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Adam Schefter: We Have Seen The Last Indoor NFL Draft Ever

BSM Staff
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The NFL Draft in Kansas City was another sign that the event is no longer suitable for a concert hall or arena setting.

Hundreds of thousands of football fans gathered in Kansas City and were passionate about the draft from the first round on Thursday night to the final pick on Saturday afternoon.

On his podcast on Monday, ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter said the trend with the draft has now to stage it in major gathering spaces in NFL cities to make it a festival-type atmosphere.

“Not only is the NFL moving cities, going to a different city every year, but I believe that we’ve seen the last – for the foreseeable future – of the indoor drafts,” Schefter said. “Because there are too many people that want to be there! They can’t stick it inside anywhere. It’s got to be outside with hundreds of thousands of people.”

Adam added that nine cities were following NFL officials around in Kansas City, vying for the opportunity to host the draft in 2025 and beyond. Next year’s draft is in Detroit, where a countdown clock has been hyping fans up for two years.

Schefter said the success of the draft in city settings, with Nashville in 2019 being the new precedent, poses an opportunity for cities that wouldn’t otherwise host a Super Bowl to host one of the league’s marquee events.

“We may see it in Green Bay in future years at some point, where they use Lambeau Field,” he said. “That would actually be a little bit limiting. I don’t know if you could open that up and make it such that there would be hundreds of thousands of people at Lambeau Field. But that’s where this is going.

“It’s become the offseason Super Bowl – the NFL’s Coachella – where cities that wouldn’t be awarded a Super Bowl, like Green Bay, because there aren’t enough hotels and nobody wants to travel to Green Bay in February,” Schefter added. “This has become the NFL’s answer to say, well we’re not going to give you the Super Bowl, but we are gonna give you this draft. And the cities, I believe, love that.”

Seth Payne: Former QBs in NFL Media Didn’t Get Will Levis Hype

BSM Staff
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There weren’t a ton of big surprises in this year’s NFL Draft, but among the big storylines entering the second day of the event was the fact that quarterback Will Levis went undrafted through the first round.

Levis didn’t have to wait too long on Day 2 to hear his name called. The Tennessee Titans selected Levis at 33rd overall with the second selection of Friday’s festivities.

There was a lot of hype surrounding Levis, who rose to prominence at Kentucky. In Houston on Sports Radio 610, morning show host Seth Payne told Clint Stoerner and Ron Hughley that in doing his own research on Levis he didn’t understand what all the hype was about.

Payne said he listened to former quarterbacks in the league talk about Levis, and they didn’t sound sold on the quarterback being a high first-rounder.

“I’m watching with a relatively untrained eye,” Payne said Monday. “So I started just going to the various ex-quarterbacks like Orlovsky. All Orlovsky was doing was making excuses for him.”

Payne added that even guys like Kurt Warner weren’t all in on the idea of Levis being ready to take first-team snaps.

“Not a single one of them was genuinely excited about Will Levis,” Payne said. “You could see them make a lot of excuses for him. So I just didn’t get it.”

WRKO Launches Sports Betting Show The Gambler With Adam Kaufman

BSM Staff
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WRKO Launches Sports Betting Show The Gambler With Adam Kaufman

Online sports betting went live in Massachusetts on January 31 and one of the first local sports betting shows in Boston made its debut on Monday on talk radio station WRKO AM 680.

The Gambler With Adam Kaufman will be heard live on Mondays and Thursdays from 10 p.m.-midnight on WRKO and on the iHeartRadio app.

Kaufman is the sports director for iHeartMedia Boston and can be heard giving morning sports reports on WBZ News Radio 1030. He will be joined by Dan Watkins and Brian Antonelli who will contribute to the show.

“There’s no greater platform than live sports talk radio and, since January, there’s no greater obsession in and around Massachusetts than sports betting,” Kaufman said in a statement. “I’ve been fortunate to spend many years of my career working in both areas and I couldn’t be more thrilled to have them intersect now. Boston is ready for a nightly gambling show. I’m honored to host it and can’t wait to sweat bets with listeners, industry experts, and our incredible team.”

