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North Carolina Lawmakers Expect Mobile Sports Betting By Football Season

BSM Staff
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North Carolina Lawmakers Expect Mobile Sports Betting By Football Season

It is already legal to place bets in North Carolina on sporting events. It is just incredibly difficult. Bets can only be made inside of 2 Cherokee casinos in the western part of the state. That could change before football season.

The State Senate, which is politically divided, passed SB 688 last year. If it makes it through the State House, it would become law and North Carolinians could then theoretically place bets online legally.

SB 88 was sponsored by Paul Lowe, a Democrat from Forsyth County. He told WRAL-TV in Raleigh that he is optimistic about what will happen in the House.

“We just want to make sure we have drummed up the votes, and I think we have,” he said. “I feel confident about it.”

North Carolina’s neighbors, including Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, have already legalized mobile sports betting.

Politically, North Carolina is considered a purple state. That is showing up in the effort to legalize mobile wagering. One of the bill’s biggest advocates in the House is Jason Saine, a Republican from Lincoln County.

“We’re ready to rock ‘n’ roll. I’ve not heard any new opposition,” he told WRAL. “I think we have a pretty smooth glide path once we do kind of start rolling into session.”

The state’s Lottery Commission would oversee sports gambling. If the SB 688 is passed, operators would pay $500,000 for a five-year license, which can be renewed for $100,000. They would also pay an 8% tax on adjusted gross revenue. Both of those numbers are low compared to other states.

“Once we pass this bill, there’s some tweaks we’re going to do,” Lowe said. “But right now we’re just trying to get it out of the chute.”

Why Charles Barkley Is Sports Television’s Most Valuable Personality

Andy Masur
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Once the Western Conference Finals end, so will the season for Charles Barkley and his TNT crew. Inside The NBA has become ‘must watch’ television over the last few years. In my opinion, it is the best of its kind in any sport right now.

The chemistry displayed on the ITN set is unparalleled. Charles Barkley is one of the biggest reasons to tune in. He’s unfiltered, he’s real and he’s always himself.

I’m not the only one that feels that way. Former ESPN boss and current Meadowlark Media front man, John Skipper, recently appeared on the Dan Patrick Show to sing the praises of Barkley. Skipper puts him among the greats in broadcasting.

“I think there are only three or four people in the history of broadcasting that you can
genuinely say people tune in to see them. The late, great John Madden, who just recently
passed, was one of those guys. Barkley is the guy right now in all of sports that you can say
people will tune in to see him.” Skipper said.

John is on to something here. Barkley is a larger-than-life personality. His analysis is sometimes way out there, but it either makes you think, scratch your head or laugh.

Sometimes all of those things happen at the same time. Barkley’s commentary is usually the stuff that floods the internet that night, and is the talk of your office, or friends the next day.

Seemingly if you miss it, you’re a little behind the times. I mean, the man made a grand entrance to the set the other night in Dallas. He rode to the set on a horse just before Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals between the Mavericks and Warriors. Shaquille O’Neal joked that to carry Barkley’s body, the horse had to have “a strong back” and he kept saying “please fall!” as Barkley had a little trouble with the dismount. Leading Barkley to exclaim, “I grew up in Alabama, brother, I know how to ride a horse.”

This is one of the reasons I think Skipper believes what he does. Barkley is always up to
something, no matter how silly it may make him look or how outlandish it might be. This guy is confident in pretty much everything he does, with the possible exception of his golf game. He can dish it out for sure, but Barkley can take it as well, which usually results in something hilarious. He has personality and its genuine. That makes him likable whether you agree with him or not.

Barkley is also the best kind of humorous, the unintentional kind. It works.

While Skipper is dead on about Barkley, it does beg the question, would Charles be as popular
without his cohorts on Inside the NBA? It’s like asking if the talented lead singer of a band, would be as popular as a solo artist. In this case, I wonder. You’ve heard of ‘system
quarterbacks’, right? I think the formula works for Barkley, in part because of the surrounding
cast. While people may tune in to see Barkley, they can’t help but notice the other guys on set and understand why Charles can be Charles. It’s because the entire dynamic works.

