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Qerim Strikes a Chord Discussing ESPN Programs

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Molly Qerim officially became a member of ESPN’s “Mike & Mike” this week, and she also serves as host of the controversial “First Take” which features Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless. She spoke with the New York Post about her dual roles and the challenges women in sports media face.

JB NOTE: Make sure you read her comments about the radio program becoming a bigger TV play and how she describes the opinions offered by Skip and Stephen A. They are very interesting.

Q: How is “Mike and Mike” trying to change?

A: I don’t want to speak out of turn, but from what I gather, instead of a radio show on TV it’s going to be a TV show on the radio. Part of that was getting the new set, which was really conducive to the TV platform. We have these radio heavyweights and we are just adding a visual aspect to that with more voices. For me, adding a third voice — a female voice — kind of representing the millennial generation, it’s nice to have that diversity there and attack things from all different directions.

Q: How do you deal with that criticism?

A: “First Take” has a lot of eyes on it and it’s a very polarizing show. Skip (Bayless) and Stephen A. (Smith) have a lot of strong takes, and I love that. But with that comes media scrutiny. What I’ve found — and this is Skip’s advice, and probably some of the best I’ve ever gotten — is “Don’t read it!” and I did stop. I do feel badly in the sense that you have viewers who want to engage with you and I might miss them, but unfortunately you have to, and ignoring the noise is what works best for me.

Q: How is it dealing with Bayless and Smith?

A: This is not some PC answer: I don’t like working with those guys, I love it. It gets heated on TV, but there’s also a mutual respect and once the commercial break hits, it’s like, “All right let’s move past it.” I think sometimes people look at our show and they say their opinions are just for the ratings. No, I can tell you it’s 100 percent authentic.

To read the full article visit the New York Post where it was originally published

610 KILT Invites Listeners To Trade Their Personalities

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610 KILT Invites Listeners To Trade Their Personalities

Sports Radio 610 KILT in Houston is playing off of the NBA Trading Deadline by inviting their listeners to become General Manager of the radio station and utilize their on-air personalities however they see fit. As part of the promotion, the audience will have a chance to vote and determine if the on-air hosts stay in their current slots, shift to other dayparts, or move to other positions such as producer, traffic reporter, sports update anchor, etc.

Voting goes until 2:00PM CT on Thursday, February 18th. The changes go into effect on Friday, February 19th, and last for the entire broadcast day.

For details on the promotion click here.

Kiley Is Out At 92.3 The Fan In Cleveland

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Kiley Is Out At 92.3 The Fan In Cleveland

Morning sports talk radio host Kevin Kiley is apparently out at 92.3 The Fan WKRK-FM.

Kiley was not on the air Friday morning for his show “Kiley and Carman” hours after announcing his resignation on TV that he said was “effective at the end of the month.”

“My principles, their principles of doing business don’t match,” Kiley said during an appearance on WOIO Channel 19’s Sports Extra. “It was tough for me to work there.”

The outspoken Kiley sparked controversy last month when called the Buffalo Bills hiring of a female assistant coach “absurd.” Those comments in addition to previous statements that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote for the Pro Football Hall of Fame or work as an NFL official drew negative attention for Kiley and 92.3 The Fan. Mike Florio at Pro Football Talk called for a boycott of the station.

But Kiley said he actually submitted a letter of resignation in November “for reasons that were unrelated to this,” but it wasn’t supposed to go into effect until the end of February.

So, why say something now?

“In 35 years I’ve never been censored and I shouldn’t have been censored for this,” Kiley told Channel 19 sports anchor Tony Zarella.

To read more visit Cleveland.com where this information was originally published

Lakers TV Analyst In a Tricky Spot Critiquing Head Coach

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Lakers TV Analyst In a Tricky Spot Critiquing Head Coach

James Worthy steeled himself, then offered a blunt assessment.

The Lakers, in the midst of a losing season, had reached their nadir with a 48-point loss to the Clippers. The Hall of Famer glared into the camera and did what many other analysts would have.

He blamed the coach.

“(Mike) D’Antoni’s got to get into these guys a little bit more,” said Worthy on that night nearly two years ago. “He’s got to make them really a little bit more responsible, maybe call guys out.”

Worthy, an analyst with Time Warner Cable SportsNet, said the Lakers’ problems could be traced to the locker room, that they should practice only defense and that an offense focused on pace of play and 3-pointers simply wasn’t working.

Such frank analysis was welcomed by fed-up fans begging for a change on the bench. It’s also the sort of criticism from which Byron Scott, a teammate of Worthy’s from 1983-93, has recently been spared during an 11-43 season.

Worthy is one of four former “Showtime”-era Lakers navigating the potentially murky waters of analyzing a team coached by a close friend.

