As local newspapers across the country shutter Americans are craving local news, but not in the traditional sense. A new Pew Institute Research study found a large majority of Americans believe local news outlets are at least somewhat important to the well-being of their community.
Yet, only 15% say they have paid or given money to any local news source in the last year.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Except, in this case, there is no such thing as free news. People are in need of, and crave, local journalists’ hard work but are unwilling to pay for it. This is unsustainable.
Pew found 32% of those polled are looking to TV for local news, which is still the most common source of news. However, this is down from 41% in 2018. Just 9% look to print and another 9% look to radio for news. It’s no surprise to anyone Americans are looking to get local news online from websites (26%) and social media (23%).
While the transition from print to digital is relatively easy from a strictly content standpoint, having people pay is borderline impossible. The most common explanation is that people don’t pay because they can find plenty of free local news. The answer for our industry to survive is simple: paywalls.
Even with a Borrell Associates prediction of local broadcast TV advertisements growing 5.9% it won’t last. The agency noted the 2024 bump will fall after the election. We can not rely on every election cycle to survive.
In 20 years, TV won’t be able to subsidize digital (in some markets they are already unable to do this). In fact, this business model needs to be flipped around before local TV and radio stations shutter like newspapers have.
As I said in a previous article, it is unethical to have social media companies pay news outlets for content (like the legislation in Australia and Canada pushed through). But the money has to come from somewhere.
Why are we giving our work for free? A dollar per click on digital advertising is only sustainable (and offers a livable wage) when it comes to clickbait. However, the mind-numbing click farm is not why most of us do what we do.
Journalists are supposed to provide information, stand up for the truth, and have some sort of moral integrity. This does not mean we and our colleagues need to live on barely minimum wage. (Full disclosure, moral integrity does not mean “activist journalism,” which is bad and not actually journalism. I mean have the integrity to keep yourself and your view out of the story.)
Suits, this is where I turn to you. In 2022, local TV over-the-air advertising revenue totaled $20.5 billion according to a Pew study. The same study said profits from digital advertising revenue reached $2 billion. So where does this money go? It’s certainly not in the newsroom.
On average starting salaries are $37,600, according to The Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA). They calculate since 2020 those who work in news on average lost 8.3% in real wages. However, the amount of airtime for local outlets increased by 18 minutes per weekday. Meaning more work, less pay, and even less time to enjoy that breaking news pizza.
People are now making more at fast food restaurants in California than your newsroom associate with a bachelor’s degree. This is not normal. Invest in your people.
Journalists have so much more to offer the community yet they are not being paid. The companies they work for are not making as much as they could because everyone is afraid to put up a paywall.
If all local news outlets unanimously ask their readers to pay (like we used to before the dot com boom when everyone had to buy a paper) people would pay. They need us to be properly informed. While we are fully aware of our industry’s credit crunch, those outside of our world are blissfully unaware of our precarious situation.
Most importantly, local news outlets are facing a news dotcom problem, ‘Dark Money.’ Axios reported this week the number of biased outlets, that say they are impartial, is more than the number of actual local daily newspapers in the U.S.
Not only are we not being paid for the value of our work, we are competing with people who have bad intentions, unlimited money, and unlimited bandwidth. True news might be dead at the national level but we can not let this happen to local news.
There is no such thing as free news. So why does the industry as a whole treat our valuable content in this way?
In the moments when athletes make a monumental decision about their playing careers, news outlets frequently try to cover the story in a timely and accurate manner. Whether it is signing with a new team in free agency, inking a new endorsement deal or retiring, basketball has plenty of these occurrences annually. These announcements are sometimes accompanied by graphics, adding visual elements of branding and allure to the development. Joe Tipton learned the nuances of photo editing and graphic design at a young age, leading him to create images of NBA players and share them on social media. Observing a lack of interest within the space, he considered doing the same for high school players nearing college commitments.
Tipton Edits, an independent business venture that he began shortly after starting in sports graphic design, provides athletes with a free edit in which their new uniform is superimposed onto an image divulging their new team. These recruits then share the photos on social media and tag Tipton. Especially at the start of the entrepreneurial property, he viewed gaining followers as remuneration, an invaluable currency as digital media continues its swift proliferation.