Take Barkley off the show, it’s not as good. Take Kenny off the show, same. Take Shaq off, also same. Take Ernie off, well you get the picture here. They each have unique personalities and the ability to be themselves and work as a group. Each brings something to the table, but the key ingredient is not taking themselves too seriously. They all enjoy being there.

Skipper saw that part of the equation as well and knows why the show is what it is, a success.

“It’s because they look like they’re having fun. They know what they’re talking about. They’re
willing to be provocative, they’re willing to mash it up, and it’s great.” said Skipper to the Dan Patrick Show.

The former players mesh like they are family. EJ is the patriarch that lets the guys be guys and jumps in when it looks like it may go off the rails. Fighting is all part of it. Heated arguments take place from time to time with strong, opinionated former players each thinking he is right. In the flow of the show, it’s actually entertaining to watch. It helps that all of the panelists had successful and in a couple of cases, Hall of Fame careers. Even if they have an interesting way of explaining their points, they each bring a knowledge base to the show.

I think by their mere presence, the group makes Charles better. Not always agreeing with him, challenging him, or calling him out if you will, makes for much more entertaining television. You can tell that Barkley feels comfortable with the group he is on the set with. It really allows him to let more of his big personality out. But it is all about that comfort and everyone being comfortable with who that other person is and what their strengths are on the show. It works so well.

Think about the popularity of the show and how many other studio crews are taking elements of it and adapting it to their own shows. That includes TNT’s NHL on TNT pre/post/intermission shows. The formula works, but you have to have the right people on the set. The NHL version is growing into something of its own, this being its first season.

Now, just to throw a wrench in here, if and when Barkley were to leave the show, it would be a big blow. Right now, he’s the one guy they can least afford to lose. But, the Hall of Famer has hinted at calling it quits recently. TNT held a conference call just before the All-Star Game in February, in which Barkley and the Inside the NBA panel appeared. At the end of the call, Barkley was asked how much longer he’ll continue to be a broadcaster.

Via the Dallas Morning News’ Brad Townsend, Barkley said he has 2 years left on his contract
“and that’s probably going to be it for me.” Barkley continued, “It’s been a great, great thing. I love Ernie, Kenny, Shaq and everybody we work with. But I just don’t feel the need to work until the day I die. I don’t, man. I’ll be 61 years old if I finish out my contract. And I don’t want to die on TV. I want to die on the golf course or somewhere fishing. I don’t want to be sitting inside over [by] fat-ass Shaq [waiting] to drop dead.”

Barkley is must see television, mainly because of the environment he’s surrounds himself in.
There’s a strength in the numbers, not just the stats these former players have amassed, but
the bond they’ve formed. It makes for terrific, not terrible (in Barkley voice), television.

Ainsley Earhardt: “I Don’t Know How to Fix This”

BNM Staff
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“FOX & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt became emotional when she was talking about the state of the country in the aftermath of the Texas mass school shooting that left 19 children dead. 

In a transcript obtained by Barrett News Media, Earhardt said she longs for a day when the country can return to its post 9/11 state where people seemed to care for one another. 

“I don’t know how to fix this. But I do know you love your neighbor as yourself,” Earhardt said. “That’s what the bible instructs us to do. It doesn’t say “love your neighbor if he or she is a Democrat or a Republican.”

According to Fox News, law enforcement officials said Salvador Ramos acted alone and was killed by a Border Patrol agent who rushed into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, without waiting for backup.

“Parents, take your children to church. I don’t know what’s going on in these individuals’ hearts, but they have a void,” said Earhardt.

“They have a hole in their heart, and they are evil and they are unhappy. Help them to get help. And I know it’s not always the parents’ fault because the parents are trying in many cases and when there’s mental illness involved, sometimes you’re at your wit’s end and there’s not much more you can do. But I don’t know what the solution is.” 