While sports analysts frequently call games involving former teammates, coaches and rivals, the dynamic gets more complicated when the analysts are day-to-day observers of the team.

Former Kings guard-turned-analyst Bobby Jackson turned heads last week when he called for a coaching change in Sacramento.

Scott has been under a microscope since he was hired in 2014 after D’Antoni resigned at the conclusion of a 27-55 season.

In Scott’s tenure, the Lakers are 32-104.

Bashing Scott is fashionable among fans and he has been widely panned by national media. He appears at or near the top of any list of coaches on the hot seat.

The Lakers are not believed to be considering a mid-season coaching change, but it is a results-driven league. Five NBA coaches have been fired since the start of the season, including former Lakers guard Derek Fisher with the improving New York Knicks.

Worthy is aware of a perception that he has taken it easier on Scott than he did his predecessor

He even agrees.

“People have opinions based on Byron and I being close,” Worthy said after a recent Lakers practice, “but that has nothing to do with it.”

Instead, he argued, D’Antoni’s Lakers were built to win with Dwight Howard, Steve Nash and a healthy Kobe Bryant.

“I had an opportunity to be more critical then,” Worthy said. “But I see what Byron’s doing. I’m in the film room, I see the practices, I see the guys buying into it. They just haven’t been able to transfer it out to the court yet.”

When Scott made the unpopular decision to move D’Angelo Russell and Julius Randle out of the starting lineup on Dec. 6, Worthy initially recoiled with surprise.

By the end of that night’s broadcast, he had come around.

“I think Byron’s right,” Worthy said. “Sometimes you have to allow younger players to watch from the bench.”

Video of the segment was posted on the network’s Facebook page. The first comment, from a user named Lynne No, said, “James Worthy was always so candid about D’Antoni. Where’s your truth now James regarding Byron?”

When Worthy has called out the Lakers this season, he has typically focused on players rather than the coaching.

“We expect effort and we criticize (the team) for that,” Worthy said. “We criticize them for points in the paint. But for decisions made by Byron right now, going through this experimental growth period, there’s nothing to be critical of.”

To read the rest of this article visit the OC Register where it was originally published

ESPN Subscribers Continue To Decline

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ESPN Subscribers Continue To Decline

According to Nielsen, ESPN has lost 7.2 million subscribers over the past three years. That news is causing concern throughout the industry and leading to a decline in value on Wall Street.

The Disney company released their quarterly earnings on Tuesday and announced that “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” helped the company’s earnings soar 32 percent, raking in $2.9 billion. However, its television profits dropped 6 percent due to the increasing costs of sports-programming rights. The combination of profit and decline marked the second time in the past four Disney quarters such a backwards spreadsheet has been recorded in the TV segment. As a result, Disney’s shares fell 3 percent to $89.48 during after-hours trading. It was the company’s lowest level in over a year.

In the coming years, sports rights will cost a combined $130 billion between all major media companies, and leading the charge in the cost department is ESPN and Disney who account for an estimated 29 percent of long-term sports-broadcasting rights, ranging from the NBA playoffs to “Monday Night Football.” If the current TV market declines faster than the current 1 percent annual rate, Disney’s overall profit for the next four years could be cut in half.

Disney CEO Bob Iger though remains a believer that sports programming will continue to be an attractive commodity to consumers. “This notion that either the expanded basic bundle is experiencing its demise, or that ESPN is cratering in any way from a sub perspective, is just ridiculous,” Iger said. “Sports is too popular,”.

Last month, ESPN’s subscriber base sat at 91.4 million. The latest data indicates that number is less than the 94.5 million subscriber base the network carried in January 2015. Additionally, about 78 percent of ESPN’s $9.5 billion in net operating revenue excluding ad commissions came directly from subscriber fees last year.

Credit to Examiner who originally provided this information

Kate Fagan Signs New Contract At ESPN

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espnW has re-signed versatile writer and commentator Kate Fagan to a new multiyear agreement, which will keep yet another of the brand’s core voices in its ranks. Fagan will continue in her role as a featured reporter and columnist for espnW on multiple ESPN platforms including espnW.com, ESPN TV – including Around the Horn, First Take, His & Hers and others — and she adds two new national ESPN Radio shows to her resume.

Fagan will host the new ESPN Radio show, Will & Kate, with ESPN contributor Will Cain, which will launch Sunday, February 14. The program, airing Sundays from 7 – 10 a.m. ET, will take an intellectual look at topical societal issues in sports by hosts who often find their opinions to be at opposite sides of the spectrum.

She is also the co-host of espnW’s The Trifecta with Spain, Jane and Kate on ESPN Radio, which debuted January 9 (airing noon – 3 p.m.), alongside fellow espnW writers Jane McManus and Sarah Spain. The show capitalizes on the trio’s chemistry as they discuss the key stories in sports and across society with a distinct perspective that only espnW can provide.

