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Is Mark Davis Nuts Asking Media Member to Advise Raiders Coaching Search?

Demetri Ravanos
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Sports fans’ attitudes on their favorite teams and games are weird. We don’t want our teams to be boring, but when they try something new and approach the games and decisions in a way no one has before, we assume it’s a bad idea until we are proven wrong. In Las Vegas, Mark Davis is trying something strange and I am not sure it is as crazy as the social media echo chamber swears it is.

You won’t catch me defending Jim Gray as some sort of football expert or coach whisperer. In fact, I am not a fan of turning to Gray to help determine the future of the Raiders at all, but I don’t think the idea of using the advice of a prominent, long-tenured member of the media is entirely absurd.

I’ll be honest, outside of hanging out with Tom Brady, I am not even sure I know what it is that Jim Gray does…or ever did for that matter. Prior to The Decision in 2010, I can’t remember ever having seen his face or heard his name. In the years since, we have all come to agree that participating in the Gray-created special is one of the dumbest things LeBron James and his team have ever done. 

Kudos to Gray though. He parlayed a poorly-received TV special into being best friends with the most iconic American athlete since Michael Jordan. That has come with access and influence that he is ready to put to use.

The Davis family has a reputation amongst not just fans, but fellow NFL owners. They are nuts! They will do and try things that other members of the league’s traditionally risk-averse ownership class will not. It makes sense that this grand experiment is happening in Las Vegas.

Two years ago, the email leak that eventually cost Jon Gruden his job showed something else interesting. ESPN’s Adam Schefter was letting the Washington front office approve a story before he reported it and even referred to the team’s then-president Bruce Allen as “Mr. Editor.”

It was unseemly. There is no denying that, but if we learned anything from Schefter’s defense of the incident, it is that reporting is a transactional business at that level. Having information is important, but protecting relationships to ensure that the information flow never stops is even more important.

Mark Davis is crazy for seeking the advice of Gray specifically, not for relying on what a reporter can tell him about the people he is considering for the job. In fact, if word got out that Davis had called Schefter or Ian Rapaport or Jay Glazer, the negative reaction would largely be reserved for the reporter. We would praise Davis for using every tool at his disposal.

There is a reason that ESPN rewarded Schefter and his NBA counterpart Adrian Wojnarowski with big contract extensions last year. Fans want information, and in the age of social media, they want the information before the event reporters are covering even happens. 

The men and women in these jobs make mistakes. They can be intentionally mislead when it benefits their sources to have inaccurate information get out. Being a high profile reporter covering any sport comes with a lot of risk for your credibility.

Overall though, the public largely considers these insiders reliable and views them as well-connected to what is going on around the league. Surely, the same can be said for the way owners and GMs view them too.

Any connected and respected NFL reporter that accepts a job advising a coaching search for a team would almost certainly have to resign from their current role. Their reputation as unbiased would be forever compromised. That doesn’t mean that it’s a terrible idea for either the reporter or the team involved.

There is money in having information. That is true in any business. If you are the one with the information, you have to make sure the price is worth the cost. If you are the one seeking information, you have to make sure you are paying the right guy. I don’t think the Raiders are paying the right guy. That is the only part of this idea that is truly crazy.

On the field, football is a physical business. For Mark Davis and his peers, it’s an information business. The Raiders, just like the Patriots, Michigan and Astros, are seeking information that will help them make the best decision and put them in position to win.

Seeking the advice of Jim Gray is the latest example of a grand Raiders’ tradition. In theory, the plan is interesting and has the potential to yield tremendous benefit. The execution though, is goofy as hell. Someone will do it much better in the future.

Rich Eisen: I’d Love to Do More Play-By-Play

BSM Staff
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Rich Eisen: I’d Love to Do More Play-By-Play

NFL Network host Rich Eisen has had the opportunity to be the play-by-play voice of all the NFL international games with the exception of one this season. And getting those reps calling the action on the field is something Eisen hasn’t had a ton of chances to do over the years.

Eisen was on the call for Sunday’s Chiefs/Dolphins game in Frankfurt, Germany, and will be on the call for NFL Network this weekend when the Colts and Patriots square off at Frankfurt Stadium. Doing a Q&A with The Athletic ahead of Sunday, Eisen said more play-by-play opportunities in the future wouldn’t be a bad thing.

“That I’d love to get more. I already see how much better I would be with 200 compared to 10,” Eisen said.

Doing those two games earlier in the season in London definitely helped make Rich more comfortable in the play-by-play role. He added that getting to do games in consecutive weeks was also incredibly meaningful, as it was the first time he’d ever been in that situation.

Rich Eisen continued that he doesn’t take the chance to put on the headset for granted.

