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Tigers Add Bobby Scales To Radio Broadcast Crew

BSM Staff
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The Detroit Tigers radio broadcast team has brought a new member to the fray. Former utility player and Michigan native Bobby Scales will join the radio network.

Scales made his debut alongside play-by-play voice Dan Dickerson for a spring training game over the weekend.

The belief is that Scales, 45, will be on the call for 40 games this season with the bulk of those assignments being road games.

Scales has an extensive background in baseball, having playing stints with the Chicago Cubs and front office roles with the Dodgers and Pirates.

The Tigers will use a rotation of analysts this season. Jim Prince is still expected to call some games, although he has cut back his travel schedule in recent years.

MLS Commissioner Won’t Confirm Or Deny If Apple Can Opt Out of TV Deal

BSM Staff
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MLS Commissioner Won’t Confirm Or Deny If Apple Can Opt Out of TV Deal

The MLS deal with Apple has only just begun, but down the road should things not be panning out like expected, the tech giant reportedly has the option to walk away.

Last summer MLS announced a 10-year, $2.5 billion media rights deal that would make Apple TV+ the official TV home of the league. With so much invested, Apple has a goal to drive subscribers to the MLS paid season subscription “Season Pass.”

Reporting in The Athletic indicates that there is an opt-out clause in the contract that would allow Apple to terminate the agreement if a certain number of Season Pass subscribers isn’t met.

But MLS commissioner Don Garber wouldn’t confirm nor deny the existence of such a clause.

“We’ve never talked about what the specific terms are, and we’re not going to talk about it now,” he said. “It’s a 10-year partnership. We’re both very, very committed to that. I am wholeheartedly convinced that this company and our league are going to be together for a very long time.”

The 2023 MLS season kicked off two weeks ago.

Jay Wright Added To CBS Tournament Selection Show

BSM Staff
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It never hurts to add a little championship experience to the panel on Selection Sunday. That is exactly what CBS is doing as former Villanova coach Jay Wright has been announced as an analyst on the 2023 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Selection Show.

Wright will join Greg Gumbel, Clark Kellogg and Seth Davis. The four will reveal all 68 teams to make the field. They will also speak with Committee Chair Chris Reynolds after the teams are revealed to get some insight on the selections.

Jay Wright has earned praise this year for his work with CBS. He has been an analyst for select games and also made in-studio appearances during the network’s Saturday college basketball coverage.

During his 22 seasons as head coach at Villanova, Wright took the Wildcats to four Final Fours. He brought home a pair of national championships. He surprised many college basketball fans, abruptly retiring at the conclusion of last season. He announced he was joining CBS in October.

While CBS is adding another analyst to the panel, Jay Wright is providing a perspective none of his colleagues can. Not only can he speak to the selection process as a former coach, but unlike Kellogg, who played his last college basketball game more than 40 years ago, Wright was just involved in the sport at the highest level last year.

Paul Finebaum: ‘ESPN Has To Decide If a 9th SEC Game is Worth More Money’

BSM Staff
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It is widely assumed that once Texas and Oklahoma officially join the SEC that the league will go to a nine-game conference schedule for football. In a column last week, Ross Dellenger of Sports Illustrated noted that the conference and ESPN do not have deal yet to compensate members for another conference game, but Paul Finebaum thinks it is merely a formality at this point.

The SEC Network host made his weekly appearance on McElroy & Cubelic in the Morning on WJOX in Birmingham on Monday and said that he expects university presidents to approve the move to a ninth conference game by next week. After that, he thinks ESPN will open its checkbook quickly to secure more inventory.

“ESPN ultimately has to decide, I’m sure, ‘do we adjust it?’ and the answer is probably yes,” Finebaum told Cole Cubelic, who also works for the SEC Network. “I don’t want to be spending your boss’s and my boss’s money, but I’ll go ahead and do it. It makes perfect sense to go to nine games.”

Fans, players, and coaches alike are buzzing about what a nine game schedule would look like in the SEC. The most popular model sees the conference abandoning divisions. Instead, each team would play three permanent opponents and rotate the remaining teams. The goal is that in a four year college career, a player would see every SEC school both at home and on the road.

“It would be very difficult to do what everybody is talking about doing with eight games,” Finebaum said. “It defeats the whole purpose of changing from divisional play to this three/six.”