Fagan is the third espnW contributor to re-sign, with the business retaining primary voice Julie Foudy and espnW original Jane McManus in 2015. Fagan joined ESPN in 2012 and has been a columnist and feature writer for espnW, and her stories have also appeared on ESPN.com andESPN The Magazine. She is a regular panelist on ESPN’s Around the Horn, contributes to The Sports Reporters, First Take and other shows.

Credit to ESPN Media Zone who originally provided this information

FOX Revenue Growth Depends on Sports Programming

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FOX Revenue Growth Depends on Sports Programming

21st Century Fox’s broadcasting network witnessed double-digit drop in key demo ratings as well as total viewers in calendar year 2015. This can be attributed to the absence of Super Bowl, which aided the 2014 viewership. Fox will air Super Bowl 51 in 2017 and that will surely lift its overall revenues and ratings next year. Television ratings primarily impact the advertising revenues for a media company. Even if we exclude the impact of 2014 Super Bowl, Fox has still posted advertising losses at its broadcasting segment in the past few quarters. This can be attributed to lower viewership at its television shows as more people embrace digital video platforms, thereby impacting the ratings on traditional television.

Also, the broadcasting advertising trends are uneven, as they are driven by various events such as political campaigns and sports.  In 2015, U.S. broadcast ad spending declined 3% while it was up 13% in Q4, reflecting strong scatter market.  Q4 numbers are impressive and this will likely bode well for the broadcasting networks in upcoming earnings. 2016 will also bode well for broadcasting networks due to the Olympics and the Presidential election. These events will likely accelerate television ad spending and Fox, along with other broadcasting networks, will benefit from the trend as well.

Fox’s advertising revenues have been hovering around $5 billion in the last few years. The network’s advertising is impacted by lower ratings, which were down 15% in key demographics and down 12% in total viewership for calendar year 2015. We estimate the broadcasting revenues will have declined around 3% for the calendar year 2015. Despite the ratings pressure, we expect Fox’s advertising to grow in low-single-digits in the coming years. Below we discuss why.

Fox has an abundance of sports programming to leverage higher ad revenues in the coming years, especially Super Bowl 51 in 2017. The Super Bowl generates solid ad revenues for broadcasters. For instance, ads for 2015 telecast were sold at $4.5 million for a 30-second spot by NBC, and the 2016 price are expected to be around $5 million for CBS and even higher for Fox next year. Apart from the Super Bowl, Fox has rights to college football games, among others. In fact, broadcasting networks (the big 4 networks) have seen stellar growth of 35% in their advertising income from sports coverage in the last 5 years. For the 2014-15 television season, the big four networks generated close to $8.5 billion in sports ad sales, representing 37% of the overall ad revenues. We expect the broadcasting networks to continue this trajectory in the coming years.

Fox will also benefit from low upfront sales for the current television season. The network had more units to sell in the scatter market, which is seeing solid growth in pricing, as is evident from the ad spending uptick of 13% in Q4. Also, Fox being one of the Big 4 broadcasting networks will absorb a significant chunk of political ad spending amid the Presidential election this year.

To read more visit Forbes where this article was originally published

Keith Olbermann Isn’t Sold On The Future of Sports Programming

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Keith Olbermann joined Jonah Keri’s Nerdist podcast for a two-part marathon late last week. Around the 1:19:00-mark of Part I, they began talking about contemporary sports media, and Olbermann, who as we’re all aware made his bones as a SportsCenter anchor alongside Dan Patrick in the 1990’s, spelled out doom and gloom for the future of the franchise:

If you’re doing a sports broadcast that has to do with more than one sport at a time? Good-bye. There is no reason anymore for a consumer to watch SportsCenter, or the Fox version of SportsCenter, or the Canadian version of SportsCenter, or the Rogers Canadian version of SportsCenter, or SportsCenter in Spanish, or your local — I grew up watching Marv Albert do the local sports news on Channel 4 — and there’s no reason to watch that, because if they’re talking about football, and you hate football, ESPN supplies you with something at your fingertips about baseball, soccer, hockey, badminton, jai alai.

By the way, there’s a jai alai channel. There’s a horse racing channel. There’s a dog racing channel. Eventually, there will be no market for these other multi-purpose shows, and you think about this, and say, ‘Oh it’s a new phenomenon, we’ve got some time to go.’ No, it’s the dark hours now. Just name to me, what’s the most recent, multi-sport, not connected to the NFL, not connected to game broadcast, what’s the last breakthrough TV sports show?

