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Tyrone Johnson: Adam Silver Doesn’t Realize People Pirate NBA Broadcasts

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Earlier this week, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said the league has been “disproportionally impacted” by the demise of the cable bundle and regional sports networks, adding that the league’s young fans aren’t finding the broadcasts. 97.5 The Fanatic’s Tyrone Johnson believes that’s incorrect.

“We recognize that, in some ways, the decline of cable has disproportionately impacted the NBA,” Silver told Yahoo Sports. “Our young audience isn’t subscribing to cable, and those fans aren’t finding our games.”

While reacting to that statement, Johnson argued that young fans are watching the games on illegal streams.

“No, the kids are watching,” Johnson wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “They are watching on free streams. TikTok had streams of both games last night with thousands of people watching for free.”

After a commenter argued that watching the league is getting “harder and harder”, Johnson countered by saying due to games now streaming on the Max streaming platform, it’s actually “easier than ever”.

Tim Kurkjian: Networks Aren’t Happy About Rangers/Diamondbacks World Series

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Tim Kurkjian: Networks Aren’t Happy About Rangers/Diamondbacks World Series

Friday night marks the start of the 2023 World Series. The matchup between the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks, however, does not contain a team from the three largest markets. Because of this, many sports media personalities and fans do not expect the series to attain high ratings. In a recent interview with Dan Bickley and Vince Marotta on Arizona Sports 98.7, ESPN MLB analyst Tim Kurkjian expressed his excitement for the matchup.

“I think it’s great for baseball, and I know I’m in the vast minority here, and I know that the networks aren’t real happy about this, but this is perfect for baseball,” Kurkjian said of the World Series. “You’ve got two, young, hungry, athletic fast teams – especially the Diamondbacks – and they’re going to show people who they are.”

Bickley asked Kurkjian how the 2023 baseball season will be remembered in the history of the game, with new rule changes quickening the pace of play in turn growing attendance, prompting him to reference a conversation he had with outfielder Mark Canha at New York Mets spring training.

“He said, ‘20 years from now, people are going to point back to this spring and say, ‘This is when the game changed. This is what the pitch clock has done.’ I covered three three-hour games out of 12, which is an amazingly low number,” Tim Kurjian said. “They would have all been four-hour games last year, and when the game moves as quickly as it does, it just makes for better games.”

Adam Silver: Younger NBA Audiences Don’t Subscribe to Cable, Aren’t Finding Our Games

BSM Staff
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The demise of the regional sports network model has been a long and arduous journey. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver believes his league has been affected the most by the decline.

During an interview with Kendall Baker of Yahoo Sports, Silver said the league views the availability of its games as a pressing concern.

“We recognize that, in some ways, the decline of cable has disproportionately impacted the NBA,” Silver said. “Our young audience isn’t subscribing to cable, and those fans aren’t finding our games.”

Silver did note that the league isn’t pressing the panic button completely, but is interested in finding ways to ensure the league is available on every viewing platform imaginable in the future.

“There are still roughly 65 million homes in America that are consuming sports in a very traditional way, and even more people on network TV. Is that declining? Yes. Is that going away anytime soon? I don’t believe so,” Silver admitted. “So we want to be on all of those platforms.”

The comments from Adam Silver come on the heels of Amazon’s reported interest in partnering with the league on a national package. The Commissioner has previously shared that he is “fascinated” by the company’s current deal with the NFL for Thursday Night Football.

Drew Carter: I Don’t Take Myself Too Seriously, So I Was a Natural for ESPN’s Toy Story Game

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Drew Carter: I Don’t Take Myself Too Seriously, So I Was a Natural for ESPN’s Toy Story Game

With the number of games that a play-by-play broadcaster has in a particular year, it’s tough to always find out what impact the game they are calling has on a viewer. For Drew Carter, he got the opportunity to feel that impact with some of the alternate broadcasts he has done for ESPN.

Carter was a guest on the One Shining Podcast with Tate Frazier and before he got into his experience calling the Toy Story game this month, he recollected his experience calling the Big City Greens NHL alternate broadcast last year between the Capitals and Ranger

“March of this past year during the NHL season, we did an animated broadcast in the world of this Disney Channel show called Big City Greens. I first heard about that in December 2022 (four months before the actual game),” Carter said. “That was when the planning started. I think they asked me to do that because they know I have no problem making myself look like an idiot on TV. It’s essentially what I do anytime.”