“I didn’t start making the graphics at 17 to have a job in it – I was just kind of doing it on the side for fun and then just kind of [seeing] where it would go,” Tipton said. “Since I was one of the first people to make graphics for these high school players in their recruiting decisions and now transfers, and now that I’ve built up the presence online and the credibility and the reputation, a lot of them will flock to me, and I think that’s what’s so sustainable about it now.”
The transfer portal keeps Tipton busy in creating and delivering graphics to collegiate athletes moving to a new school. Remaining prepared to create an enticing visual featuring the player in their new uniform and distributing it on social media requires a commitment to the craft. Even though he was a marketing student at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, he was still trying to determine the best path forward and ended up transforming his hobby into a sustainable career.
“I was able to communicate with high-level basketball players and create something for them – and all of it free of charge – in exchange just for a tag on Instagram and Twitter, which helped propel me and grow my brand and following online,” Tipton said, “and over the years, [it] got me to where I am now.”
By designing these graphics in advance, Tipton was privy to coveted information and recognized that he could effectively reveal where players were signing. His work has been featured on various sports outlets such as ESPN and Bleacher Report and shared by NBA legends including Shaquille O’Neal and Scottie Pippen.
NEWS: 2025 five-star Will Riley has made a change to his group of finalists — replacing Arkansas with Illinois. The 6-8 small forward is also considering Alabama, Arizona, Kentucky, and the NZ Breakers. https://t.co/B6FlQvCMxKpic.twitter.com/NGTdIQBt8d
On3, a digital sports media brand that delivers news, analysis and insights to consumers regarding college sports, recruiting and NIL, added Tipton as a national basketball reporter after he graduated from college. Since that time, he has established himself as a distinguished journalist covering high school and college basketball.
“[I] had an opportunity to join On3 because basically what I was doing when supplying the graphic to a high school recruit and even transfers now in the portal, I am being gifted the knowledge of where a player is going,” Tipton said, “so I’m able to report that information, and that’s basically what I serve as now for On3.”
Joining On3 provided him with another platform to disseminate this information and expand his audience while assisting the company in its own growth. Shannon Terry founded On3 in 2021, and the platform has continued to expand with dedicated coverage of NIL, the transfer portal and the NFL Draft, along with adding subsidiary verticals such as On3 Elite and On3 HER.
“When it comes to the transfers and their decision making, it’s so rapid fire, and there’s so many players that enter the transfer portal because of NIL, because of instant opportunities and also the ability to play right away and not have to sit out like the previous rules stated,” Tipton articulated, “so it increased the need for what I do and just the coverage of the transfer portal in general has taken a significant leap, which is great for those who cover the portal and recruiting in general.”
Tipton earned a contract extension at On3 earlier in the year, but he has always operated with a chip on his shoulder to prove that he is more than just a graphic designer. While he is a recent graduate and continuing to shape his identity and forge relationships, he believes the process has been considerably slow to this point. Nonetheless, he remains optimistic that working with On3 will be able to propel him to the next level.
“They didn’t view me as a reporter even though I was breaking news, so especially in the earlier stages, I wasn’t getting credit for breaking the news just because I guess they didn’t view me as a reporter [or] traditional media outlet,” Tipton said. “But ever since joining On3, that’s kind of painted me in a new light, and people will look at me a little bit differently, especially with the coverage that I’m able to provide for On3 and then just the overall stories broken.”
NEWS: 7-foot Oklahoma State transfer forward Isaiah Miranda, a former top-40 recruit, has committed to Doug Gottlieb and Green Bay, he tells @On3sports.
There is an aspect of fluctuation that has become more embedded in college basketball, rendering it fundamental to verify information ahead of its circulation. For example, if a player informs Tipton that they are committing to a certain school, he will oftentimes call the coaches or athletics department to safeguard against complicating miscommunication between the two entities. In the end, he is never releasing graphics or reports without extreme confidence in its veracity.
“There’s definitely a competitive aspect of it, which I really enjoy actually because it just kind of keeps you on your toes,” Tipton said. “It’s kind of a rush as well to be able to get it out first, but the first year on the job with On3, there was an incredible amount of pressure that I put on myself to just achieve this at a high level, but there’s also a great deal of stress that comes with it because a lot of what I do is time sensitive.”