Sara Haines: “We Must Fight for Red Flag Laws”

BNM Staff
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The Texas school massacre that left 19 children dead has left a nation divided over gun control and how politics play a role in the perceived loopholes that allow people to own certain weapons.

On Wednesday’s “The View” co-host Sara Haines shared a conversation that she had with her husband immediately following the deadly attacks. Haines said that it was difficult for her to process the level of grief that she was feeling at the time. She said the nation needs to red-flag laws. The following conversation was published via Mediate.

“We must fight for red flag laws in every state because right now the people that protect guns are protecting it can limit,” said Haines. “Can’t we all agree that people that have a problem and can threaten people should not have a weapon for a period of time?”

Goldberg criticized Gov. Abbott for signing a number of bills that she claims, “made it easier for mass shooters to buy, carry, and own guns in his state.”

 “Let’s apply his abortion laws to guns by deputizing citizens to sue anyone involved in gun violence. So, you sold an AR-15 at the gun show? See you in court. Does your neighbor have too big an arsenal?” Goldberg continued. “Call the cops.”

Tracy McGrady’s Basketball League Enters Media Partnership With Showtime

BSM Staff
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Tracy McGrady’s Basketball League Enters Media Partnership With Showtime

Hall of Famer Tracy McGrady launched his own basketball league this year. Ones Basketball League is a touring competition to find the best one-on-one basketball players in the country. Now fans can follow the action on Showtime.

The Showtime Basketball brand will create a behind-the-scenes documentary following the OBL’s 2022 tour. The all-access series will put new episodes on the Showtime YouTube channel.

“The production and creative team at Showtime Sports knows how to build and tell stories like no one else, and the detailed background and exciting drama we have already started to capture with OBL makes this content partnership a perfect fit for us,” McGrady said in a press release. “The team at Showtime shares our excitement for putting a spotlight on one-on-one basketball and all of the great action, rich stories, and hyper-competition that flows from the game.”

OBL competitions from now until the end of the season will be documented. Each tour stop features a 2-day, 32-player competition. Three of the league’s six competitions are complete.

Showtime will be there for stops in New York, Springfield, Virginia, and Los Angeles as well as the championship tournament in Las Vegas.

“We believe in Tracy’s vision and are thrilled to be working with the OBL on their inaugural season,” Brian Dailey, SVP of Sports Programming & Content for Showtime Networks Inc, added. “This collaboration embodies the Showtime Basketball brand — premium, bold and boundary-pushing. We are delighted to welcome Tracy and the OBL team to our unmatched lineup of content and talent.”

WSJS Adjusts Format To News & Sports Mix In Winston-Salem

BSM Staff
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WSJS Adjusts Format To News & Sports Mix In Winston-Salem

Truth Broadcasting isn’t sticking to sports. WSJS, which originates from Winston-Salem, North Carolina and also serves Greensboro, is transitioning from all sports talk to a mix of conservative talk and sports.

“While WSJS enjoyed providing the Piedmont Triad with a 24/7 sports format, so much was lost with our connection to the Triad community with little to no live and local talk, news features, guest host hours, award-winning talk shows and more. Now, we’ve remedied that. Just wait until you hear it!” Market Manager Tom Hamilton said in a press release.

Afternoon host Josh Graham will remain on staff. His show The Drive will continue to air from 3 until 6 pm. Nights will be filled by the Rich Eisen Show, followed by programming from CBS Sports Network. The station will also continue to carry local high school play-by-play and the Duke Blue Devils.

The station will add a local morning show featuring Jeffrey Griffin. Triad Today will air from 7-10 AM. WSJS will also feature syndicated shows from Brian Kilmeade, Todd Starnes and Charlie Kirk.

WSJS can be heard on 600 AM as well as four translators. The station’s new weekday lineup goes into effect on June 6. It is listed in full below.