“I love doing it. There’s nothing like it,” he said. “My entire career, I’ve either talked about something in advance to preview it – like a pregame show – or talked about something afterwards – like a highlight show like SportsCenter – or what I do on my daily show.”

“It’s a tremendous responsibility,” Eisen added.

When it comes to making a connection with the audience, Eisen understands from his decades in TV and radio just how important establishing and maintaining it is as a play-by-play voice.

“Each time you’re on the air, you’re creating a connection with a viewer or a listener, and you want them to feel comfortable hearing you,” Rich Eisen said. “You want to be a good hang. If you’re a bad hang, that is a bummer for a lot of people. I take that seriously, and I have reached out to a ton of colleagues in our business to pick their brains and get their thoughts on it.”

“I want to make sure that I am not that person where you say, ‘He should just stick to hosting,’ he continued. “I see that in my social timelines sometimes, but I don’t pay any attention to it because I am trying something that is new to me. The way I view it is how lucky I am that 27 years into my national broadcasting career, I’m getting opportunities to try something new. It’s not just a challenge but an enjoyable one.”

Bally Sports Offering Credits to Users After Several Outages

BSM Staff
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Bally Sports Offering Credits to Users After Several Outages

After technical issues caused multiple days of outages for several Bally Sports+ subscribers across the country, the company is trying to make good with customers with an account credit.

The Tampa Bay Times reported over the weekend that those who subscribed to Bally Sports+ through the Bally Sports app or website would be receiving a seven-day credit to their accounts. Those credits would show up on the next billing cycle.

“Saying ‘we’re sorry’ is not enough,” an email to affected customers from Bally Sports read. “We owe it to you to acknowledge our failures and try to make it up to you.”

The outages caused problems for NHL and NBA fans in several markets including Detroit, Dallas/Fort Worth, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Milwaukee, Tampa, and Cleveland.

Bally Sports‘ parent company — Diamond Sports Group — is in the midst of Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, and the streaming issues have been perceived by some as a sign of a looming shutdown of the networks altogether.

The company continued in the email to customers that they understand if some fans just want to cancel figuring the streaming is more hassle than anything. But they did encourage folks to stick with them.

“We will not promise perfection but truly our mission is to deliver an improved experience because the teams and their fans deserve it,” the company said. “We hope to earn back your trust in time.”

Nielsen DDI Measurement Metric is a Ruse

Dr. Ed Cohen
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Nielsen DDI Measurement Metric is a Ruse

If your cluster subscribes to the Nielsen Audio PPM service, you’ve no doubt been subjected to the acronym “DDI”. This column will explain what it is and further, why it may be the most useless metric in radio audience measurement, in other words, one that you should ignore.

DDI stands for Designated Delivery Index and is a way to obfuscate the problem of proportionality in Nielsen’s surveys. First, let me explain to you how it works.

In PPM, the data are weighted using 18 discrete age/sex cells (I’m ignoring the other weighting variables because DDI is typically used for age/sex demos, however, it can be applied to other variables as well). Working from youngest to oldest, you have Boys 6-11, Girls 6-11, Boys 12-17, Girls 12-17, Men 18-24, Women 18-24, and on up to Men and Women 65+.

Let’s say that five percent of your market’s population is Men 25-34. In that case, ideally, five percent of the average daily sample should be Men 25-34. It won’t always work out that way and that’s why weighting is used. 

For this example, let’s assume that Nielsen was a little short on that cell and that 4.5 percent of the average daily sample for the month was Men 25-34. That means, on average, that those meters would be weighted up a bit (each meter would carry some extra weight to get the total representation to five percent). 4.5 is 90 percent of 5 percent (4.5 divided by 5), so the proportionality for that demo would be a 90. Good so far?

Next, let’s say that the Persons 6+ target sample for the market is 1,000 meters (average daily intab), and because Men 25-34 are five percent of the population, there should be 50 in the sample (.05 times 1000). However, Nielsen overshot (a good thing for the subscribers), and the average daily intab for Persons 6+ was 1,120.

Here’s where DDI comes into play. The DDI is based on the size of the actual sample, not the population percentage. In this case, the math looks like this: We know 4.5 percent of the sample is Men 25-34 and 4.5 percent of 1,120 is 50.4, but let’s round that and call it 50. Since we have 50 men in the average daily sample and we needed 50 based on the sample target, the DDI is 100 (50 divided by 50 times 100 to create an index). 

Your Nielsen rep will tell you that the DDI is dead on, but does this have any effect on the results that you’re seeing? Not one bit. The proportionality was still 90 (and 90 is not bad) and that meant the Men 25-34 meters had to weighted up a bit on a typical day.