Although he has a stellar reporting record dating back to his days solely creating graphics, there are moments when other reporters or outlets beat him to the story. In these situations, the power of his brand and its identity assists in overcoming these impediments, indicative of his broad appeal and widespread reach. Establishing himself as a brand rather than being a graphic designer or reporter within a larger entity has been a key differentiator within his formative years in the business.
“I think it’s the key to sustainability and a way to separate yourself from other people, so I’m incredibly fortunate that the players believe in me, trust in me and then On3 does the same because I’m a source for the player that they can come to and trust, and we all grow together,” Tipton said. “I help grow the player, [and] I help grow On3. On3 helps grow me [and] the player helps grow me because they’re all posting my stuff, we’re posting them, so we’re all on this together, so it’s really nice.”
Tipton never envisioned himself appearing in front of the camera, but he is now doing so regularly for On3. As part of its content, he frequently discusses the latest news regarding recruitment, the transfer portal and NIL in addition to synthesizing player rankings.
“[I am] obviously only just scratching the surface of the on-camera stuff, but I think that is a strong potential avenue for me moving forward in my career,” Tipton said, “but then also my ability to break news at a high level and also the relationships that I have just when it comes to the recruiting insider portion of my job as well.”
Later this month, Tipton will see some of the players for whom he has created graphics soon enter the NBA when the NBA Draft takes place from Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. Although he has not assimilated into reporting on the NBA, he is competitive and has thought about his future work. Yet he understands that a majority of his verve is in college basketball and is focused on breaking news beyond recruiting.
“The good thing about me and kind of how I was brought up was I wasn’t raised in a family that was a fan of a specific team; in fact, my parents aren’t even sports fans at all,” Tipton said. “Sports was just not on at all growing up, so I never grew up a specific fan or a diehard of any specific program.”
Reflecting back on his journey thus far, Tipton feels that he stumbled into his career with fortuitous timing. The versatility he has developed, along with his persistence, networking and inexorable work ethic, has contributed to the growth of Tipton Edits and his role with On3.
Tipton found a way to cut through the media ecosystem, investing his time and effort into a niche that did not exist with the level of cache and emphasis that it currently possesses. The industry moves with unrelenting momentum and can seem imposing to shrewdly understand and cover, but Tipton aims to masterfully keep up while enjoying his journey to an unknown destination.
“We live in a world where, especially younger people, they’re keen on growing their social media presence,” Tipton said, “so On3, Tipton Edits and others alike are able to grow their channels, so they’re encouraged to utilize services like mine to help kind of propel their following and for it to reach a large number of people.”
Netflix will stream two National Football League games on Christmas Day this year as part of a new deal with the league that was inked ahead of the official release of the regular-season schedule. The company is starting to prepare for these matchups by reportedly reaching out to broadcasters in an effort to find a partner to produce these matchups, the first of which is an AFC tilt between the Kansas City Chiefs and Pittsburgh Steelers at 1 p.m. EST. Some of the broadcasters with whom Netflix has reportedly spoken with are ESPN, NBCUniversal and CBS Sports, according to a new report from Lillian Rizzo and Alex Sherman of CNBC.
The Walt Disney Company, which has a majority ownership stake of ESPN, will reportedly not produce these games since it has college football matchups on the same day, according to people familiar with the situation. CBS Sports and FOX Sports produce several games in different regions every week, which could make producing games with Netflix somewhat of a burden. The report also indicates that there could be “more resistance among current NFL partners to help out Netflix” because the company may be looking to become a long-term media rights partner for the league in the future. The NFL is able to opt out of its current media contracts following the 2029-30 season.
Over the years, Netflix has produced a variety of sports-related content in the form of documentaries and live specials. The company signed a media rights agreement with World Wrestling Entertainment to become the new broadcast home of the WWE Raw series beginning in 2025 reportedly worth $5 billion over 10 years.
Netflix also released the trailer for Receiver, the NFL docuseries following players on and off the field throughout the 2023-24 season, which is produced by NFL Films, Omaha Productions and 2PM Productions. The eight-episode series, which is a sequel to Quarterback, will feature Davante Adams, Justin Jefferson, George Kittle, Deebo Samuel and Amon-Ra St. Brown.
Liberal radio host and content creator David Pakman has announced he is ending his nationally syndicated radio show and subsequent TV simulcast.
