Reynolds' Rap
Business, as Usual, at the Super Bowl
The NFL is the model pro sports league. Its weighted/revolving schedule presents many teams with a chance to elevate to the playoffs from the basement the season year before, while its billions in varied revenue sources, TV chief among them, seemingly flow unabated. Super Bowl XLVI is looking to extend the NFL Championship audience for a seventh consecutive year, which would make Comcast’s ...... Read More
Comments (0)Saturday Night's Alright for Tebow?
The followers of the phenomenon that is Tim Tebow will be put to the test on Saturday night in Foxborough. And I’m not talking about the God-loving, mechanics-challenged QB leading the Denver Broncos to an upset over Bill Belichick and Tom Brady’s New England Patriots in the primetime NFL Divisional playoff game on Jan. 14. To channel, the late Al Davis: Just keep it close, baby. Tha ...... Read More
Comments (0)Romeo Crennel's Christmas Present to David Stern
Does absence really make the heart grow fonder? David Stern and the NBA will find out on Christmas, when the league finally tips off its 2011-12 season. Avoiding Stern’s nuclear winter, the NBA will begin its lockout-shortened season with a five-pack of high-profile contests. The season starts with Carmelo Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire and Tyson Chandler and the retooled New York Knicks ...... Read More
Comments (0)Review: Showtime Honors The Service Academies
On the surface, Showtime’s A Game of Honor is about wanting to “sing second.” That’s what the victors in the longstanding college football rivalry between Army and Navy get to do upon game’s conclusion — join in a rendition of their alma mater, ahead of their vanquished foe. But the feature-length documentary, which bows on the premium network on Dec. 21 a ...... Read More
Comments (0)Looking to Net a New Viewing Tradition
Officially it’s dubbed the Discovery NHL Thanksgiving Showdown, but the “Black Friday Battle,” “Tryptophan Tussle,” or “Post-Turkey Day Tango” might also be appropriate monikers. Whichever way, the NHL and NBC are again looking to break through traditions and strike viewer gold for the second time this century with a new marquee, holiday puck franch ...... Read More
Comments (0)NBA Lockout: Commish, Nix the Nuclear Winter Rhetoric
It’s well before dawn. Our tuxedo cat Donald has awakened me, per usual, begging for food. On ESPN’s season-opening marathon of college hoops, Hawaii is putting it to Cal State Northridge. Drexel and Rider are about to tip. It’s Day 138 of the NBA lockout. Yesterday on Day 137, after leadership of the NBA Players Association rejected the league’s “final&# ...... Read More
Comments (0)Overnight of the Century
[Updated: Nov. 7] And thus far that moniker also applies to the new millennium for CBS, which tackled its top regular-season, college football Nielsen rating since the late 1980s with its Nov. 5 coverage of LSU-Alabama. Billed as the latest “Game of the Century,” Saturday night’s special between the SEC West rivals didn’t quite live up to that hype — unless you l ...... Read More
Comments (0)Nielsen Life Left In The Old Ballgame
It may have taken a lead-in for the ages, but Fox scored big with its coverage of Game 7 of the St. Louis-Texas World Series. Fox closed out what was truly a Fall Classic with a 14.7 rating/25 share and 25.4 million viewers for its Game 7 telecast on Oct. 29, the highest-rated and most-watched MLB contest since the Boston Red Sox swept away the Cardinals and the 86-year “Curse of the Bambin ...... Read More
Comments (0)Much Left To Wonder About World Cup Rights Deals
Last week, Fox and Telemundo gained the U.S. media rights to top FIFA events from 2015 through 2022, highlighted by the men’s World Cup in Russia in 2018 and Qatar four years thereafter. It was an upset — perhaps not as big as the U.S. topping England 1-0 in the group stage during the 1950 World Cup in Brazil — because money and FIFA president Sepp Blatter were involved. Still ...... Read More
Comments (0)In The Tigers' Lair
It wasn’t Saturday Night in Death Valley, which was probably a good thing for Auburn, considering that tigers hunt nocturnally and how blood-thirsty things became in the Baton Rouge afternoon. As LSU fans have lamented the lack of a 2011 SEC night game in their storied lair, it may have amplified their purple and gold snarl — even though their Tigers donned mostly white stripes on Sa ...... Read More
Comments (0)MLB Game 5s: Giveth and Taketh
After years of seeing MLB’s Division Series come up short in drama and games, TBS almost ran the table this year. The “very funny” network, with an assist from sister service TNT, got to televise 19 of possible 20 first-round MLB playoff games, highlighted by a trio of one-run Game 5s — only Texas topping Tampa in four prevented a DS Grand Slam, so to speak. Those tight ...... Read More
Comments (0)Of Pence, Papelbum, Ravech and The Proctologist
On arguably the most exciting night in Major League Baseball regular-season history, it was great to be a supporter of the St. Louis Cardinals and Tampa Bay Rays. But it was very painful to be a fan of the Atlanta Braves and Boston Red Sox, who ignominiously secured their places in baseball’s pennant race collapse clubhouse, alongside the likes of the 2007 New York Mets, 1995 California Ang ...... Read More
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