Why did DDI come to pass? Whatever the PPM P6+ sample target is in your market, Arbitron used to typically overshoot and that was by design. Nielsen generally does as well, but they try to get closer to the target because, well, it costs money to meter a PPM household. If the average daily sample is bigger than the target, then DDI makes the sample look better in key demos than does proportionality. It’s a ruse and if you don’t know any better, it’s misleading.

What should you do about it? Don’t do anything except ignore DDI. What matters is the proportionality of the sample, period. Remove the DDI acronym from your lexicon. If your Nielsen rep sends you data citing DDIs in your market, ask them to stop doing that and include only proportionality, which you can do yourself using the E-Book. 

Keep a running track of the monthly results of each weighting variable for your market. As a reminder, the variables are:

Age/sex demos

Geography (if more than one geographic unit, typically a county)

Race and/or ethnicity (Black and Hispanic in most markets, but some have only one)

Language preference among Hispanics (if the Hispanic population is large enough)

Presence of children (children is defined as 0-17)

Working status for persons 18+ (working full-time or not working full-time)

You have enough things to do during your workday.  Don’t waste your time on metrics that don’t matter.

Let’s meet again next week.

Mike Valenti: The Difference Between Me and Others is ‘I Watch The Games’

BSM Staff
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Rumors connecting FOX Sports college football analyst Urban Meyer and the current vacancy at Michigan State together. 97.1 The Ticket afternoon host Mike Valenti questioned the validity of the rumors while keeping his fandom in check.

During an episode of The Mike Valenti Show Thursday, the Detroit host questioned whether he was blinded by his own bias for wanting Meyer to accept the job or if he was simply the “pulse of the people”.

Co-host Rico Beard said due to Meyer’s history, it’s difficult to rule out his potential return to a college program.

“Until I hear that Urban goes on the Fox pregame show and says, ‘I’ve heard a lot of stuff. I just want to set the record straight’, I don’t care what he does on some Plumber in Tennessee’s podcast when he says he don’t care about the rumors,” Beard said.

That led Valenti to say he’s more trustworthy than others on the topic due to his dedication to taking in as much of the sport as possible.

“Here’s the difference, I think, between me and a lot of people who do lists. I actually watched the games,” said Valenti, referencing writers and radio hosts who have made lists of potential replacements for Michigan State coach Mel Tucker who was dismissed earlier this year after allegations of sexual misconduct came to light.

FOX Sports reporter Bruce Feldman has previously reported that Meyer has no interest in returning to college coaching. However, earlier this week, Meyer admitted he does not trust information disseminated from reporters.

NBA Wants Media Rights Back From Diamond Sports After 2024-25 Season

BSM Staff
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Diamond Sports Group is in the process of trying to restructure its $8.6 billion in debt as it tries to find a way to escape Ch. 11 bankruptcy. As the proceedings continue, the future of the regional sports networks is becoming a concern for many sports leagues and fans, pointing to how the Sinclair, Inc. subsidiary dropped the local rights for the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks during the Major League Baseball season.

According to a report from the New York Post, the company is working on a deal with the NBA that would cut the nearly $600 million it pays for annual rights fees by 20% for the next two seasons. Within these negotiations though, the NBA reportedly wants all of its local rights back after the 2024-25 season, coinciding with the expiration of the national contract with The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Discovery.

A source told the Post that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver plans to sell the streaming rights for the league to a technology company, such as Amazon, beginning in the 2025-26 season. MLB Commissioner Robert D. Manfred Jr. testified in bankruptcy court earlier this year that Sinclair executive chairman David Smith threatened to declare bankruptcy and selectively reject contracts if the league did not grant it direct-to-consumer broadcast rights to strengthen the Bally Sports Plus app.

When Manfred decided to stand firm and shot down his proposal, Smith followed through with what he said, the very threat of which prompted the league to create a local media department prepared to broadcast these games. Manfred stated that the league is ready to produce and disseminate local game broadcasts for the 14 teams that currently remain on Bally Sports regional networks. The deadline for debtors to object to the relief within the motion to compel, which was filed earlier in October, was recently extended to Wednesday, Nov. 6 at 5 p.m. CST.

Sinclair is also reportedly exploring a purchase of Diamond Sports Group outright, offering $850 million in partnership with Bally’s Corporation independent director Soo Kim to regain control over the subsidiary. At the moment, Diamond Sports Group is responsible for airing local games on regional sports networks for 39 teams across MLB, the NBA and NHL. Since the bankruptcy filing, it also lost rights to the Phoenix Suns, Phoenix Mercury and Arizona Coyotes, prompting the closure of Bally Sports Arizona. Sinclair currently has ownership over 185 television stations in 86 markets and is being viewed as a “last gasp” to keep RSNs broadcasting on local television.

