ESPN GAINS WIMBLEDON

Wimbledon is leaving NBC after 43 years and appears headed to ESPN.
NBC said in a statement Sunday that while they we would have liked to have continued their relationship, they were simply outbid.
A person with knowledge of the negotiations confirmed that ESPN was working on a contract with the All England Club to televise the entire Grand Slam tournament. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal was not ready to be announced.
ESPN had owned the rights to extensively televise early rounds of Wimbledon, with NBC picking up coverage as the tournament progressed, culminating with the Breakfast at Wimbledon broadcasts of the finals.
It would be the latest major sporting event to move from the traditional four over-the-air networks to cable. College football's Bowl Championship Series title games are on ESPN, and NCAA basketball's Final Four will be on TBS in alternating years starting in 2016.
Months into its new partnership with Comcast, NBC is losing a marquee event. The network did keep an even bigger one when it outbid ESPN and Fox last month for four Olympics.
This year was the 32nd anniversary of "Breakfast at Wimbledon," with coverage ending Sunday in the men's final.

Phillip Daniels calls NFL's Concussion Crackdown "Crazy"

The Washington Post

Here's a sneak peak of what you can expect from your national Wednesday NFL open locker room coverage: defensive players complaining loudly and eloquently about the league's sudden emphasis on preventing concussions. You will see stories like this from just about every NFL market, with players arguing that a certain level of violence is inevitable, and that legislating it out through fines and/or suspensions is both hypocritical and impossible.

For your sneak peak, I present Phillip Daniels's Tuesday appearance on the LaVar and Dukes show. Daniels actually began his critique of the NFL on Twitter; some of his comments are grouped together here:

    Have we become a cupcake league? We already have better helmets and gear. Wonder how the old school players feel about this. Not in the back of minds when talking about 18 game season so let's play football please....Even guys using shoulders to hit are getting flagged for helmet-to-helmet. Defense is getting sloppy because guys are avoiding fines and will get worse if suspending comes into play....

    There has been a warning sticker on the back of every helmet since pee wee league. When u put that helmet on you know you will hit or be hit. We still choose to play. Parents are asked to sign forms for their kids to play because of the dangers of the sport. Nothing is different.

On the radio, he was perhaps even more pointed when asked about the NFL's response to last week's carnage.

"To me, when I hear guys getting fined that much money for a game in which we're taught to be physical and hit people, I think it's ridiculous," Daniels said. "When this game started, from way back, your dream is to go out there and hit somebody and bring some excitement to the game. You're talking about taking that away. Guys are gonna get hurt. This is football. This ain't no cupcake league.You're gonna go out and play football, you're gonna get hit. Offensive players know they're gonna get hit, and defensive players go out to hit. Nothing's changed. You just go out there and play football and take all this other stuff out of it, this suspension stuff. It's kind of crazy. The fines are crazy too."

Daniels echoed a widespread opinion that the double knockout shot leveled by Dunta Robinson on DeSean Jackson was actually clean, and he said that players are virtually never trying to hurt each other.

"I don't think guys should just go be blatant and go after a head or leave their feet and spear somebody with a helmet, but we're taught to be physical, we're taught to go out and hit people," he said. "And now you get a couple of stars hurt in this league, now they want to talk about suspending guys? I just think this game is going downhill. Defenses right now are sloppy, there's more missed tackles, because guys are trying to avoid the helmet-to-helmet hit. Now you're talking about suspending guys? You definitely gonna get a lot of guys trying to go in the wrong way, missing tackles....You've just got to go out and play football."

Daniels said he uses an "old-school" helmet and is suspicious of the new helmet technology, saying that all three Redskins who have suffered concussions this season were using newer models. He said he's never been on a team that suffered as many concussions as these Redskins, who have already lost Chris Cooley, Rocky McIntosh and Anthony Bryant to head injuries. But he also said that when you go into his profession, you do so with the understanding that your body might be damaged.

"They've done a lot to make this league safer," he said. "It's changed a whole lot already. We protected the quarterback, you've got the horse collar [rule] that happened when T.O. went down. A superstar goes down, the rules change, that's just how it is. I don't get it. We get a couple big name guys go down this weekend, now we're talking about the helmet issue. I just think the NFL, they've done a lot to keep players safe.

"You're gonna get hurt, and if people ever wonder why we get paid so much, this is why. They're talking about this helmet-to-helmet stuff, but it's not coming into play when they're talking about 18 games....How can they argue the 18 game increase? It's crazy. This game is already tough enough with 16 games. To add two more, as physical as this game is, is kind of ridiculous."