“I’m not going to take myself seriously, but I will take the show seriously. That was in mid-March and went really well. I got some awesome feedback. When you’re doing the stuff we do, it’s kind of hard to tell the impact.”

Drew Carter said that he would read messages from social media saying how much a child who had never watched a hockey game enjoyed that experience. When he was assigned to do the Toy Story broadcast, he did both prep from the movies and for the game itself.

“I watched all 4 Toy Story movies, basically rapid fire. I had seen them, but I had to re-watch them.”

“That was part of the prep and then you have to prep it like a typical game. I’ve got my notes on Bijan Robinson and Drake London and Calvin Ridley and all that stuff and it really came together I think in a beautiful way.”

At the beginning of the broadcast, Carter was worried that the technical difficulties that came at the beginning of the broadcast were going to ruin the experience, but the technology was fixed and he thought it was cool that he got to be a part of it.

“We did have some technical difficulties off the top and we were on camera in animated fashion for about 3 minutes at the start. At that point, I’m like this is going to be the biggest disaster in ESPN history, and Booger McFarland and I are going to be the faces of a total train wreck. Thankfully, we figured out the technology and people seemed to enjoy it. We got some messages on social media that we’re really cool and made it sort of feel worth it.”

“We’re really small parts of that show. The parts that matter are animating the players in real time and that technology is incredible. The characters everybody loves from Toy Story, that was the part everybody really loved. But it was cool that we were the faces and the voices of it,

Chris Canty: Stephen A. Smith Told Me to Keep a Suit on Standby At All Times

BSM Staff
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Chris Canty: Stephen A. Smith Told Me to Keep a Suit on Standby At All Times

Filming from the Seaport District studios in New York City, First Take has access to several members of ESPN’s talent pool, and Chris Canty learned he could be called on at any time.

ESPN Radio’s new morning show — UnSportsmanLike — airs from the same studios as First Take, allowing for its hosts to contribute to television programs as well. Canty recently appeared on an episode of the program where he was implored by Smith, who also serves as an executive producer of the program, to be prepared if he needs him at a moment’s notice.

“I don’t think it could be described as a jab; more like a tongue-lashing,” Canty said on Friday morning. “This was off-air – this was off-air – and a little bit on-air too; it came on-air too, but it was after the segment that I had on First Take, it was, ‘Make sure you bring a suit to the Seaport and be on standby for when I need you.’”

Canty played 11 seasons as a defensive end in the NFL. Because of his NFL knowledge, co-host Evan Cohen likened the situation to Smith serving as a veteran for Canty. Cohen emphasized that the way Canty told the story suggested that when Smith speaks to him, he feels he has to listen.

“The only difference is my vet in the NFL would actually take me suit shopping and buy the suit for me,” Canty said. “That’s the only difference.”

“Let’s now read between the lines here, ladies and gentlemen,” Cohen replied. “Are you suggesting that Stephen A. Smith, if he wants you to have suits on standby, should buy you suits on standby?”

Responding to Cohen’s inquiry, Canty expressed that it would be a “nice gesture” if Smith were to purchase a suit for him to have at the ready for First Take. In his response, he expressed how veterans in the NFL locker room would have purchased the player a suit so there would be no excuse in not being properly dressed on road trips.

“I would pay for cameras to be rolling for you and Stephen A. Smith to go suit shopping,” co-host Michelle Smallmon said.

“If that happened, I’m buying the most expensive suit [with] the most expensive fabric I can find,” Chris Canty replied. “I’m talking about Purple Label Ralph Lauren; House of Zeniaa.”

Pat McCarthy Recovering After Being Struck By Car

BSM Staff
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Pat McCarthy Recovering After Being Struck By Car

New York Mets radio announcer Pat McCarthy is on the mend after being struck by a car while jogging earlier this week.

McCarthy recently completed his first season as a member of the radio crew for the New York Mets. Before joining the MLB radio booth, McCarthy called AAA games for the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs.

His father, Tom McCarthy, is the television voice of the Philadelphia Phillies. He also calls the NFL on CBS and Westwood One.

The elder McCarthy gave an update on his son’s condition Friday, saying “Pat is recovering more and more each day and maybe no marathons in the foreseeable future, but plenty of (baseball) and (basketball) ahead!”