Pakman — who had been hosting the program since 2005 — said the juice was no longer worth the squeeze.
“When this show started, it started as a radio show. And it started on community radio stations. It expanded to community television stations. It expanded to satellite TV,” he stated. “Over the years, the importance of those platforms has diminished. The amount of staff time required to service those platforms has not diminished. In fact, it’s probably gone up. And the interference that being on those platforms causes for our online platforms has become more and more significant.”
The longtime host will focus on the digital aspects of his endeavors. Currently, he has nearly 2.2 million subscribers on YouTube. Additionally, Chartable.com ranks The David Pakman Show as the 45th most popular political podcast in its most recent rankings.
He shared that the nature of the program — which was syndicated for just a one-hour timeslot — made producing content more difficult.
“If I got a good 80 or 90 minutes one day because of a great interview, we have to chop the interview up and divide it into two shows, and only put the interview online. We get a lot of complaints about that,” he shared. “In addition to this, we often have to curtail language — bleep things. Sometimes we forget to bleep and then that becomes a problem for affiliate stations.
“There’s a lot of little things … to be honest, there’s also a financial component where we’ve been producing the show for radio and TV at our cost. And it generates essentially zero revenue for us. So this is a business decision as well as a decision about the future of media. I believe the future especially for shows like this is on digital platforms.”
David Pakman shared that there are changes to his digital aspects that he hasn’t been able to announce yet, but is excited for the future of his program.
The David Pakman Show will end “effective at the start of August,” the host shared when making the announcement.
Dan Patrick was a guest of Dan Dakich on his OutKick.com show Don’t @ Me and the two talked about several topics including Patrick’s plan to retire at the end of 2027. Patrick shared a story with Dakich about the day he first realized he didn’t want to continue at ESPN.
“There was one day when I was doing the 6 o’clock SportsCenter and I remember I threw it out to Sal Paolantonio with the Eagles. He’s doing his report and I’m not listening to anything he is saying because in my mind I am thinking, ‘I am going through the motions here, I am not getting any better.’ I remember coming home that night and I said to my wife, ‘ I don’t think I want to stay at ESPN…I don’t know, I think I might want to leave after this contract’s up, because I wasn’t getting any better.
“And that’s why I went on my own, because I needed to get my ass kicked. And we did the show for three years in my attic at my house, it wasn’t anything glamorous that I was leaving for, but I needed to jump start that again. And I accomplished it. I’m the first person to get out of Alcatraz and swim safely to the shore and live to tell about it and I’m good. I’ve accomplished what I wanted to accomplish and it’s time for somebody else to come in and do this, somebody younger.”
Dakich replied, “You’re great man, you’re not good, you’re great. And what you did was be a trailblazer…People don’t leave ESPN unless they ask you to leave. You know why I left? Other than the fact that I maybe was too controversial. I got bored. I get bored easy, and I got tired of ‘Don’t do this’ and ‘Don’t do that’ …so I go to OutKick where they let me say whatever the hell I want, and I don’t get in trouble.”
Patrick agreed with Dakich about the way ESPN dictates most of the topics and decides who can or cannot come on for analysis. “When I was at ESPN, you’re told what you’re supposed to talk about, you’re told you have to have ESPN analysts on,” he said. “It’s an echo chamber. And I just kept thinking that we needed to have people from outside instead of just our analysts on and that was not met well. It just felt like when Disney took over, the walls kind of got tighter, things shrunk, it wasn’t as much fun there…I felt like I didn’t graduate, I didn’t progress, I didn’t get any better.
“Berman left, Bob Ley left, Olbermann left, Kilborn left, Tirico left, Chris Myers left, Rich Eisen left. They all left, and I was just there going, ‘ Oh my god, I don’t want to be laughed at, I want to be laughed with. I gotta get out.’
Patrick said he turned down a five-year contract extension and that his boss “couldn’t believe it.”
Patrick said he believed he had been selfish long enough and that it was time to be able to spend more time with his family.
“You have to be selfish to be good at just about anything it feels like, and I thought I had been selfish to get to this point and I didn’t want to continue to be selfish to my family,” he said.
Earlier this week, Tucker Carlson announced a nationwide tour of live events that included conservative guests like Glenn Beck. Now, the nationally syndicated radio host is claiming that CNN attempted to get the tour shut down.