Comcast Seeking Competition With ESPN

Story from the Wall Street Journal

Comcast Corp. executive Jeff Shell said at an industry conference in June that expanding the sports business at his cable networks was the "top of our list over the next five years."

If Comcast's bid to control NBC Universal succeeds, it would advance Mr. Shell's goal overnight, creating a potential new rival to Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN.

As the cable-TV giant and NBC Universal's parent, General Electric Co., work through details of a deal that would merge Comcast's cable networks with GE's NBC Universal, people close to the negotiations say the two companies see the creation of a combined sports business as a key benefit of a partnership.

The new company would marry Comcast's Versus and Golf Channel cable-sports networks and multiple regional sports networks with NBC Universal's broadcast-sports operation and rights to major sports events, including a Super Bowl and two Olympic games.

The talks seek to create a TV and movie company that would be 51% owned by Comcast, with GE holding the remainder. NBC Universal's current minority owner, Vivendi SA, would have its 20% stake bought out. Negotiations could still fall apart, but the merger appears to be the most likely outcome for NBC Universal, people familiar with the matter say.

Paired up with NBC, Comcast could get a bigger slice of a large sports TV market. Advertisers spent an estimated $10.6 billion for commercials in sports programming across U.S. broadcast networks, cable networks and local TV stations last year, out of total TV ad spending of about $68.4 billion, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Cable-sports channels raked in more than $9.2 billion of about $22.9 billion in basic-cable TV subscription fees for the year, according to estimates from SNL Kagan.

The expanded NBC Universal would combine both companies' rights to college football, hockey and golf. It would have NBC's rights to the Olympics in 2010 and 2012 and NFL games through 2013. A deal could also give NBC Sports access to cable subscription fees, which would put it in a better position to keep up with growing sports-rights costs.

Comcast's Versus and Golf Channel already receive about $400 million in yearly subscription fees, according to industry estimates. In addition, Comcast could try to push paid distribution for NBC's fledgling Universal Sports channel.

Among the possibilities for the combined company would be for Comcast to air football games simultaneously on multiple channels, with each offering different camera angles, a person familiar with the matter says. Comcast could also put large swaths of Olympics footage in its video-on-demand service, the person says.

"If this merger goes through, they become a much, much stronger competitor to ESPN. And they threaten to dominate CBS and Fox," says Neal H. Pilson, a sports-media consultant and former president of CBS Sports.

Spokesmen for ESPN and CBS both decline to comment. A spokesman for Fox says the company "has a big event sports strategy nationally, and we don't see that changing." Fox Sports and The Wall Street Journal are owned by News Corp.

ESPN is a dominant force in nationallytelevised sports that would be hard for Comcast to match, even with NBC Universal. Owned 80% by Disney and 20% by Hearst Corp., ESPN and its sister operation ABC Sports span seven TV outlets in the U.S. and hold the rights to air many baseball, football and basketball games.

While ESPN's ad revenue suffered in the recession, subscription-TV providers such as Comcast will pay approximately $5.8 billion to carry ESPN's U.S. networks this year, according to estimates from research firm SNL Kagan. If Comcast succeeds in building a stronger sports business, the company and other cable operators might gain better leverage when negotiating the fees they pay ESPN.

"To the extent that there are multiple places you can get big-time sports on a national basis, ESPN's growth in rates may be constrained," says Frank Hawkins, a media consultant and former NFL executive.

Mr. Shell, president of Comcast Programming Group, has pushed to expand his sports business. He has built up Comcast's regional sports networks. He has also focused on expanding Versus from niche sports like bull riding and the Tour de France to include professional hockey and college football.

Versus is in 75 million homes and averaged 125,000 viewers this year through Oct. 4, up 17% from a year earlier, according estimates from Nielsen Co. "We have a huge opportunity," Mr. Shell said of Versus at the June marketing conference in New York, to create "another sports brand in America," he said. Still, Versus's average number of viewers is less than a seventh of ESPN's, and just over a third of that on ESPN2.

Winning new sports rights would cost money on top of NBC Universal's already hefty commitments, including more than $600 million a year for its NFL games, and the $2 billion it has committed for the next two Olympics. Many packages of rights are already locked up for years.

But size could bring other advantages. College-sports conferences, in particular, want deals that cover multiple outlets to air more of their events. ESPN has been most able to do so, for instance, putting one game on ABC and another on ESPN2.

"It really gives you a substantial array of networks to throw into a package," Lee H. Berke, a TV-sports consultant, says of a potential union of NBC Sports and Comcast's sports networks.