Diamond Sports Group is reportedly seeking another extension from Nov. 29, 2023 to Jan. 29, 2024 to come to terms on and finalize a restructuring plan. The subsidiary is utilizing mediators from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of Texas to try to come to a resolution in its attempt to reorganize. At the moment, Diamond is suing Sinclair and alleging $1.5 billion in fraud through misconduct related to “fraudulent transfers of assets, unlawful distributions and payments, breaches of contracts, unjust enrichment and breaches of fiduciary duties.”

As part of a potential purchase, Sinclair would want Diamond to drop the lawsuit, which claims that Sinclair took money from the subsidiary to fulfill its own needs despite having knowledge of its insolvency. Moreover, Sinclair claimed that Diamond would not emerge from its bankruptcy in response to the lawsuit several months ago.

The offer has reportedly been presented to junior creditors of Diamond Sports Group, which accrue approximately $8 billion of the outstanding debt. The faction will need to determine whether or not to accept the deal, which would result in a sizable loss since the debt has a trading value of around four cents on the dollar.

The Bally Sports-branded group of regional sports networks was originally purchased by Sinclair from The Walt Disney Company after the latter acquired Twenty-First Century Fox. Under an antitrust-related divestiture by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2019, it was asserted that if Disney did not sell these assets, it would result in higher prices for cable sports programming licensed to multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) around the country.

Don La Greca: ‘Calling the Knicks the Rangers’ My Biggest Worry During NBA Debut

BSM Staff
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Don La Greca: ‘Calling the Knicks the Rangers’ My Biggest Worry During NBA Debut

98.7 ESPN New York host Don La Greca has long been the backup radio play-by-play voice of the NHL’s New York Rangers. This season, he has an additional assignment, serving in the same role for the NBA’s New York Knicks. He said there was really only one thing he was nervous about while making his debut.

La Greca called the Knicks game against the Cleveland Cavaliers Wednesday, and his cohorts discussed the broadcast during The Michael Kay Show afterward. During the show, La Greca admitted he was nervous about mixing the teams up.

“The thing you worry about was would I call the Knicks the Rangers,” the New York host said. “I said RangersKnicks once, and I joked about it with (analyst) Wally (Szczerbiak).”

Much to La Greca’s chagrin, the program played the moment, proving La Greca right that he immediately corrected himself.

La Greca went on to add that he also referred to the foul line as the “blue line” at one point, saying “I said ‘Wally, that’s only two. That’s not bad’, so I’m trying to have fun with it.”

Both Rosenberg and Kay gave Don La Greca props for his work, noting that he shouldn’t have been nervous due to his long career as a play-by-play announcer.

Joy Taylor: ‘Even Today, I Can’t Make a Mistake’

BSM Staff
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Joy Taylor: ‘Even Today, I Can’t Make a Mistake’

Joy Taylor is the host of Speak on FS1, and has become a trusted and credible voice across the sports media industry. When Taylor was first starting her career in sports media in Miami, she devised a plan to combat the ramifications of social media, which was growing in prevalence and scope at the time. From the beginning, she encountered both praise and harsh criticism on the internet, but she always tried to look at the situations in a similar light.

In a recent appearance on South Beach Sessions with Dan Le Batard, Joy Taylor outlined how she used to approach messages on social media platforms and how that has changed over the ensuing years. As she has gained more experience and grown in the industry, she has been able to filter the seemingly incessant amount of feedback perpetuated from multiple sources and knows what is worth valuing.

“For a long time, if people have followed me on social, this was sort of a bit of my personality on the internet was to just fire back and kind of cook people and be very mean about it,” Taylor said. “I’m not going to lie – it was kind of fun; it was a bit of a sport. I’ll pick out one of these 10,000 idiots and embarrass them and then everyone pile on, and it just kind of became a thing.”

Taylor currently views social media as more of a business venture than a place to substantiate any genuine conversation. Within today’s dynamic media ecosystem, she feels that humans receive more feedback than they are designed to face, something that can be both good and bad. Le Batard opined that since Taylor is working to create pure sports media content, there is no need for the aggrandizement of doubt or feeling of perpetually being attacked.

“I don’t think you have to have a certain opinion about me or what I do or what I say, but these are not opinions,” Taylor replied. “They’re just attacks for the sake of, ‘I have access to this person and I have this evil thing I want to say.’”