Olbermann reckoned this to be Pardon the Interruption, which went on the air in 2001, and said that because of this prolonged stretch that there have not been many young talents who have differentiated themselves as big stars. He also said that when they point to First Take as a beacon of success (and qualified that he likes both Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith), that their record viewership had metrics akin to typical hourly numbers for the Hallmark Movies and Mystery channel, whatever that is. He acknowledged that his own most recent show never gained solid footing, and that live sports are still experiencing profound growth. He said that one-sport specialists will over take the generalists.

To read more visit The Big Lead where this was originally published

Jay and Dan To Return With a Rebuilt Fox Sports Live

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Jay and Dan To Return With a Rebuilt Fox Sports Live

Fox Sports Live co-anchors Jay Onrait and Dan O’Toole, who took turns this past week blasting their own network on TV, social media and on the radio, will return to FS1’s airwaves on February 22nd to debut a new version of the show, sources tell The Big Lead.

Onrait and O’Toole, who arrived from Canada in 2013 for the birth of the new network, starred on the ratings-challenged Fox Sports Live for two years before the show faced dramatic alterations. Initially hatched as a show to rival ESPN’s Sportscenter, the matchup never materialized. The advent of social media and having highlights at your fingertips 24-7, and specialized programming for fans of single sports, have sent the traditional sports highlights show into increasing obsolescence, which is what former ESPN host Keith Olbermann said this week. Olbermann and Dan Patrick made the highlights show cool in the 90s, but in recent years, TV ratings for SportsCenter have been eroding.

ESPN’s flagship program is also in the midst of iterating. Out with highlights, in with strong opinions. ESPN is pushing Stephen A. Smith more and more on SportsCenter (and on its most popular radio show, Mike & Mike); Jay and Dan will be emphasizing more opinion and personality because everybody already knows what happened in the games.

Jay and Dan did not merely leave breadcrumbs about their dissatisfaction with the direction of the network and their own careers, they dropped loaves. Given that this time off was not scheduled prior to a meeting between the pair and FS1 president Jamie Horowitz on Monday, some eyebrows were raised around the network. The Big Lead initially heard that they were off the air due to a suspension; a Fox Sports spokesman says that this is “totally inaccurate.”

Perhaps a “cooling off period” might be the best label, given that the time off is paid and with the intent of enabling Jay and Dan to recharge their creative juices in the Fox offices before rebooting the show?

To read the rest of this article visit The Big Lead where it was originally published

Fox Sports Bosses Wanted Colleen Dominguez To Get a Makeover

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Fox Sports Bosses Wanted Colleen Dominguez To Get a Makeover

This past December, Colleen Dominguez filed an age and gender discrimination lawsuit against Fox Sports 1. In the complaint, Dominguez, who came to the network in 2014 as a sideline and features reporter after a long run at ESPN, alleged that all the choice assignments were given to younger reporters, most notably Erin Andrews. (The suit listed Dominguez’s age as 54; Andrews is 37.) With that lawsuit pending and enhancing the aura of doom already permeating all Fox offices, now comes word that Dominguez’s producer, Jacquelyn Bower, was fired for reasons that remain in dispute.

One FS1 source tells Deadspin that Bower was “collateral damage” in the network’s feud with Dominguez. Another believes that Bower, who was close to Dominguez, was fired because she knew things that could help the plaintiff and hurt office morale.

Among the alleged things that Bower knew, according to multiple sources, was that FS1 higher-ups had ordered Dominguez to get hair extensions in hopes that she would wear her hair like Erin Andrews.

“They sent her to Erin Andrews’s hairdresser, then said she needed extensions, and even brought in the person who did J. Lo’s extensions,” a source says. “They spent thousands of dollars on this, but Colleen just laughed. There was no way she was ever going to wear those.”

Further, these sources allege, Dominguez was told by co-workers that bosses were spreading word around the office that they wanted her to “get a facelift.” This inspired giggles from Dominguez, but not compliance.

Multiple sources told Deadspin that Bower was summoned to Fox’s human resources department shortly after Dominguez’s attempt to settle her grievances with the network through mediation blew up, and shortly before Dominguez’s lawsuit was filed. Inside the HR offices, these sources say, Bower was grilled by a department head and a top network official about her views on the allegations. One source says Bower told friends and co-workers that she felt like she was being “interrogated,” yet still asserted that she, too, believed that FS1 was a bastion of age and gender discrimination.

Days after the meeting, Bower was fired. Multiple sources say the HR department told Bower she was being fired because Fox had canceled America’s Pregame, a daily studio show.

“The problem with that is [Bower] never worked for America’s Pregame,” says a source. “She was Colleen’s producer. That was just an excuse to get rid of her.”

Bower has not yet filed any litigation related to her firing, but according to multiple sources, she is peeved, and has hired a lawyer.

To continue reading the rest of this story visit Deadspin where it was originally published

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