Justice Department to analyze deal as the NFL pushes back The planned sports streaming venture proposed by Disney’s ESPN, Fox Corporation, and Warner Bros. Discovery could be finished before it even gets off the ground. Two significant developments took place this week as the Department of Justice (DOJ) is now looking at the proposed joint venture for anti-trust concerns. The […]
Kansas City Chiefs were not the only winners; so were CBS, Univision, and Paramount Global For the first time in nearly two decades, we have a repeat Super Bowl champion as the Kansas City Chiefs won Super Bowl LVIII in a thrilling game against the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in overtime – the second overtime game in Super Bowl history. […]
Also: Timberwolves strike iHeartMedia deal; CBS affiliates decline Bears game in large numbers; Survivor names a tribe after an old media company Longtime Chicago radio veteran Rick O’Dell is the latest media figure to announce his retirement, doing so on Facebook. His final day is October 4. Currently the program director of MeTV FM (WRME-FM), O’Dell is best known for […]
Bears sink in ratings locally despite gains for football – pro and collegiate elsewhere Last year, Chicago football fans had hope the Bears would drastically improve as they finished 3-14 and earning the first draft pick, whom they traded to the Carolina Panthers to get even more draft picks and acquiring a few standout veterans such as DJ Moore and […]
This year’s Super Bowl was the second most-watched of all time Super Bowl LVII was indeed super in the ratings department, although it fell short on the one-yard line toward the record books. In the big game this this year were the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, with each looking to win their second Super Bowl title in […]
Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapses on the field during 1st quarter A game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals with playoff implications was one of the most heavily-hyped NFL games of the year and the biggest Monday Night Football matchup in quite sometime, to be televised on not only ESPN but ABC and ESPN 2 (without a ManningCast […]
Package was last NFL property still out on open market; heads to YouTube TV After 29 seasons on DirecTV, NFL Sunday Ticket is on the move. Google and the NFL announced an agreement Thursday with the tech giant acquiring the out-of-market package of games for an estimated $2 billion as an add-on option to existing YouTube TV subscriptions and a-la-carte […]
Also: Jennifer Hudson, Sherri Sheppard start off well; Clippers return to broadcast TV in L.A. We won’t go into this as much as we did in previous years when the Bears and Packers play in primetime as what has been said about this…has already been said. The Chicago team’s 27-10 loss to Green Bay drew 20.8 million viewers across NBC, […]
Also: local Atlanta station removes popular syndicated show to air more news; controversial political ad removed from local airwaves; the GOP looking to deregulate the media business even more; Ramsey Lewis dies [Editor’s Note: There is an update to the second story in this piece. See below.] Thursday Night Football may have left Fox, but its owned stations certainly haven’t […]
Hall of Famer and video game innovator leaves marks on sports and media John Madden didn’t invent the game of football, but he sure helped contribute to it. The pigskin icon, who was a coach and broadcaster died Tuesday in his Bay Area home at the age of 85. Madden was an innovator in sports broadcasting, injecting enthusiasm and his […]
Two bad teams equals good ratings for the NFL…somehow You’d think given the horrid records of two of the worst teams in football playing against each other, people would eschew this matchup to find something else better to do right? Well, that theory was tested on Thanksgiving Day when the 3-7 Chicago Bears took on the 0-9-1 Detroit Lions – […]
Also: Don’t Bet Your Life; Bids made for Tegna; Johnny B to host RHOF ceremony The NFL continues to rack up impressive numbers at a time when viewers are abandoning linear TV in droves. Case in point: The Bears game on Sunday against the Bengals drew a household 22.9 rating and 60 share for Fox-owned WFLD-TV Chicago Sunday, easily making […]
Same old Sunday Night Football story for Bears I’m not going to bore you whining about why the Chicago Bears keep getting national prime-time TV appearances; I’ve covered the topic aplenty over the years, most recently here and here. But the decision to keep Matt Nagy and Ryan Pace around for another year is one of those “Chicago Way” type […]
Blockbuster pacts include new deals for streaming Just a week after the NHL announced a return to ESPN/ABC, the NFL announced Thursday it completed its television deals. While nothing really earth-shattering (Fox stunning the world in 1994 by grabbing the NFL from CBS or Monday Night Football moving to cable), the new deals does send a message – streamers have […]
Game was a blowout; commercials were about average Given the times we’re in with political division, unemployment, and a never-ending pandemic riddled with deaths, I thought about sitting out this year’s Super Bowl commercial recap. But pop culture never stops – even during a pandemic. And so here we are – and this year we have a song about oat […]