Kevin Durant & Boardroom, CNBC Partner For Sports Business Summit in LA

BSM Staff
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Kevin Durant & Boardroom, CNBC Partner For Sports Business Summit in LA

CNBC and NBA star Kevin Durant are partnering up to bring an exclusive sports business summit to Los Angeles this summer.

The business network has teamed with First in Business Worldwide and Boardroom, Durant and Rich Kleiman’s premier media brand, to stage the event called Game Plan on July 25.

The event is invite-only and will bring the top leaders in the sports business together for a meeting of the minds. Star athletes, league owners, multimedia moguls, cultural innovators and cutting-edge investors will gather to discuss a range of topics from the future of live sports and shifting dynamics in sports business leadership to the future of fandom and sports culture.

“By combining CNBC’s unparalleled business and financial news and information platform with the dynamic and innovative team at Boardroom, Game Plan will raise the bar for sports business events, bringing together the top names in sports for purposeful and powerful discussions, providing the audience with information they can use to step up their game and get in on the action,” said CNBC Events managing director and executive editor Nick Dunn.

Panelists and speakers at the event will be announced as the date gets closer.

2023 NFL Draft Sees Ratings Growth Across All 3 Days

BSM Staff
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The National Football League announced an unduplicated audience of 54.4 million viewers for the 2023 NFL Draft with an average audience of 6.0 million viewers, up 12% from last year.

The opening round combined for an average of 11.29 million viewers, a 13% increase annually and marking the third-highest total audience on-record. The total unduplicated audience for the first night was measured to be 34.2 million viewers, a 2% increase from last year. All three days of the NFL Draft also saw improvement in terms of the average audience on television and digital platforms compared to last year, and 312,000 people attended the event in Kansas City. For the sake of comparison, in 2022, 300,000 people attended the draft in Las Vegas when the first overall pick was made by the Jacksonville Jaguars and the team selected edge Travon Walker.

This year’s draft had a strong appeal in the opening round because of the wide array of star quarterbacks. In fact, three of the four draft picks were quarterbacks (Bryce Young; C.J. Stroud; Anthony Richardson). Last year, only one quarterback was selected in the first round of the draft – Kenny Pickett by the Pittsburgh Steelers – and traditionally, drafts with several quarterbacks as top picks have accumulated higher ratings. The highest-rated combined audience for the first night of the NFL Draft came in 2020 when it was executed remotely (15.26 million), and among adults aged 18-49, a rating metric of 3.5.

Additionally, the opening night of the NFL Draft attained a higher sum of average viewers than several prominent sporting events such as the Stanley Cup Final; Indianapolis 500; French Open; and Game 2 and 3 of the 2022 World Series. The Walt Disney Company just completed its fifth consecutive year of broadcasting the NFL Draft over multiple networks, including ESPN, ABC and NFL Network.

Donald Trump Joining CNN Town Hall

BNM Staff
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Former President Donald Trump will make an appearance at a CNN town hall event in New Hampshire next week, marking his first appearance on the network in years.

The former President will field questions from New Hampshire Republicans, as well as undecided voters who plan to cast a ballot in the 2024 Republican Presidential primary.

CNN This Morning anchor Kaitlan Collins will moderate the event on Wednesday, May 10th from St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Trump is currently the front-runner for the Republican party’s nomination. However, he is currently embroiled in two separate legal battles. He has been indicted in Manhattan after he allegedly used campaign money to pay women he had had extramarital affairs with for their silence. He also is being sued by former newspaper columnist E. Jean Carroll who claims she was sexually assaulted by the businessman in the 1990s. Trump has denied wrongdoing in both cases.

“CNN has a longstanding tradition of hosting leading presidential candidates for Town Halls and political events as a critical component of the network’s robust campaign coverage,” a statement from the network read. “This event with former President Trump will be the first of many for CNN in the coming months as CNN correspondents travel across the country to hear directly from voters in the runup to the 2024 presidential election.”