There has been plenty of talk about just how much ESPN would be willing to pay for a 16-team SEC. USA Today has even speculated that the conference could out-earn the NCAA in broadcasting revenue by the second year of the deal the two sides will start in 2024.

Pat Donovan: Dave Wills Dying Leaves Tampa Fans ‘in a Fog’

BSM Staff
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For the last 18 seasons, the voice of Dave Wills was synonymous with Tampa Bay Rays baseball. Over the weekend, the long time radio broadcaster died suddenly. He passed away in his sleep early Sunday morning at the age of 58.

“I know for the last 24 hours or so since I found out, since we all found out, I think all of us are just in a fog and Rays fans are in a fog,” Pat Donovan said Monday morning to open WDAE’s Pat & Aaron.

Wills was a beloved figure in the Tampa Bay area. Donovan said that if you ever doubted that, all you needed to do was look at social media to see the way he was being discussed.

“I noticed on Facebook, I noticed on Twitter, I noticed everything I saw about Dave Wills had very little to do with the broadcaster he was, and he was a Hall of Fame level broadcaster. Very few people mentioned the kind of broadcaster he was because everyone was talking about the man that he was.”

Dave Wills is survived by his wife Liz, his son Alex and his daughter Michelle. Donovan said that he couldn’t help but also think about Andy Freed, who had been Wills’ partner on the Rays’ radio broadcast since 2005.

Donovan compared the relationship to his own with co-host Aaron Jacobson. He noted that if something were to suddenly happen to Jacobson, it would be hard to come back to the WDAE studio and do a show. Freed will have to do that relatively quickly with Rays’ radio broadcasts and returning to a booth that Dave Wills isn’t in is likely going to be painful.

“Very few people outside of this profession, and there aren’t many professions, where you have your entire life, almost your identity tied to another human being the way that we do, the way that Dave and Andy do,” Pat Donovan said.

The segment concluded with Donovan noting how ubiquitous Dave Wills was on the Florida Gulf Coast. He wasn’t just a broadcaster that came to town to do a job. One look at Wills’ social media pages, Donovan says, proves he was a part of the community.

“When you’re the play-by-play guy for anybody as long as he was, that’s a big part of your identity, but if you knew the guy at all, if you were Facebook friends with him, you see so many of his posts were about hanging out at this place and having a beer, hanging out at this place and eating food.”

Sweeny Murti: New Job With MLB Offers Creativity WFAN Job Did Not

BSM Staff
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Sweeney Murti is set to begin a new chapter in his life. After being at WFAN for almost 30 years and covering the Yankees for the radio station the last 22 seasons, Murti starts a new role as a senior media contributor for MLB media.

Murti was a guest on the Sports Media with Richard Deitsch podcast on Monday and he talked about what his new role would be at MLB and how it gives him some room to be creative, which is different.

“I’m excited to kind of see where this goes. I worked for a traditional radio station for a very long period of time. What we put on the radio was very distinct and kind of in a straight line…This kind of has some room for creativity here.”

Murti told Deitsch about how the business has changed over the last 20+ years and that the information he would first give to WFAN is easily accessible now.

“It probably became less cost-effective to send me all over the country to cover games when you are able to get information in other sorts of fashion. I used to call Mike Francesa to give him the Yankees lineup everyday. Now the Yankees themselves are the first to post their lineup on Twitter. We were trying to find different ways to keep it relevant and matter whether it’s having podcasts or trying to find audiences for different things. We were all trying to do that. I just don’t think there’s an easy answer to this.”

Even though Murti was still able to do his job covering the Yankees, he was not on the road as much and it wasn’t easy for him to do the job.

For part of those 21 years on the Yankees beat, Murti covered Derek Jeter, who is now going to be doing work for FOX . Murti gave his expectation for how he thinks Jeter will do and he thinks it will be easy for the former captain to avoid controversy:

“I don’t think he is ever going to walk into controversy. If you saw The Captain, he has opinions and he wasn’t afraid to give them in that forum. Most of it was about him and the people around him. I’m a little curious how it is going to be with different teams. He never wanted to walk into controversy and was very astute in doing that. He’s a smart guy. He knows a lot about the game of baseball from the playing side and the business side.”

Beth Mowins, Doris Burke, Cassidy Hubbarth Lead ESPN All-Women NBA Broadcast

BSM Staff
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ESPN will celebrate International Women’s Day on Wednesday with an NBA broadcast that features only women on the broadcast crew. Beth Mowins and Doris Burke will call the action. Cassidy Hubbarth will serve as the sideline reporter for the Mavericks’ visit to New Orleans.