5 AM-6 AM – First Light

6 AM-7 AM – America In The Morning

7 AM-10 AM – Triad Today With Jeffrey Griffin (9 AM-10 AM – Expert Hour)
10 AM-12 NOON – The Brian Kilmeade Show

NOON-2 PM – The Todd Starnes Show

2 PM-3 PM – The Charlie Kirk Show

3 PM-6 PM – The Drive With Josh Graham

6 PM-9 PM – THE Rich Eisen Show

9 PM-10 PM – THE Zach Gelb Show

10 PM-2 AM – JR Sportsbrief

2 AM-5 AM – Amy Lawrence

Pat McAfee Defends His Intellectual Property on Show

BSM Staff
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Intellectual property is the most important asset a content creator has in the digital space. That’s why it should not come as a surprise when Pat McAfee took to his show today to defend his.

A YouTube user named AntSlant had been acquiring video from Pat McAfee’s daily show for a while and putting it on his YouTube channel as his own content for months. McAfee has been a hot commodity and it seems that the personality may have been alerted to this activity thru potential future partners and their social searches. McAfee apparently reached out and sent a warning and today he addressed the account in what he called a little “house cleaning.”

“I have funded everything that you see (referencing his studio),” McAfee began. “Whenever you talk about stealing people’s footage, stealing people’s content and putting it up on the internet – so you can benefit from it – I don’t know how you think that the person that created, funded and paid for the content, worked their dick off, and their ass off amongst their peers and did everything – how they are the scam artists in this entire thing and not the account.”

Pat McAfee started referencing the offending account’s ability to monetize the videos. “We looked it up because we have this ability, [they] probably made $150,000 off of our content – not remixing the content, not getting in there and speaking and being a content creator – ripping content from us. Putting it together putting it up as their own videos and marketing it as if they work for us. And never reaching out to us one time. Not one time.”

The value of this content is immeasurable especially considering the account using McAfee’s IP is on the same platform (YouTube) as he is. McAfee add, “no network would just let you take their shit and profit off it. Nobody on Earth would let you do that.”

McAfee then revealed that he would partner with another YouTube account Toxic Table Edits. That account, which was doing the same thing as AntSlant, created a community around the Pat McAfee Show image. Things went differently for Toxic because when contacted by McAfee, the owner of that account responded “like a human”. Now the two will partner on future projects.

A Twitter account with the name @AntSlant did tweet shortly thereafter saying that the videos McAfee discussed had been deleted from his YouTube channel.

Upon an inspection of a YouTube account named AntSlant, the videos are no longer.

Joe Buck: ESPN Is Letting Us Set Tone For Monday Night Football

BSM Staff
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Joe Buck: ESPN Is Letting Us Set Tone For Monday Night Football

While Joe Buck and Troy Aikman will be calling football games on Monday nights for ESPN instead of Sunday afternoons for FOX this year, fans shouldn’t expect the broadcasts to be that much different, if at all, than what they’ve been used to over the last 20 years. 

Buck was recently a guest on the Green Light with Chris Long podcast and said that ESPN knows that he and Aikman have to be comfortable in order for Monday Night Football to be a success.

“I know we are in the honeymoon phase. I’m not dumb. That stuff wears off after a while. They are like ‘however you guys have always done a game, that’s the way we want you to do a game whether it’s with regard to meetings vs. conference calls or when you guys show up, how you like the booth set up. However you want it, we are going to do it your way’ and that’s to their credit. It wasn’t well, you are at ESPN, you have to figure out how we do it.”

Buck and Aikman are obviously already very familiar with each other. Buck said that it will be important not to take that for granted or second guess what they already know.

“I think the one thing Troy and I have to avoid is trying to be different than we’ve been. They hired us based on what we’ve done and who we are and how we relate to each other and the way we see a game,” said Buck. 

Parker Hillis Named Brand Manager of SportsRadio 610

BSM Staff
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Goodbye snow and hello heat! Parker Hillis is headed to Houston. Audacy has announced that he will be the new brand manager for Sports Radio 610.

