This harmonic convergence could produce some sappy TV on Sunday: Amid the post-Katrina recovery and on the 9/11 anniversary, the NFL opens.
If history is any guide, networks paying billions for the NFL will be tempted to make a maudlin mix of the three disparate events — positioning the NFL as something bringing welcome relief to the weary and wounded.
Fox adds 30 minutes to its pregame show — which at least 50% of its affiliates will carry — to include 9/11 and Katrina from a football-related perspective. Terry Bradshaw was dispatched to report on storm victims in his native Louisiana.
"If I had lost everything I had, I don't necessarily think football would help me escape my problems," he said Wednesday. "And it's difficult to have a smile on your face when there is so much devastation happening in your country."
After meeting people Thursday who'd "lost everything," Bradshaw saw things differently. He met people with lost relatives, such as "a little girl, 6, looking for her mama." But he "was totally surprised by the fact that they're excited by the football season, looking forward to a diversion. ... They're not feeling sorry for themselves. They're excited. And they're finding people haven't turned their backs on them."
Fair enough. It's also fair that Fox will carry the New Orleans Saints at Carolina Panthers game in 36% of the USA, up from its planned 14%, and nationally air introductions of the Saints players. Says Fox Sports president Ed Goren, "For a day, they become America's team."
But while questions of subtlety are usually irrelevant to TV sports, networks should be careful they don't embarrass themselves Sunday by broadly mixing their bombs and blitzes with actual life and death.
•NFL tip sheet: Jerry Rice will be in CBS' NFL studio Sunday, essentially giving the recently retired superstar an audition tape for TV jobs. ... Inexplicably, CBS brings back animated character Thurston Long to its pregame show, ostensibly to be funny. CBS Sports president Sean McManus won't take the blame: "I've tried to fire him twice." ... Fox's Curt Menefee and J.C. Pearson will call Sunday's Tampa Bay Buccaneers-Minnesota Vikings game, becoming the first regular NFL TV broadcast team comprised of African-Americans.
Whither OLN?
Plenty of sports officials would like an alternative to dealing with ESPN, whose dominance can leave them in take-it-or-leave-it situations.
So there'd be plenty of enthusiasm for the Outdoor Life Network, which recently bought NHL TV rights and is owned by leading U.S. cable operator Comcast, to move beyond niche sports and become a bigger deal. An obvious way to do that: buy rights to a seven-game prime-time package of NFL games, on Thursday and Saturdays, that will start in 2006 or steal one of ESPN's Major League Baseball TV packages. And change the channel's name to take it beyond its roots in hunting, fishing and rodeo.
Comcast has been publicly mum. But in meeting with USA TODAY staffers Thursday, CEO Brian Roberts said such "speculation has gotten a little frothy. We're focused on the NHL." But, he said, OLN could be rebranded, as the NHL deal "will probably cause us to look at (changing) the name."
Oops!
What happened with a marquee tennis match — Andre Agassi's five-set win Wednesday night against James Blake in the U.S. Open — is instructive about who needs to be responsible for looking out for the fan.
At 12:37 a.m. ET Thursday and the match on USA Network in a fifth-set tiebreaker, CBS had the contractual right to use its late-night show for exclusive coverage.
Networks, like most businesses, routinely act out of self-interest. And CBS did: It took the match, except on the West Coast, where it remained on USA because CBS wasn't airing its late-night shows yet. The network used its studio analysts to call the action off TV monitors — and got an overnight TV rating up 64% from last year.
Affiliates can do what they want, and CBS stations in at least five markets, including Houston, Orlando and Indianapolis, aired the match on tape delay. DirecTV viewers missed it. The satellite service carries USA's Eastern feed but the tennis was on its Western feed. So DirecTV viewers needed to flip to CBS' Eastern feed but weren't told that.
Meaning? Networks take what they can get. Event organizers need to take the lead in looking out for fans by making TV details that give them control, even if it means getting less TV money. The Agassi-Blake match shouldn't have even started so late.