Rob Thun on RSN Demise: Broadcast TV is Not the ‘Silver Bullet’

BSM Staff
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Rob Thun on RSN Demise: Broadcast TV is Not the ‘Silver Bullet’

As the regional sports network (RSN) model faces inherent change, there are questions about how fans will be able to access live and local sports content. In today’s marketplace, there are several RSNs that are owned by independent companies – most notably those from Diamond Sports Group. The company is currently within an exclusivity period to try and restructure its more than $8 billion in debt to emerge from Ch. 11 bankruptcy. As these proceedings continue to linger, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League are trying to remain prepared in the scenario that the company ultimately fails to come to a resolution with its creditors. 

There are also several regional sports networks owned by the teams themselves, including YES Network, Altitude Sports Network, NESN and Monumental Sports Network among others. Even so, DIRECTV Chief Content Officer Rob Thun feels that there is a sense of uneasiness among teams utilizing traditional RSNs to distribute their games as it pertains to future carriage.

“I think all of them are nervous that, ‘What happens if our deal is up, and if the RSN business is taking a drastically different course, are pay TV providers going to want to plug those RSNs into their programming lineups?,’” Thun said during an appearance on The Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast this week. “DIRECTV obviously has a long history of being a leader in sports programming, and we don’t intend to deviate from that, but there are going to be exceptions as broadcasters step into the fray and try to opportunistically take these rights where we have technical limitations.”

In being a satellite television service, DIRECTV does not have unlimited bandwidth and is thus not able to carry every digital multicast. The satellites simply do not allow for these capabilities, part of the advantages inherent with internet TV, a space in which the company also has involvement.

“There are going to be some changes to the whole marketplace,” Thun said, “and we’re as anxious as everybody else to see how these play out because they plug into our overall strategy of leading in sports.”

Essentially, the company could be moving from an instance where it had been paying several regional sports networks because of the breadth of sports rights to having to pay retransmission consent fees to local broadcast channels picking up those rights. The Vegas Golden Knights and Arizona Coyotes recently inked deals with Scripps Sports to be broadcast on over-the-air television, while the Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury are working with Gray Television and also have a direct-to-consumer solution.

The Utah Jazz made the return to over-the-air television and recently reached distribution deals that will reach 3 million additional fans in the region, expanding the presence of their games and reach of potential fandom. Even so, Thun does not feel the broadcast model will be a panacea or “silver bullet” for answers in coming to a solution.

“Why we even got here with Diamond Sports and RSNs in general is because the model is broken,” Thun said. “The rights just kept going up and up and up, and the actual viewership or the demand for these local sports – while there are some that engage very heavily in watching their local team, the lion’s share of people do not watch RSNs, at least on our dial, and I think it’s fairly common across all the other distributors. It’s the same concern that the prices didn’t match the viewership, and so we are overpaying for these rights and they need to be re-rationalized.”

Dish TV moved out of the regional sports network when it dropped the FOX Sports-branded group of networks in 2019, which started a three-year process of ultimately removing all such channels from its service. Brian Neylon, the group president of the outlet, called the model “fundamentally broken” and did not foresee the company entering the business again.

“I think we’re going to see a replay of this down the road because the broadcast stations are also too expensive, and they’ve been asking for crazy increases over the years,” Thun said. “We’re hitting a point where, ‘Do the broadcast channels make sense?'”

Brian Kilmeade: Young People Don’t Get News From Radio or TV, Get Bad News From TikTok

BNM Staff
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Reaching a younger demographic is always a discussion in the broadcast industry. Fox News and radio host Brian Kilmeade believes the problem has reached a critical stage after the current situation in Israel has exacerbated the need for good information.

During an appearance with Sid Rosenberg on 77 WABC, Kilmeade discussed the current situation between Israel and Hamas with the New York host. He noted that Gen Z isn’t turning to traditional news sources — like radio and television — for its information, instead it’s getting bad information on current affairs from social media.

“Do you know one of the headlines on Drudge (Report) right now is ‘Jews Are Warned to Stay Away From Brooklyn’? Do you believe this? I mean, in America? I don’t understand,” Brian Kilmeade said. “I when I’m watching this happen, I’m thinking to myself, ‘Do these guys know about a Balfour Declaration? Do they even know what the history is in this area? Where do they get this information from?’

“And you know what more people have told me recently? TikTok! And you know, there are algorithms that China has put out that are beginning to unwind. They’re pushing this. But these 20-year-olds — it sounds insulting and I don’t care — they get all their information and their news (from social media), they’re not listening to us and they’re not watching us. They are watching on TikTok and saying, ‘Well, these Palestinians, they are innocent people, and Israel are the thugs. And they keep on making their lives miserable. What choice do they have?’ They have no idea about what a two-state solution is, and why it fell apart due to the Palestinians.”

