- The NBA plans to allow teams to stream local telecasts over the internet, reports the Sports Business Journal. The league has authorized its teams to launch “video streaming, interactive TV and video-on-demand” services by the start of this season, though there is a possibility that may be an optimistic timetable. Complicating matters: some teams have already sold the right to stream games online to regional sports networks, and cable/satellite providers are expected to “hate [the] concept.” If the plan does go through, only fans in a team’s designated territory would be able to watch the games.
- ESPN/ABC, which will bid on the 2014 and 2016 Olympics along with NBC and FOX, says that it would televise fewer events on tape delay than NBC does currently. ESPN’s John Skipper, quoted by the New York Times: “It?s hard in our culture to fathom tape-delaying in the same way they have. I?m not suggesting it wasn?t the smart thing for them to do, but it?s not our culture. We did Euro 2008 in the afternoon. We?ve done the World Cup in the middle of the morning. We have different audiences.”
- The likes of Miley Cyrus and James Denton will not be making return appearances in the Monday Night Football booth this season. ESPN plans to “focus on all-football-all-the-time” during MNF telecasts, meaning an “official end to in-booth guests” and “heavily scaled back use of sideline reporters.” This is a departure from recent years, which saw heavy use of guests for extended periods of time — for example, an appearance by Charles Barkley last season, which lasted throughout the entire third quarter of a game.
NFL records its highest regular season average since 1989
The usual methodological caveats abound, but the NFL officially recorded its highest regular season audience in more than three...