If history is any guide, networks paying billions for the NFL will be tempted to make a maudlin mix of the three disparate events — positioning the NFL as something bringing welcome relief to the weary and wounded.
Fox adds 30 minutes to its pregame show — which at least 50% of its affiliates will carry — to include 9/11 and Katrina from a football-related perspective. Terry Bradshaw was dispatched to report on storm victims in his native Louisiana.
"If I had lost everything I had, I don't necessarily think football would help me escape my problems," he said Wednesday. "And it's difficult to have a smile on your face when there is so much devastation happening in your country."
After meeting people Thursday who'd "lost everything," Bradshaw saw things differently. He met people with lost relatives, such as "a little girl, 6, looking for her mama." But he "was totally surprised by the fact that they're excited by the football season, looking forward to a diversion. ... They're not feeling sorry for themselves. They're excited. And they're finding people haven't turned their backs on them."
Fair enough. It's also fair that Fox will carry the New Orleans Saints at Carolina Panthers game in 36% of the USA, up from its planned 14%, and nationally air introductions of the Saints players. Says Fox Sports president Ed Goren, "For a day, they become America's team."
But while questions of subtlety are usually irrelevant to TV sports, networks should be careful they don't embarrass themselves Sunday by broadly mixing their bombs and blitzes with actual life and death.
•NFL tip sheet: Jerry Rice will be in CBS' NFL studio Sunday, essentially giving the recently retired superstar an audition tape for TV jobs. ... Inexplicably, CBS brings back animated character Thurston Long to its pregame show, ostensibly to be funny. CBS Sports president Sean McManus won't take the blame: "I've tried to fire him twice." ... Fox's Curt Menefee and J.C. Pearson will call Sunday's Tampa Bay Buccaneers-Minnesota Vikings game, becoming the first regular NFL TV broadcast team comprised of African-Americans.
Whither OLN?
Plenty of sports officials would like an alternative to dealing with ESPN, whose dominance can leave them in take-it-or-leave-it situations.
So there'd be plenty of enthusiasm for the Outdoor Life Network, which recently bought NHL TV rights and is owned by leading U.S. cable operator Comcast, to move beyond niche sports and become a bigger deal. An obvious way to do that: buy rights to a seven-game prime-time package of NFL games, on Thursday and Saturdays, that will start in 2006 or steal one of ESPN's Major League Baseball TV packages. And change the channel's name to take it beyond its roots in hunting, fishing and rodeo.
Comcast has been publicly mum. But in meeting with USA TODAY staffers Thursday, CEO Brian Roberts said such "speculation has gotten a little frothy. We're focused on the NHL." But, he said, OLN could be rebranded, as the NHL deal "will probably cause us to look at (changing) the name."
Oops!
What happened with a marquee tennis match — Andre Agassi's five-set win Wednesday night against James Blake in the U.S. Open — is instructive about who needs to be responsible for looking out for the fan.
At 12:37 a.m. ET Thursday and the match on USA Network in a fifth-set tiebreaker, CBS had the contractual right to use its late-night show for exclusive coverage.
Networks, like most businesses, routinely act out of self-interest. And CBS did: It took the match, except on the West Coast, where it remained on USA because CBS wasn't airing its late-night shows yet. The network used its studio analysts to call the action off TV monitors — and got an overnight TV rating up 64% from last year.
Affiliates can do what they want, and CBS stations in at least five markets, including Houston, Orlando and Indianapolis, aired the match on tape delay. DirecTV viewers missed it. The satellite service carries USA's Eastern feed but the tennis was on its Western feed. So DirecTV viewers needed to flip to CBS' Eastern feed but weren't told that.
Meaning? Networks take what they can get. Event organizers need to take the lead in looking out for fans by making TV details that give them control, even if it means getting less TV money. The Agassi-Blake match shouldn't have even started so late.