In a post to X, Beck alleged that CNN tried to interfere in the tour by pushing Ticketmaster — who is handling all ticket sales for the events — to end its relationship with the conservative firebrand.
“After the announcement of Tucker’s tour with ‘dangerous’ guests like me, CNN tried to bully Ticketmaster & arenas into canceling him,” Beck asserted. “For SPEECH. THAT. HASN’T. HAPPENED. So, who’s the real ‘threat to democracy’? Tucker or the Saul Alinsky activists pretending to be journalists?”
After the announcement of Tucker's tour with 'dangerous' guests like me, CNN tried to bully Ticketmaster & arenas into canceling him. For SPEECH. THAT. HASN'T. HAPPENED. So, who's the real 'threat to democracy'? Tucker or the Saul Alinsky activists pretending to be journalists?
Beck’s comments were in response to an article posted to CNN.com by media reporter Oliver Darcy that claimed Ticketmaster was “profiting off” Carlson’s “hateful rhetoric.” Darcy asked for comment from some of the arenas set to host the former Fox News host about his controversial stances. No building, however, returned a comment to the CNN reporter.
“Companies with basic ethics should, of course, reject doing business with dishonest figures who profit by dumping toxic waste into the country’s information environment,” Darcy wrote. “But doing so puts them at risk of being targeted by those very same people who, like Trump, have tremendous sway over the vast majority of Republicans and a lightning rod for painful boycotts.”
Tucker Carlson Live will feature a series of live programs where the former cable news host will be joined by a rotating group of fellow conservative commentators in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.
Carlson has announced 10 tour dates in September in cities like Phoenix, Los Angeles, Tulsa, Kansas City, and Milwaukee, among others. Beck insinuated in his post he will be a guest at one of Carlson’s tour stops, but has not been announced as one. However, the former Fox News host has yet to announce a special guest for his stop on Wednesday, September 18th in a suburb of Houston, Texas. Glenn Beck is based in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
On Wednesday night, seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Tom Brady was honored by the New England Patriots with an induction ceremony at Gillette Stadium to celebrate being nominated into the team’s Hall of Fame. Patriots owner Robert Kraft surprised Brady by revealing that the team had also retired his No. 12 and thanked him for his contributions to the organizations over his 20 seasons with the organization. Brady will be joining the lead commentary booth for the NFL on FOX next season, commencing his work as an analyst alongside play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt and reporters Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi.
Brady recently joined the SI Media with Jimmy Traina podcast and discussed his approach to joining the FOX Sports broadcasting team this fall for NFL games. Before he retired from the NFL, Brady signed what was reported to be a 10-year, $375 million deal to call NFL games in the network’s lead broadcasting booth. FOX Sports is entering the second year of its new 11-year media rights agreement with the NFL, which will culminate in Super Bowl LIX on FOX from the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, La.
“I love having a microphone that’s going to reach 30 million people on Sundays a week, [and] I love being a part of the best broadcast in sports,” Brady said, “so I think for me it was a no-brainer, and if you want to have an impact on people and you want to [have] impact on a sport you love, then you’ve got to work toward that.”
Although Brady retired from the NFL after the 2022 season, he did not immediately join the lead broadcast team on FOX Sports. Instead, he decided to wait a year before beginning his role, a decision that allowed him more time to prepare and become familiar with the broadcasting craft.
“For me, it was the only way to do it,” Brady explained. “I realized that to come off a playing season and then to jump right into that, it’s a whole [other] discipline to learn, and I really wanted to take some time to watch, listen, learn, talk to people – people who I really see as the greatest at what they’ve done – and everyone really opened their arms to embrace me and phone calls, and there’s still more I’m going to make before the start of the season, and I’m just very grateful for all the people that kind of shared a lot of incredible nuggets [and] ways to succeed that I’ll be able to involve myself in as I go forward.”
Brady believes that deciphering the game within his analysis will be a straightforward process since it is similar to what he did as a quarterback on a daily basis. Additionally, he anticipates enjoying the preparation and learning more about the teams ahead of the broadcast. A part of his approach he foresees being important, however, is in continuing to make the game fun for consumers so they can enjoy the viewing experience as a whole.