“Parker is a rising star,” Sarah Frazier, Senior Vice President and Market Manager of Audacy in Houston, said in a press release. “He has impressed us since day one with his innovative ideas, focus on talent coaching and work ethic. We’re thrilled to have him join our Audacy team.”

Hillis comes to the market from Denver. He has spent the last three years with Bonneville’s 104.3 The Fan. He started as the station’s executive producer before rising to APD earlier this year.

In announcing his exit from The Fan on his Facebook page, Hillis thanked Fan PD Raj Sharan for preparing him for this opportunity.

“His leadership and guidance set the stage for me to continue to grow and develop in this industry, one that I absolutely love,” Hillis wrote. “This is a special place, one that I am honored to have been a part of and so sad to leave.”

Sports Radio 610 began the process to find a new brand manager in February when Armen Williams announced he was leaving the role. Williams also came to Houston from Denver. He started his own business outside the radio industry.

“I’m excited to join the Sports Radio 610 team in Houston,” said Hillis. “The opportunity to direct and grow an already incredible Audacy brand is truly an honor.”

Schopp & Bulldog: NFL Has To Figure Out Pro Bowl Alternative That Draws Same Audience

BSM Staff
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Schopp & Bulldog: NFL Has To Figure Out Pro Bowl Alternative That Draws Same Audience

After years of criticism and declining television ratings, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell publicly stated this week that the Pro Bowl, as it is currently contested, is no longer a viable option for the league and that there would be discussions at the league meetings to find another way to showcase the league’s best players.

Yesterday afternoon, Schopp and Bulldog on WGR in Buffalo discussed the growing possibility of the game being discontinued, and how the NFL could improve on the ratings it generates with new programming.

“The same number of people [who] watched some recent… game 7 between Milwaukee and Boston… had the same audience as the Pro Bowl had last year,” said co-host Chris “The Bulldog” Parker. “….Enough people watch it to make it worth their while; it’s good business. They’ll put something in that place even though the game is a joke.”

One of the potential outcomes of abolishing the Pro Bowl would be replacing it with a skills showdown akin to what the league held last year prior to the game in Las Vegas. Some of the competitions held within this event centered around pass precision, highlight catches and a non-traditional football competition: Dodgeball. Alternatively, the league could revisit the events it held in 2021 due to the cancellation of the Pro Bowl because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which included a virtual Madden showdown and highlight battle, appealing to football fans in the digital age.

Stefon Diggs and Dion Dawkins of the Buffalo Bills were selected to the AFC Pro Bowl roster this past season, and while it is a distinct honor, some fans would rather see the game transformed or ceased entirely – largely because of the risks associated with exhibition games.

In 1999, the NFL held a rookie flag football game on a beach in Waikiki, Hawaii before the Pro Bowl in which New England Patriots running back Robert Edwards severely dislocated his knee while trying to catch a pass. He nearly had to have his leg amputated in the hospital, being told that there was a possibility he may never walk again. Upon returning to the league four seasons later with the Miami Dolphins, Edwards was able to play in 12 games, but then lost his roster spot at the end of the season, marking the end of his NFL career.

“You might not want to get too crazy with this stuff, but there’d have to be some actual contests to have it be worth doing at all,” expressed show co-host Mike Schopp. “Do you not have a game? I don’t know.”

The future of the Sunday before the Super Bowl is very much in the air, yet Goodell has hardly been reticent in expressing that there needs to be a change made in the league to better feature and promote the game’s top players. In fact, he’s been saying it since his first days as league commissioner in 2006, evincing a type of sympathy for the players participating in the contest, despite it generating reasonable television ratings and advertising revenue.

“Maybe the time has come for them to really figure out a better idea, and maybe that’s what’s notable [about] Goodell restating that he’s got a problem with it,” said Parker. “If there’s some sort of momentum about a conversation [on] creating a very different event that could still draw your 6.7 million eyeballs, maybe they’ll figure out a way to do something other than the game, because the game just could not be less interesting.”

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