CNN was a frequent target of Trump’s ire during his presidency. He often clashed with the network’s reporters, namely Jim Acosta, during press availabilities. He mocked the network for its diminishing ratings at a near-constant rate during his time in the White House, often labeling the outlet as “fake news”.

Maple Leafs Radio Crew Allowed To Travel After Game-Winning Goal Flub

BSM Staff
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Following criticism resulting from errors made broadcasting games remotely by Toronto Maple Leafs radio play-by-play announcer Joe Bowen, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment has announced the radio broadcast will be covering all action in-person beginning at the start of Round 2 in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. This decision came after a majority of fans voiced their displeasure with the team’s parent organization on Twitter for restricting their radio broadcasts to solely being remote.

There are surely challenges associated with remote broadcasting, largely having to do with access to players, coaches and personnel, along with the restricted visibility announcers have in watching games off of a monitor. Over the last three years, Bowen and radio color commentator Jim Ralph have called games inside Sportsnet or TSN studios based on which station is broadcasting the game. A similar setup is in place with the Toronto Blue Jays, whose radio broadcast team is not traveling to road games for the second consecutive year.

The announcement received positive feedback from Twitter users, with many expressing that calling games remotely should have never been permanently instituted as COVID-19 restrictions began to be lifted.

https://twitter.com/camcharronyvr/status/1653060320410361856?s=20

On Saturday night, Maple Leafs captain John Tavares scored the game-winning goal to advance his team to the second round of the playoffs for the first time since 2004. Yet Bowen saw the celebration on the monitor centered around forward Morgan Reilly, leading him to assume that Reilly scored the goal instead. Shortly thereafter, Ralph noticed Tavares was the player to bury the puck in the back of the net, but at that moment, Bowen was caught up in jubilation to genuinely care about who was responsible for the momentous feat.

Listeners noted Bowen struggling with certain calls throughout the Maple Leafs’ playoff series against the Tampa Bay Lightning due to the remote broadcast setup. A large majority of those listeners, along with members of the sports media, assumed the move to be a cost-cutting measure and indicative of the ownership group not taking a vested interest in radio broadcasts. Now as the Maple Leafs play for their first Stanley Cup championship since 1966-67 – a 55-year drought (the longest in NHL history), the team’s radio broadcasters will join them from FLA Live Arena in Sunrise, FL when on the road against the Florida Panthers.

Megyn Kelly: Fox News in ‘Existential Crisis’ After Departure of Tucker Carlson

BNM Staff
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Many had questioned what the television ratings would look like after Fox News fired Tucker Carlson last week. The numbers were not promising, and former Fox News host Megyn Kelly was quick to point out the stunning losses.

After Carlson’s departure last week, the 8:00 PM ET timeslot that had previously averaged over 3 million viewers for Tucker Carlson Tonight saw 1.4 million viewers by the end of the week for what the network is calling Fox News Tonight. The program was neck-and-neck with MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes after routinely dominating the window. The Hayes-led program actually defeated Fox News in the 25-54 demographic on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

“Just some of the terms that come to mind: massacre, bloodbath, murder, devastation,” said Kelly during her SiriusXM program. “The audience is gone. They left. There’s virtually no one there at 8:00 PM anymore. Just as bad as I’m sure Fox News was worried it would get, it’s far worse than that…they’ve lost almost two-thirds of their audience in the 8:00 PM timeslot. It’s total devastation.”

After going through the viewership totals for the days following Carlson’s exit, Kelly claimed the numbers signal a death knell for the conservative news outlet.

“Fox News is in a downward spiral that they’re going to have to claw to get themselves out of,” Kelly continued. “Just for context, these numbers, overall, are so dreadful that we went back and looked back at when I was #1, hosting at 9:00 PM ET on Fox News, you know what my demo was in October, right before I left? 641,000 in the key demo. They are down to 124,000 right now at the 8:00 PM, and this is an existential crisis for the channel because this is how they make money…They live off their primetime, and the food has dried up.”

Kelly hosted a primetime show — The Kelly File — for Fox News from October 2013 until January 2017.