In conversations with other women, Joy Taylor frequently discusses how she deals with and processes what is on social media. She outlined her mindset about being able to weigh the benefits with the inherent costs that come in utilizing these outlets. The key for her is not internalizing or interpreting any of the commentary as genuine, instead recognizing it as a forum where people have substantial access to get the attention of public figures.

“It’s all just sort of white noise,” Taylor said. “If 10,000 people a day tell me that I’m the most beautiful woman in the world, it means absolutely nothing to me. If 10,000 people tell me that they want me to go die, it means absolutely nothing to me. Both of these pockets are engagement, so I treat social media as a business, and if they want to say that, they can say it.”

Le Batard wondered how Joy Taylor was able to get to that point as she tried to discover her voice and make a name for herself in the industry. Despite regarding her as tougher than most people in the industry, he presumed that there had to be some facets of the platform that affected her during her formative years.

“I noticed always that I can make a lot more mistakes than the women could without it affecting my credibility,” Le Batard added.

“Even today, I can’t make a mistake,” Taylor said in response. “It’ll be a whole YouTube reel and there will be articles written about it; I can’t make mistakes. Early on, of course, it affects you, but very early on, I decided I wasn’t going to allow this anonymous feedback to hurt me because I can’t allow that anonymous feedback to make me feel good either.”

Through her comments, Taylor cautioned that if she were to allow the internet to affect her disposition, it would likely risk her perceiving things more negatively. As a media professional, she sees value in face-to-face communication and regards social media as not being completely authentic. Rather than allowing these platforms to impede her progress, she regards them as being in the background and staying focused on the tasks at hand.

“When you see people get very addicted to the praise on the internet, and I never wanted to fall into that because if you make yourself vulnerable to the praises, you will make yourself vulnerable to the criticism,” Joy Taylor said. “And the criticism is, as we’re discussing, so far off the pendulum of what actual feedback is that it will really affect you.”

Bomani Jones: ‘I Have No Interest’ in Talking About Working at ESPN All The Time

BSM Staff
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Bomani Jones recently departed ESPN after concluding his second stint with the network. After his exit, he moved his podcast to Wave Sports + Entertainment, and in a recent episode said he wouldn’t spend all his time talking about his former home.

While discussing college football with Shutdown Fullcast Podcast host Spencer Hall on The Right Time with Bomani Jones, the former ESPNer mentioned he never really had the opportunity to discuss the sport that often at his previous home.

“Honestly, I don’t get to talk college football in front of people that much,” Jones admitted. “Especially when I was working at ESPN. And by the way, just so you know, I have no interest in turning into the person who talked about working at ESPN all the time. But I do want to say this: college football is a tricky thing for talking about on television, because the rule about talking about stuff on television is really ‘You got 48 hours’. So you play games on Saturday. You’re not on television until Monday, and then there’s a day full of NFL the day before, right? Like you don’t really get that meeting chances honestly to talk about it.”

One could infer that Jones is referencing former ESPN host Dan Le Batard, who has made it a habit to discuss his former employer on his popular podcast.

Last week, Bomani Jones discussed his relationship with Le Batard with Barrett Sports Media, saying “I don’t mean that snidely or rudely, but I think that people with the assumption that I would wind up going to work for Meadowlark are operating under the premise of what my relationship has been with Dan Le Batard. What about me implies to you that I make business decisions based on something that personal? You just can’t, that’s not how things work. You can’t do that.”

He noted that he was close to inking a deal with Le Batard’s Meadowlark Media in 2022, but a deal ultimately didn’t make sense.

“The way that Dan sells things, you know, ‘It’s work, it’s family.’ It ain’t really how life works. But, you know, that’s him and the way that he does things. I think that people who really love Dan and who enjoy the things that I did with him, they would love to see me go work there and be part of this thing that they already love. I could totally see how that would be the best thing for them. I just don’t know how those people would necessarily explain how it would be the best thing for me.”

KXNO Hosts Bid Outgoing PD Andrew Downs Farewell

BSM Staff
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KXNO Hosts Bid Outgoing PD Andrew Downs Farewell

After announcing last week that his time with KXNO was coming to a close, Program Director Andrew Downs is receiving a sendoff from the station’s hosts.

In a series of videos posted to X, formerly Twitter, station staff wished the outgoing Downs farewell as he embarks on a different career path, utilizing the hashtag #ThanksAD.

Downs announced his exit from the iHeartMedia Des Moines sports station last week, saying “I’ve made the difficult decision to leave KXnO after 15 years,” wrote Downs. “I’ll be forever grateful for the people I worked with and those who listened.”

He has served as the station’s program director since 2016 after originally joining the station in 2008 as a producer.

His final day with the station is Friday, with KXNO listeners being invited to a local brewery to wish Downs well.

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