Category Archives: Sherman Spotlight

What’s another billion dollars? NBC spends big money to land NASCAR; analysis of new deal

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At some point, you would think the cartoonish spending for sports on TV will end. The money has to run out eventually, right?

Well, that wasn’t the case Tuesday. According to Sports Business Daily, NBC shelled out $4.4 billion for a new 10-year contract to air NASCAR on NBC and NBC Sports Network, beginning in 2015.

From Tripp Mickle and John Ourand:

That represents a significant media rights increase for NASCAR over the more than $2.28B paid by ESPN and Turner Sports combined for the same number of Sprint Cup and Nationwide races in their current 8-year agreements. This comes after NASCAR received a more than 30% increase in its earlier deal with Fox that covers the first half of its season.

Why was NBC so motivated? Of the 20 races in this package, 13 will be shown on NBC Sports Network. That’s prime live programming for a sports network that saw itself get left on the sidelines for MLB and some of the major college rights deals. Now NASCAR gives NBC SN a valuable property in the summer and fall.

NBC Sports chairman Mark Lazarus called the deal “a game changer.” Whether it leaves NBC without any change in its pocket remains to be seen, but Tuesday wasn’t a day for crunching numbers.

“Over the past two and a half years, we have set forth, since Comcast bought NBC, to renew and acquire properties,” Lazarus said. “We’ve done a significant amount of deals in that time period, but this is one that we’ve really been focused on. The fact that we are going to be working with all of those NASCAR constituencies to build content for NBC, NBC Sports Network, our regional sports networks, the quantity of content that this deal provides and the quality of content that this provides is really a game changer for us for our entire group, and we can’t wait to get started.”

As for NASCAR, why leave ESPN, which is seen in 20 million more homes than NBC SN? Well, it is following the NHL’s lead here.

At ESPN, NASCAR often trailed in the fumes from the network’s coverage of football, college and pro, the NBA, and MLB. At NBC and NBC SN, NASCAR will be the main game in town during its coverage season. The scenario has worked out well for the NHL.

Indeed, when you think about it, how weird was it to hear NASCAR president Brian France invoke hockey when discussing the new deal?

France said: “I can tell you from our discussions as we negotiated this, the integration, and I know that word is used a lot and over used probably sometimes, but the reality is that you can see what they’ve done with the NHL and other properties. They’re in a mode where they’re pulling together all their properties.  They still have a bigger emphasis on big events on network television.”

Lazarus added: “What I think we’ve demonstrated over the past several years is that when we’re able to have a property like the Olympics, the NHL,  the Premier League,  NASCAR, Formula 1, we’re able to bring an audience and surround it with content. (We do it) both on broadcast, on cable, in digital by promoting and marketing using our RSNs. We’re able to bring a level of awareness to a sport, to a property that is frankly unparalleled in the industry, and that’s what we intend to do with NASCAR.”

Starting in 2015, there will be 10 years to see if this deal works for both parties. And for NASCAR fans.

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For those who want more, here is the entire transcript to the call:

BRIAN FRANCE:  Good afternoon, everyone.  Obviously a very exciting and huge day for the sport of NASCAR, the industry of NASCAR and all of our stakeholders, and before I talk just a moment for how excited we are about the future, and I certainly want to make mention of two partners who are not going to be renewing their rights, that being TNT and Turner and ESPN.  We’ve been together one way or the other for 30 plus years, and they’ve done an outstanding job of presenting the NASCAR story week in and week out, and we’ll certainly miss them in many ways.

But this isn’t about the present, it’s about the future, and the future for us, with all of the assets of NBC and Universal and Comcast, made a very compelling point to us that we’re better together going forward with their family of networks and assets, and not to mention the fact that we’ve had a long standing and long confidence in Mark Lazarus, who spearheaded the deal on their part.  So we had a high degree of confidence that Mark brought to the table, and we’ve outlined what we think is just a terrific agreement, one that’s going to present the sport    we think it’s going to be very, very compelling on how that’s going to get done, and there’s a lot of work to be done on the NBC side, and they’re excited about just that.

But what we know is the integration of the assets that they are marshaling together, because this is going to be such an important franchise sport for them, made it to be so compelling that it was just the right choice.  So I know I speak for everybody at NASCAR, including our stakeholders, our drivers, teams, tracks and sponsors, and I’ve talked to an awful lot of them here in the last 24 hours, and there’s a real excitement about partnering with NBC and what I’ve told them, and we’re thrilled to be part of the NBC Sports family.