“Sometimes I get a little too serious because I see myself as ‘quarterback Tom Brady’ as opposed to ‘Let’s enjoy a great game of football Tom Brady,’” Brady articulated. “Sometimes I become a little too critical, so I’m trying to make sure I have the right tone.”
Traina found Brady’s answer about being too critical at times and having a specific way in which he believes the game to be played as rather interesting. One of the common critiques Traina has towards broadcast analysts with the exception of Troy Aikman on ESPN is that they are sometimes afraid to criticize players and referees. Although announcers do not need to call a decision dumb, there are moments he has perceived things to be glossed over. Brady wants to impart his wisdom throughout the broadcast with his many years playing in the NFL and help other people achieve their goals.
“I think there’s a high expectation of how I expect the game to be played because I was there and I saw Coach Belichick and I saw Hall of Famers and I played with them and played against them and I played in big games, and there’s just a certain expectation that I see for really great performers, and I want to see these guys perform really well,” Brady said. “But part of the contribution to make is, ‘How do I help other people be successful as well?’”
Brady understands that there will be opinions about his broadcasting abilities from the consumption audience from the moment he starts on the air. Yet over his 28 years playing college and professional sports, he has developed a thick skin and has heard plenty of plaudits and disapproval towards other broadcast analysts. Brady is ultimately going to focus on evaluating his effort, preparation, intention and if he gave his best to his colleagues at FOX Sports and the audience.
“You may not like it – I understand, it’s okay – but I’m just giving you my commentating, my analysis, so it’s really, in the end, kind of like I played quarterback was about satisfying me,” Brady said. “I could have had a bad outcome, but if I thought the process was good, ‘Alright, let me just work on the process to get the outcome I want.’ If the outcome was great, it was, ‘What did I do right that enabled me to be prepared and be successful in the moment?’”
Earlier in the week, there was considerable speculation surrounding the Los Angeles Lakers pursuit of UConn Huskies men’s basketball head coach Dan Hurley to fill the team’s head coaching vacancy. Hurley ultimately chose to stay at the University of Connecticut, a decision that elicited both surprise and relief in the basketball world, but his candidacy was relatively unknown before a report from ESPN senior basketball insider Adrian Wojnarowski. The report of Hurley being the frontrunner for the job came after Shams Charania, senior NBA insider at The Athletic, reported that NBA on ESPN analyst JJ Redick was the frontrunner instead.
Charania, who also works for Stadium and FanDuel TV outside of his reporting at The Athletic, appeared on ESPN Wednesday afternoon within The Pat McAfee Show where he outlined the Lakers coaching search and Hurley’s decision. Dan Le Batard, hosting an abridged version of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz due to severe weather in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area, spoke about how he recently read a Substack by Ethan Strauss that mentioned the rivalry between Wojnarowski and Charania.
“It’s King Kong and Godzilla of the information business, and Shams learned it from his mentor [Wojnarowski], who is the most competitive person I’ve ever met in sports media, who has relationships with the executives, with the old guard in basketball – the people who have controlled all of the power in basketball,” Le Batard said. “And his protégé, who is 30 years old and much different than him, traffics in the information from labor, from the players, and so there has been a fight at the top of the food chain.”
Le Batard, who used to host on radio and television for ESPN, explained to co-host Jon “Stugotz” Weiner that Wojnarowski is one of the best sportswriters he had ever seen. As the world of disseminating information has changed though, Le Batard stated that Wojnarowski does not write in that manner anymore and is instead divulging “cubes of information” as fast as he can because of money, power and interest in the craft. Although Charania has been a guest on The Pat McAfee Show before since it began broadcasting the first two hours of the program on ESPN last year, Le Batard felt that this particular appearance carried extra merit.
“To see Shams on McAfee is such a ‘F**k you’ from McAfee to Woj and the established infrastructure,” Le Batard said. “No one is allowed on ESPN basketball stuff until Shams on McAfee that Woj isn’t good with. To see his enemy in the middle of the workday on McAfee is hugely interesting to me, and then to see them this far apart on what the Lakers were doing and fighting at the top of the information food chain to produce a story around Hurley that I don’t think any of us but Woj saw coming – like that was not something that people were talking about before Woj reported it after Shams had reported JJ Redick is the frontrunner.”
