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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.

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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.

Chris Wallace No Longer ‘Headline Hunting’ With Interview Show

BNM Staff
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Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? had its season premiere over the weekend, and the former Fox News host says the program varies wildly from his days hosting a Sunday news program.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Wallace admitted that the program — which will now air Fridays at 10:00 PM ET on CNN as opposed to its previous timeslot on Sunday evenings — will still look for interviews with high-profile guests, but isn’t going “headline hunting”.

When asked about the broader selection of guests for the third season, including Jay Leno, Carol Burnett, Bill Hader, and Miranda Lambert, among others, Wallace was asked if he missed covering strictly politics on a daily basis.

“Oh, there are days when I think I’d like to get back into things, sure. But as a general rule, I don’t miss the day-to-day coverage,” Wallace said. “And I think doing these weekly interviews will give me an opportunity to sort of satisfy my curiosity and interest about politics and what’s going on in news and what’s going on in that part of the world while also being able to have these other conversations.”

Wallace continued by saying that the program gives interview subjects an opportunity other shows can’t provide.

“You’re able to offer them instead of five minutes on the Today show or 10 minutes on a Sunday news show, we can go into greater depth, we can talk about policy and what your motivation is,” Wallace said. “I certainly don’t mind headlines, but I’m not going in headline hunting the way that you do on a Sunday talk show.”

Joey Zanaboni: Thinking of TV Audience Can Be ‘Trap’ For Radio Play-by-Play

BSM Staff
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This season, Joey Zanaboni is the lead radio announcer for St. Louis City SC, the newest team in MLS. He is a voice you might be familiar with from the unique style that he has calling college and minor league baseball during his career among other sports.

Zanaboni was a guest on The Wormcast: How Sports Media Happens podcast with Jason Wormser and he admitted that he has a different voice than most broadcasters and that he does have to be an acquired taste for a lot of people.

“I really think maybe the difference is basically you just don’t really know what’s going to be said next. I kind of go week-to-week. Once that week ends, I try to have some new stuff. I’m comfortable with the fact it’s not for everybody as well. I do understand that.” 

When Zanaboni was beginning his broadcast career, he mentioned he was worried that because he did not go to a big-time school for journalism. Instead, he went to Rockhurst University and part of him thought it could affect his opportunities.

“I just felt like it was going to be hard to get some doors open because especially in minor league baseball. Syracuse, Northwestern, and Missouri broadcasters are pretty much the standard. As 4-5 years went by, I realized that unique perspective of being involved in literature, creative writing, and poetry from college and beyond, that actually could be my advantage. That could help me to stand out and take a slightly different approach.”

With the MLS being on Apple TV, fans have the option to hear Zanaboni’s broadcast while watching home games via MLS Season Pass. He told Wormser that he tries to find a balance and not give too many details in his broadcast that take away from the flow of the game.

“It is a really tough balance to strike sometimes. When you watch soccer on TV watching NBC and Premier League, it’s spare, but it puts those flourishes on it. The game almost could not exist without the announcers, and yet they’re, at times, hardly saying any words. That’s just something I’ve taken a lot of from. Then, you get into a situation where it’s radio and you realize I have to be much more descriptive than them, but I don’t want to overload this for the people watching on TV and that’s one of my traps in radio announcing.”

Joe Bowen Blames Remote Broadcasts For Error in Maple Leafs Call

BSM Staff
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For the first time in nearly a decade, the Toronto Maple Leafs are advancing to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs; however, the moment was not quite punctuated in the way radio play-by-play announcer Joe Bowen envisioned.

Captain John Tavares netted the game-winner past Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. It was surely an exciting moment for Tavares, especially since he is a native of nearby Mississauga, Ontario, but listeners on the radio were told the goal was scored by forward Morgan Rielly instead.

“Tavares coming out; sends it on goal – they score!” Bowen proclaimed. “They score! Holy Mackinaw, they score! Morgan Rielly! Mo, Mo, Mo Rielly! The Leafs have won it! They’re going to the second round! Do you believe this? Holy Mackinaw.”

The Toronto Maple Leafs radio broadcasters were calling the game remotely, a practice instituted because of complications associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. While a preponderance of broadcast providers have reversed course on this practice in the years since the onset of the pandemic, the Maple Leafs have continued as such, presumably because of the associated cost. Road games throughout the playoffs are split between Sportsnet and TSN, respectively, and both outlets released statements divulging that games would be called remotely through the first round.

Color commentator Jim Ralph recognized that while Reilly was involved in the play, he was not responsible for the goal, but Bowen was presumably caught up in the revelry of the moment and got confused.

Bowen received criticism on Twitter from a fan for stumbling on two of the three overtime goals throughout the series, with the user calling it a “tough look.”

In response, Bowen stated the difficulties associated with making a call off of a television monitor, and said the television coverage of the celebration made it look as if Reilly had won the game. Subsequent comments were made in favor of Bowen, with many calling him the No. 1 play-by-play announcer in the sport. Another user expressed how the Maple Leafs not having their radio broadcast team at the game was “an international embarrassment.”

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