With that I will turn it back over to you, Greg.

GREG HUGHES:  Thank you, Brian.  Now the chairman of the NBC Sports Group, Mark Lazarus.

MARK LAZARUS:  Thanks.  I’ll simply start by saying we are back.  We are thrilled to be back.  When NBC was involved with NASCAR from 2001 to 2006, it was a very good experience for NBC, the rich history of NASCAR.  We think that the stakeholders at NASCAR, led by Brian as well as the teams, the owners, the tracks, the drivers, will all welcome us back with open arms based on previous history and experience with us, and we couldn’t be happier to have NASCAR back as a tent pole property for NBC and NBC Sports Network, as well as integrating, as Brian said, other assets into the deal.

Over the past two and a half years, we have set forth, since Comcast bought NBC, to renew and acquire properties.  We’ve done a significant amount of deals in that time period, but this is one that we’ve really been focused on, one that we have wanted to have the opportunity to be able to sit at the table when contractual opportunities came due, and the fact that we are going to be working with all of those NASCAR constituencies to build content for NBC, NBC Sports Network, our regional sports networks, the quantity of content that this deal provides and the quality of content that this provides is really a game changer for us for our entire group, and we can’t wait to get started.

GREG HUGHES:  Now let’s go to Steve Herbst, NASCAR vice president of broadcasting and production.

STEVE HERBST:  Thanks.  I just wanted to echo what Brian said earlier, just that NBC brings so much to the table for NASCAR, outstanding production quality, great promotional opportunities with all their other properties.  Some of the best championship programming you’ll see out there lives on NBC, and I think it’s the start of something really special, a very special partnership.

With today’s announcement and the FOX agreement we came to in the fall, our TV picture, our puzzle is almost complete.  We have one more package out there.  It’s a first half Nationwide package with 14 Nationwide races, along with three Cup races.  That package is being discussed.  We have ongoing negotiations, and we plan to place that very soon, and that will all move very quickly.

Finally from me I just want to say for ESPN and Turner, they are our partners through 2014.  High class organizations with great leadership with John Skipper and David Levy and others.  We’ll work closely with them through the balance of this season and next season to deliver great product to the fans.

Q.  Steve and Brian, can you give me a sense, you don’t always see a property leaving ESPN.  What is it about the NBC Universal Comcast asset that you find at least or more compelling than ESPN’s assets, which are always talked about, their many, many, many platforms?

BRIAN FRANCE:  Well, I’ll take that.  First of all, I think it’s the commitment that they’ve made in terms of how important NASCAR is going to be within the already robust properties that they have, and start with that.  And I can tell you from our discussions as we negotiated this, the integration, and I know that word is used a lot and over used probably sometimes, but the reality is that you can see what they’ve done with the NHL and other properties; they’re in a mode where they’re pulling together all their properties, and non sports properties, as well, and plus the network.  They still have a bigger emphasis on big events on network television.

So a combination of all of that, and then the trust that we have in Mark, because we’ve done business with him for many, many years, it brought it to a point where this is the right place for us to be.

Q.  My question is for Brian, following up on that.  The last time ESPN didn’t have a deal with you guys from 2001 to 2006, it seemed to affect their coverage of the races.  I know you guys weren’t as big a presence on SportsCenter.  They’re such a Goliath on the sporting landscape.  Are you worried about how you might be affected in terms of being presented on ESPN?

BRIAN FRANCE:  You know, we’re actually not, and the reason is it’s a different time now.  They have different thinking about how they want to cover sports.  John Skipper is as good as it gets in his organization, and we’ve had conversations.  Obviously you think about all those things, but the reality is they have to cover the big events that people watch every weekend, and I don’t    you never can predict the future, but we didn’t think that was something that would hold us back from making this deal, that’s for sure.

Q.  So they’ll still be invited or credentialed for races if they choose to do that in 2015 and beyond?

BRIAN FRANCE:  Well, yes, but obviously there are exclusive rights and some things we’ll have to all work through, but that’s not anything different than what naturally occurs.  So we’ll be working through that.  I have no problem that this is a different time than way back when, and I’m certain that we’ll all figure that out together.

Q.  Brian, can you talk about the balance between having races on network versus races on cable, specifically NBC Sports Network?  I don’t know if you can give us any final figure of how many races per season will be on network total and cable with the combined deals.

STEVE HERBST:  Are you asking about the NBC package or the overall package?

Q.  I know the NBC package.  I was curious if you could give us any sort of figure for the entire package, at least for 33 of the 36.