Rosenberg called the young people “idiots” for failing to get news and information from social media instead of more traditional sources.

‘NBA on ESPN’ Draws Strong Opening Night Numbers

BSM Staff
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‘NBA on ESPN’ Draws Strong Opening Night Numbers

ESPN attained record viewership on Opening Night for its coverage of the National Basketball Association, which included a doubleheader matchup and new commentary teams. As a whole, the doubleheader viewership averaged nearly 2.76 million viewers, an 80% rise from the comparable slate of games last season. Aside from 2012 and excluding the lockout-impacted 2011 season, it was the network’s best opening doubleheader currently on record.

The Boston Celtics’ 108-104 victory over the New York Knicks had an average of 2.55 million viewers, which peaked at 4.35 million viewers at 9:45 p.m. EST/6:45 p.m. PST. These numbers make the Eastern Conference tilt the most-watched season-opening game in the early slot on ESPN since 2012, up 76% from the early matchup last year between the Knicks and Memphis Grizzlies.

NBA Countdown featuring Malika Andrews, Stephen A. Smith, Bob Myers, Michael Wilbon and Adrian Wojnarowski were live from Madison Square Garden to host the program. Shortly thereafter, the new lead broadcast team of Mike Breen, Doc Rivers and Doris Burke made their debut and were joined by reporter Lisa Salters.

Later on, San Antonio Spurs center and No. 1 overall draft selection Victor Wembanyama made his highly-anticipated NBA debut against the Dallas Mavericks, drawing an average of 2.99 million viewers. While the Mavericks defeated the Spurs 126-119, the matchup caught the attention of the basketball world and peaked at 3.9 million viewers at 10 p.m. EST/7 p.m. PST.

The presentation was up 83% over last year’s game in this slot – a matchup between the Mavericks and Phoenix Suns – and it was the most-watched season-opening game in the late slot on ESPN since 2012. Outside of Christmas Day, the game also marks the most-watched Spurs or Mavericks regular-season game ever on ESPN. The new secondary commentary team of Ryan Ruocco, JJ Redick and Richard Jefferson made its debut on the game with reporter Cassidy Hubbarth.

ESPN did not have to compete with the Major League Baseball postseason on Wednesday night, whereas the NBA on TNT was up against Game 7 of the National League Championship Series (NLCS), albeit on its owned cable network TBS. The NBA on ESPN was the most-watched prime time program across broadcast and cable television on Wednesday night in several key demographics, including people under 50, adults 18-34, adults 25-54, men 18-34, men 18-49 and men 25-54.

Cumulus Reports 11% Revenue Decline in 3rd Quarter

BNM Staff
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Cumulus Reports 11% Revenue Decline in 3rd Quarter

Cumulus Media has released its third-quarter revenue results, and the figures showed a decline in year-over-year performance.

The company say an 11% decline compared to the same time period in 2022. In total, Cumulus brought in $207.4 million during the third quarter, a drop from the $233 million it saw last year.

Digital revenue was up for the company, growing 7% to $37.2 million. That figure represented 18% of the company’s total revenue during the three-month period.

“Third quarter revenue and Adjusted EBITDA finished in line with expectations with results reflecting the continued dichotomy between local and national business lines,” said Cumulus Media President and CEO Mary G. Berner. “Despite the challenging environment, we maximized performance by continuing to focus on areas we can control, including growing each of our digital businesses, reducing costs, and improving our balance sheet through non-core asset sales and debt reduction. These actions have further improved the Company’s revenue growth profile, operating leverage, financial flexibility, and strategic optionality and, collectively, position us to rebound when the advertising environment improves.”

“While we are continuing to see weakness in national markets, as companies are
starting to set their 2024 marketing budgets, we are seeing some initial indications from key national advertisers in several categories that sentiment is improving for next year,” Berner continued. “That tone, combined with the anticipation of a robust political spending cycle, gives us cautious optimism that we may be seeing the early signs of a market recovery.”

In total operating income, Cumulus saw a profit of $2.7 million, down sharply from the $8.5 million it saw in the same quarter a year ago.

At the end of the quarter, the company shared it held $675.8 million in debt, $592.9 million in net debt.

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