It will be the first game of a Wednesday night double header. Becky Hammon will join Mike Breen and Mark Jackson at the broadcast table for the second game, which will feature the Toronto Raptors and the Los Angeles Clippers.

Women will dominate studio coverage that night as well. An all-female cast will join Malika Andrews for both NBA Today and NBA Countdown. Chiney Ogwumike, Becky Hammon, Ramona Shelburne, and Monica McNutt will make appearances.

The behind-the-scenes action will also be led by women. Some of the production crews’ most pivotal roles including producer, director, graphics producer, statistics analyst, and social media lead, will be handled by women that have been doing those jobs all season.

ESPN+ will also be a part of the International Women’s Day celebration as the streaming platform debuts Ice Queens, a documentary about Black women in hockey.

NAB Names WEEI, Arizona Sports 98.7 Finalists For 2023 Radio Crystal Awards

BSM Staff
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NAB Names WEEI, Arizona Sports 98.7 Finalists For 2023 Radio Crystal Awards

The NAB has announced the finalists for its 36th annual NAB Crystal Radio Awards.

The NAB Crystal Radio Awards honors stations for their “year-round commitment to community service”.

The winners of the prestigious awards will be announced during the We Are Broadcasters Awards ceremony on April 18th at the NAB Show in Las Vegas.

A pair of sports talk stations, WEEI and Arizona Sports 98.7 have been named as finalists for the award.

In total, 50 stations were named as finalists for the awards. 10 Crystal Radio Award winners will be honored at the event in April. Winners will be chosen by a panel of judges representing the broadcast industry, community service organizations, and public relations firms.

Additionally, the NAB will honor Arizona Sports 98.7 sister station KTAR with the Crystal Heritage Award, which recognizes radio stations that have won five or more Crystal Radio Awards. Only 10 other stations have received the honor.

Several News/Talk Stations Finalists For 2023 NAB Crystal Radio Awards

BNM Staff
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Several News/Talk Stations Finalists For 2023 NAB Crystal Radio Awards

The NAB has announced the finalists for its 36th annual NAB Crystal Radio Awards, with several news/talk stations up for the honors.

The NAB Crystal Radio Awards honors stations for their “year-round commitment to community service”.

The winners of the prestigious awards will be announced during the We Are Broadcasters Awards ceremony on April 18th at the NAB Show in Las Vegas.

News/Talk finalists include:
-KFI (Los Angeles)
-KIRO (Seattle)
-KKOB (Albuquerque)
-KRLA (Los Angeles)
–KRMG (Tulsa)
-WCCO (Minneapolis-St. Paul)
-WHIO (Dayton)
-WHO (Des Moines)
-WNRP (Pensacola)
-WSB (Atlanta)
-WTAM (Cleveland)
-WTAW (College Station)
-WTMJ (Milwaukee)
-WTOP (Washington D.C.)

In total, 50 stations were named as finalists for the awards. 10 Crystal Radio Award winners will be honored at the event in April. Winners will be chosen by a panel of judges representing the broadcast industry, community service organizations, and public relations firms.

Additionally, the NAB will honor KTAR (Phoenix) with the Crystal Heritage Award, which recognizes radio stations that have won five or more Crystal Radio Awards. Only 10 other stations have received the honor.

Stan Van Gundy Added to Turner’s NCAA Tournament Team

BSM Staff
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Longtime NBA head coach Stan Van Gundy will work as a game analyst for Turner’s coverage of the NCAA Tournament, according to a report from The New York Post.

Van Gundy will replace Reggie Miller, who was previously teamed with Kevin Harlan and Dan Bonner.

According to The Post, Miller made the decision to end his run as an NCAA Tournament game analyst, allowing him to devote more time to his NBA endeavors.

The former head coach of the Heat, Magic, Pistons, and Pelicans has worked as an analyst at both ESPN and TNT, spending two different stints with Turner between his position with the Pelicans.

Van Gundy — who signed what was described as a multi-year agreement with Turner in 2021 — does have some college basketball experience from a coaching standpoint. In addition to working as an assistant at Division I universities Vermont, Canisius, and Fordham, Van Gundy was the head coach at Castleton College, UMass Lowell, and Wisconsin.

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