STEVE HERBST:  So the first half package obviously with FOX, we’re still discussing the mix there, so I don’t have an overall number for you.  You see the split for the second half Cup on NBC of 13 and 7, but we are not ready to talk about    13 and 7 for NBC.  But we’ll have information in due time on what the total season will look like.

MARK LAZARUS:  Let me just talk a little bit about having a balance and having both the broadcast and NBC Sports Network.  What we have found and what we have learned and what I think we’ve demonstrated over the past several years is that when we’re able to have a property, whether it’s a part of a season or an entire season or complete ownership of a property like the Olympics, like the national hockey league, like premier league, like NASCAR, like Formula 1, and we’re able to bring an audience and surround it with content, both on broadcast, on cable, in digital by promoting and marketing using our RSNs, that we’re able to bring a level of awareness to a sport, to a property that is frankly unparalleled    equal to or unparalleled in the industry, and that’s what we intend to do with NASCAR.  By having this mix, what we always do is make big events bigger, and that’s what we’ll do each Saturday and Sunday from July on starting in 2015.

Q.  Let me ask Brian, do you consider it a risk at all to go from what I would say is the more    obviously an older, more established cable network to one that’s kind of still in its infancy?

BRIAN FRANCE:  No, because if you look at what they’re doing right now, and Mark just outlined it, he’s not just talking conceptually.  They’re doing that right now with record ratings with the NHL and the integration of the Olympics, Sunday Night Football.  I mean, don’t forget, they have a robust lineup obviously without us, and we’re going to add to that in a significant way.

I can assure you from hearing from leadership throughout the Comcast system, they didn’t just want to own sports properties, they wanted to integrate within all their assets, and they’re doing it right now.  We don’t have to guess about it.  We’re looking forward to it.

Q.  I just wonder if you could talk about, it’s probably too early for this since it’s a couple years ago, but will you be bringing over some of the TNT or ESPN or NASCAR on air talent to NBC or NBC Sports, and also, how does this affect the future of the IndyCar Series on NBC and NBC Sports?

MARK LAZARUS:  Well, two questions there.  Let me start with the talent question:  First of all, all those folks are under contract to TNT and ESPN, and we’re respectful of those contracts.  It is too early.  Frankly this deal began and ended in very short order and expeditiously, so our production team is learning about it in sort of real time here, so they haven’t even spent any energy thinking about talent, though my guess is their heads are spinning and they’re thinking very hard now.  We have a couple of years on that.

But what I do promise is that when we hire talent, we do it with the thought of being relevant to the core fan but also being welcoming and open to the casual or new fan, and I think when you look around our Mount Rushmore of broadcasters, whether it’s Al Michaels, Cris Collinsworth, Johnny Miller, Bob Costas and others that I’m sure that I know I’m leaving off, Dan Patrick, that we are second to none both in play by play and analysts, and we will continue that with NASCAR as we move towards the beginning of our contract.

How does it relate to IndyCar?  We think that this gives us    listen, we have IndyCar rights for NBC Sports Network.  We do not own the rights for broadcast.  Those are held by ABC and ESPN, by ABC, so we are only the cable partner there, so we are not able to do what we do with other sports by wrapping around it fully.

This will have no impact there, other than that I believe with us now being the home to the second half of the NASCAR season, the home for cable for Indy and the home to Formula 1, that we are one of the    probably the most dominant home for motorsports, and that that circulation of motorsports fans will be good for all.

Q.  Mark, I have a follow up on what you just said, which is that you’re the dominant home for motorsports.  With three racing series that are worldwide, was it NBC Sports group’s design to sort of grab the motorsports market, or is that just sort of how the properties fell?

MARK LAZARUS:  Well, you know, a design would be probably too forward thinking.  As we saw the way rights were developing over the last 24 months, we saw an opportunity, and as SPEED Channel decided to make its migration to something more multisport, we saw an opportunity to potentially fill a gap in the marketplace that might not be satisfied, and so we set forth, not knowing whether NASCAR would ever be able to us, but we set forth with the others.  We inherited the IndyCar deal.  We were able to acquire the F1 deal and that gave us the base.

But then seeing the opportunity that might exist with NASCAR, we believed that we can fill a gap in the marketplace for fans, for marketers and potentially with our cable operators and affiliates.

No one else has ever had all three of those.

Q.  Steve, I have a question for you, and I may be incorrect, but it’s my understanding NBC Sports Network is blocked in Canada, and one thing we see is a lot of complaints from Canadian fans about their ability to access NASCAR coverage, so how will you address that?

