all efforts to move forward with the acquisition of WBD until the legal case is resolved, or until June 1 of next year, whichever comes first. With a trial date not set until next March, Paramount will need to reach a settlement in order to avoid hundreds of millions in quarterly “ticking fees” it agreed to pay WBD shareholders for each quarter the deal is not consummated.
ESPN’s MLB Little League Classic moving off Sunday night next year
Next year’s Major League Baseball Little League Classic will take place on Thursday, August 19, league commissioner Rob Manfred announced on ESPN’s broadcast of this year’s edition Sunday night. ESPN will again carry the game, which next season will pit the Cubs against the Blue Jays.
The Little League Classic has taken place on Sunday nights since its debut in 2017 and ESPN aired the game as part of its “Sunday Night Baseball” package. While ESPN relinquished “Sunday Night Baseball” when it opted out of its MLB media rights deal early last year, it retained the Little League Classic as part of the new deal it eventually struck.
With this year’s game remaining on Sunday night, new “Sunday Night Baseball” broadcaster NBC had to give up its usual primetime window, instead carrying Giants-Red Sox in the afternoon. (NBC aired the WNBA instead Sunday night.)
That will not be a problem next year, presumably allowing NBC to air “Sunday Night Baseball” at its traditional time. NBC had already been awarded a new primetime window next August with the addition of the Field of Dreams Game from Dyersville, Iowa, which is set to take place the week before the Little League Classic.
Charter CEO Whitney seeks “solutions” to Lakers, Dodgers, RSNs
Charter CEO Chris Winfrey told Meg James of The Los Angeles Times last week that his company would “love to find solutions” that would improve its relationships with the Lakers and Dodgers, whose games air on the two separate Spectrum-branded regional sports networks it inherited as part of its acquisition of Time Warner Cable a decade ago. While conceding that the teams are “very important” to both the company and its customers, Whitney added “that doesn’t mean it’s a great economic agreement with us.” Both teams are reportedly owed hundreds of millions in annual rights fees in long-term deals that extend into the 2030s.
Whitney went on to say that the company wants to be “innovative” in finding a “better long-term solution,” though it was not clear what that would entail. John Ourand of Puck reported Tuesday that Dodgers owner Mark Walter, who also owned the Lakers until earlier this month, approached Charter about buying out the remaining years of its deals with both teams, but the talks “went nowhere.”
Charter has been trying to tell the Lakers’ RSN, Spectrum SportsNet, as reported earlier this year by Ourand and again last week by the Times. Ourand’s reporting earlier in the year indicated that the company would have to declare bankruptcy in order to move off from its more expensive deal with the Dodgers, whose games air on SportsNet LA.
Both the NBA and Major League Baseball have plans to launch centralized local streaming platforms by 2028, for which rights to teams like the Lakers and Dodgers will be particularly valuable.
Plus: NASCAR Chicago, ESPN graphics, Scripps WBB, Bouchard
- NASCAR will not resume its Chicago Street Race next year, instead visiting the oval Chicagoland track for a second-straight year, according to Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic. Talks between NASCAR, the city and the state are said to have stalled over cost.
- ESPN on Thursday ‘soft-launched’ a new NFL graphics package that incorporates the new bespoke font the company unveiled as part of its “ESPN Unlimited” rollout last year. The new look, which is not yet a finished product, debuted months ahead of the company’s first Super Bowl broadcast next February. ESPN has been using a unified look on all of its sports promotional campaigns over the past year, but so far has continued using separate graphics packages for its actual game telecasts.
- Scripps announced earlier this month that it will host a branded women’s basketball event in December featuring defending champion UCLA, Duke, USC and Miami. Titled the “Scripps Sports Women’s Basketball Showcase,” the event will take place Wednesday, December 16 in Phoenix with UCLA facing Duke at 7 PM ET and USC playing Miami at 9:30, both on Scripps-owned ION. Scripps has become associated with women’s sports, owning rights to the WNBA and NWSL, among others.
- ESPN announced last week that it has added former tennis player Genie Bouchard as an analyst for its upcoming coverage of the U.S. Open. Bouchard is the latest newcomer to ESPN tennis coverage, after Andy Roddick debuted at Wimbledon earlier this summer.