Gregg Giannotti Recalls Awkward Encounter With Bill O’Reilly at Islanders Game

BSM Staff
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Although most of the fans went home disappointed after the New York Islanders lost in overtime and were eliminated from the Stanley Cup Finals on Friday night, WFAN’s Gregg Giannotti left with a feeling of unease due to an encounter he had with longtime political commentator Bill O’Reilly.

On Monday morning, co-host Boomer Esiason expounded on the encounter.

“[Gio] relayed a story of an awkward handshake he had with Bill O’Reilly at UBS Arena Friday,” Esiason said. “O’Reilly went for the fistbump and [Gio], well, didn’t. Instead, he grabbed and covered his hand.”

Esiason and Giannotti welcomed Michael from East Brunswick, N.J. onto the program, who gave Giannotti a suggestion should he face a similar situation down the road.

“I’ve been there,” the caller stated. “It’s a classic; it’s called the stick-shift. They put out the fist; you shake it, but you have to pronounce, ‘Stick-shift,’ and the awkwardness goes away.”

“Wow, you stick-shifted Bill O’Reilly,” Esiason replied.

Giannotti felt that doing that would have aggravated the moment, surmising that he may have never been invited back to UBS Arena.

“Imagine – ‘Stick shift,’” Giannotti exclaimed. “‘Hey Bill, stick shift. Woo hoo – Let’s Go Islanders! Stick-shift my ass off in the elevator with Bill O’Reilly.’”

Esiason and the rest of the in-studio crew bursted out in laughter before he related it to another occurrence that took place over the weekend pertaining to Boomer & Gio producer Al Dukes.

“That’s about as bad as people coming up to me telling me that Al Dukes basically had a meltdown waiting for his Uber on Saturday night,” Esiason said. “People were uncomfortable watching Al Dukes get all tangled up and twisted up.”

Dukes expressed how he is fed up with disorganization, and he explained how it was pouring rain outside and the confusion Uber drivers had in navigating the event location. After making it back to the hotel partially inebriated, he realized the revolving door was locked. He vaguely remembers his wife telling him he was shouting at the revolving door, questioning its existence.

“I woke up the next morning thinking, ‘I know Gina’s mad at me. I’m trying to think what I did.’” Dukes recalled.

Joe Buck: Career ‘Never Would Have Gotten Up Out Of the Ground’ If Not For Mike Shannon

BSM Staff
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The names Buck and Shannon carry a lot of weight with St. Louis Cardinals fans. Mike Shannon was the analyst on the team’s radio broadcast from 1972 to 2021. During that time, both Jack Buck and then Joe Buck had tenures as the play-by-play voice of the team.

Following Shannon’s passing over the weekend, 101 ESPN gathered as many influential St. Louis sports voices as it could find on Monday to join the station’s morning show. Joe Buck called into The Opening Drive. Host Randy Karraker guessed that Joe could not remember his life before Mike Shannon was a part of it.

“Mike would have been coming over to our house to, I guess, go through broadcast 101 with my dad. That was 1972, so I was three,” Buck answered. “I considered Mike almost like a second dad and I think Danny and Tim Shannon considered my dad like a second dad.”

Joe Buck added that he was lucky to have grown up going to Busch Stadium and sitting in a broadcast booth with two of the most iconic voices in baseball.

He added that he was also lucky that Mike Shannon was willing to work with him at all. The younger Buck began calling Cardinals games at 21 years old. While he acknowledges that nepotism probably played a role, he has realized in hindsight that Shannon played an even bigger role.

“Had Mike not been into that, like ‘I’m not working with Jack’s kid’ or anything like that, I never would have gotten up out of the ground. It was quite the opposite of that. He took me under his wing.” 

While Jack Buck is an icon of the Cardinals organization, Joe says there are things about being a professional that his dad could not teach him. Much of how he learned to interact with players and conduct himself on the road came from his time working with Mike Shannon.

“I am so indebted to that man for so many things, and that is right at the top of the list,” Buck said.

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