STEVE HERBST:  We have a TSN relationship that will continue, and we have broadcast TV, so our broadcast TV will reach Canada.  We have the ongoing TSN relationship, and that’s how we’ll service our Canadian fans.

Q.  Mark, what did you learn about effectively relaunching NHL hockey on TV that you can apply to NASCAR?  And my second question is for Brian:  Brian, are you getting an annual rights fee increase, and will we see any races on the new FOX Sports 1?

MARK LAZARUS:  What we learned from NHL is two things:  One, the ability to have both the broadcast element and the national cable element on NBC Sports Network allowed us to market and promote across both.  It also allowed us to build shoulder and ancillary programming around the content to consume and surround the fans that we know already like a sport or a property and give them more of that content.  And we will apply all of that to NASCAR.

We’ll also integrate our regional sports networks in that, as well.

The other part that I’ll add is what we have built with all of these tent pole properties is a team of dedicated people that work behind the scenes.  I’ve talked a little bit about our broadcasters and our talent, but when you take people that have worked either at NBC or at other places on these properties over time, and whether it’s John Miller, who does our programming, the other John Miller who does our marketing, Sam Flood, our executive producer, who understand the sport, are agnostic to whether it’s on broadcast or cable, we treat it the same no matter where it is, and the fact that they love the properties that we work on, it allows us to really put fans’ interests at heart, and that’s what we will do here.

BRIAN FRANCE:  Yes, an answer on the  — we will have both Cup and Nationwide on FOX Sports 1 at some level.

Q.  This one is for Mark:  I’m curious, why the 20 number?  Why didn’t you just go 23 and take them all?

MARK LAZARUS:  We were offered a package that had 20 in them, so we bought everything that was made available to us.  That doesn’t mean we bought everything we wanted.

Q.  And then in 2015 Speedweeks, FOX is the primary broadcaster, but are you figuring on having a lot of programming during the FOX side of the contract?

MARK LAZARUS:  We’ll be there as a news organization with the ability to cover it like other news organizations I would imagine, and some of this is still being ferreted out, that we’d have some ability to cover it as a little more than just a typical news organization.  But we’ll have shoulder programming and access, but we’ll be respectful of their rights and what they have bought, as we know they will be in our half of the season.

Q.  And then for Steve, you said that the remaining dates that are available, that you expect those to disappear pretty quick.  Is there any kind of rights battle going on, any kind of bidding war for those at this point?

STEVE HERBST:  I would just say that the rights are out there right now.  The package is there.  We expect it to move quickly, and we’ll be placing those in short order, and we’ll keep you posted.

Q.  Mark, lots of race fans are listening live right now, and the question is they know there’s a different philosophy or identity of each network.  What’s the generic philosophy of covering sports and news on sports for your network, and just a little bit more about what makes NASCAR so compelling for your network?

MARK LAZARUS:  Well, the mantra that we live by is two things:  One, we want to tell great stories, and NASCAR, what makes it so compelling is there are wonderful stories.  There are more than 40 drivers in every race.  It’s the all star game every weekend.  It’s the best athletes in the sport on the same playing surface at the same time, and it’s each and every week.  And whether that’s Saturday or Sunday, you have compelling programming, compelling stories, rivalries that get built over years and years and years.  It’s one of the rare sports where you can have multigenerational athletes competing against each other.  Every track is unique and still has its own stories.  It’s like a golf course in that way; each one has its own way of treating its athletes, and the athletes have to think differently about them, and each of the tracks are like that.

So the stories are incredibly compelling.  We believe that we take the time to develop those stories, develop the personality, make sure fans know the rivalries and why they should care about them, and that’s what we spend our time doing in all sports, and we think that NASCAR suits that production value very well.

Q.  This question is for Brian:  In 2015 when all of the new TV deals are in place, and I know there are still three races unaccounted for, but I think you can still answer this question; will the purses for the Sprint Cup Series races be higher in 2015 than they were in 2014?

BRIAN FRANCE:  Well, the purses are formulated not just off of TV revenue, obviously, and they’re formulated by a number of things.  But I anticipate that they certainly will be.  That would be my guess.

But yeah, this is obviously a lucrative    we wouldn’t have made the change if it weren’t a favorable arrangement for the industry financially, and it is, and everybody will benefit from that as every league does.

Q.  Brian, two questions:  Can you talk about the digital rights that will be a part of this?  In essence what will fans be able to    will there be essentially this version of RaceBuddy and how you envision the digital rights?  And can you talk about the tie in of NASCAR on Sunday afternoons leading into Sunday Night Football?  I would presume that’s part of the interest in all this.