“I’m with you,” Weiner concurred. “No one saw this coming; the Laker job coming. It is interesting with McAfee because he is doing that just to piss of Woj, and believe me, it pisses of Woj.”
Wojnarowski and Charania previously worked together at Yahoo Sports on “The Vertical” where they broke news of several transactions within the NBA over the years. While Charania was in his junior year of college, Wojnarowski had called him “the best young basketball reporter on the planet.” A rivalry between the two reporters began to develop through the years and became noticeable to fans when Wojnarowski joined ESPN in 2017 and Charania moved to The Athletic and Stadium in the next year.
The aforementioned Strauss detailed the relationship between Wojnarowski and Charania in a Substack article in October 2021, in which he states that they are “highly motivated to beat one another in a battle for speed, conducted over Twitter, a medium built for it.” After Hurley rejected the Lakers’ reported offer, Charania stated on FanDuel TV that Hurley was not the No. 1 candidate for the job from the start, which was viewed by some people as a disputation of Wojnarowski’s report.
The National Hockey League and Amazon’s Prime Video have announced the creation of NHL Coast To Coast, a new weekly whiparound live look-in show airing on Thursday nights in Canada. This new program will feature live views, highlights and analysis of every NHL game on the schedule as Prime Video prepares to embark on a two-year sublicensing deal with the league and Rogers Communications to present live games on Monday nights. The series is produced by NHL Productions in collaboration with Prime Video, and more information, including details surrounding the talent and production for the show, will be revealed at a later date.
“We are thrilled to work with NHL Productions on this new concept for hockey offering the ultimate destination for all the NHL action,” Magda Grace, head of Prime Video, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, said in a statement. “NHL Coast To Coast will provide fans with a comprehensive look at the latest key moments in games, as-they-happen highlights, interviews and analysis from the world of hockey featuring top players, coaches and commentators. The show will bring innovation and offer more to fans of the game than ever before, all in one place with their Prime membership.”
Earlier in the month, Prime Video and NHL Productions unveiled an untitled docuseries with Box to Box Films that will provide consumers with access to compelling players from around the league at different stages of their careers all trying to win the Stanley Cup. The series will include interviews with players, their rivals and those in their inner circle, trying to accurately depict what life is like for these players on and off the ice.
Amazon and the NHL have worked together since 2021 on their cloud-based delivery system, which has facilitated the delivery of in-game analytics and video highlights to enhance the overall fan experience. Among these ventures is the NHL Edge IQ stats portfolio that implements advanced analytical outputs to engender a better understanding of the on-ice action.
“NHL Coast To Coast is yet another example of Amazon’s extraordinary investment in hockey programming and commitment to delivering an enhanced viewing experience for hockey fans,” Steve Mayer, senior executive vice president and chief content officer of the National Hockey League, said in a statement. “We are impressed with Amazon’s all-in approach to hockey and the NHL. Together with our amazing team at NHL Productions, Amazon continues to build on its mission to serve hockey fans across Canada with whiparound coverage that will make Thursday nights appointment viewing.”
Over the last several years, Amazon has expanded its presence in sports media through the acquisition of broadcasting rights within the National Football League, NASCAR, National Women’s Soccer League and Overtime Elite. The company is reportedly set to acquire media rights within the National Basketball Association’s new broadcasting deal, which is also said to include The Walt Disney Company (ESPN/ABC) and NBCUniversal, although no deals have currently been announced.
Salem News Channel will now be available on local, over-the-air television in 55 markets after a new partnership with HC2 Broadcasting.
The new partnership will place the conservative news outlet on digital subchannels in markets like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, San Francisco, Phoenix, Tampa, and Minneapolis, among others.
“We welcome our new partnership with HC2 Broadcasting. This is another significant step in the rapid growth and distribution of the Salem News Channel, and in HC2 Broadcasting’s expansion,” said Salem News Channel Vice President and General Manager Cary Pahigian.
“We are excited about our partnership with Salem Media Group and delighted to be launching the Salem News Channel on our TV broadcast platform,” added HC2 Broadcasting President and CEO Les Levi. “The channel will be available for the first time to broadcast television viewers, who should enjoy the network’s rich and informative news content.”
With the new partnership, the network — which will be on broadcast television for the first time — will be available in 25% of TV markets in the nation.