BRIAN FRANCE:  Steve, I’ll let you address the digital rights on our side.

STEVE HERBST:  Yeah, we still hold rights for RaceBuddy.  NBC will have exclusive TV everywhere rights for its events and highlight rights for all of its NBC digital platforms.  Some of those are still developing and working through our digital chief Mark Jenkins, but that’s generally the snapshot there.

MARK LAZARUS:  Yeah, when you get to the fall, when you have not only our wonderful NASCAR schedule but our Sunday Night Football schedule and the beginning of our NHL season, our ability to promote across all three of those to each other we think will be beneficial to all three of those.  As we get closer and as the race schedule and the sanctions come through, we will work with NASCAR to lay out the schedule.  But we don’t anticipate any disruption in coverage for either NASCAR or the NFL due to this deal.  There’s enough latitude that we have with NBC and NBC Sports Network to make sure that doesn’t become an issue.  But we do see greatly the benefits of all of our fall properties being able to promote each other, somewhat overlapping but also to somewhat differentiated audiences, with the help of growing them all.

 

So how much sports will Nate Silver be doing for ESPN?

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Unfortunately, I was out for part of yesterday afternoon. As a result, I wasn’t able to participate in Nate Silver’s teleconference with the media.

ESPN did provide a transcript. It made for interesting reading.

While looking through it, I came away with one question: Will Silver actually be doing sports for the world’s top all-sports network?

I’m sure Silver will since he loves sports and that was his expressed reason for going to ESPN. Silver, though, made it clear sports won’t be the primary agenda for his new FiveThirtyEight site on ESPN.

“You know, what I’ve done now for politics at FiveThirtyEight is an approach we think is applicable to lots of areas,” Silver said. “Obviously I have a background in sports, and that would be a big focus here, but it’s not just going to be a politics site or a sports site.  There’s lots of potential in business and economics and weather and health and education and technology and culture.”

During the teleconference, Silver fielded questions about whether he will be predicting the winners of the Oscars and even the weather. Sports? What’s that?

According to an ESPN spokesman, the many non-sports questions were the result of the type of media on the call.

Deep into the teleconference, Silver finally was asked a sports-related question. There was this exchange.

Q: “I was just curious, you mentioned a little bit about how it’s not going to be strictly sports or strictly political.  What in your opinion would be sort of like the dream home page of what kind of topics you’re covering, if you can go a little bit more specifically into what kind of topics you would like to cover?”

Silver:  “I mean, one model we’ve talked about is kind of the old ‑‑ the current actually USA Today where you have those four sections; you have news, sports, money and life, and you can kind of fit most things we want to cover into one of those four bundles.

“So you have obviously sports is going to be an important focus of the site.  On the news side we’re probably more going to be concerned about elections in particular, but there’s some other types of news.  Weather is one I mentioned.  On the life side it can be fun, kind of cultural stuff, what’s the best place to live, also education‑related things, and then obviously we think we can do maybe a better job than current competitors about how you present economic data to people that understand some of the uncertainty when you have a job support ad every month, what that really means.

“Now, I also know that things will evolve over time, so I can’t predict what the exact mix of content will be.  I do want to emphasize we’re not pulling back from politics.  We’ll probably hire at least one more person to cover politics full‑time, so although my interests might be slightly more divided, we are certainly still going to be fathering election forecasts, certainly going to be writing other coverage of politics.  It’s not going to be a partisan site, as FiveThirtyEight isn’t right now.  It’s not going to be a political commentary, but to the extent there are data‑driven ways to look at politics, it’s been a very successful product for us and will continue to be an emphasis.

“But we have an ambitious and broad take on what we’d like the site to grow into.”

What about the television component for Silver and ESPN? John Skipper, ESPN president, offered a vague response, although he knocked down reports that Silver will be a regular on Keith Olbermann’s new show.

“We don’t have a programmatic plan for where Nate is going to appear,” Silver said. “It’s going to be much more opportunistic and it’s going to tie in much more with what he’s doing on FiveThirtyEight that we think will be interesting on television. The dramatic exception to this would probably be ABC News during an election cycle where we do have every intention of Nate appearing on ABC News to talk about the elections.

“The second point I would make is there have been some speculative notions about where decisions have been made about Nate on television, and those are just wrong.  We have not made any decision about Nate appearing on the Keith Olbermann show, we have not made any decisions about Nate being on the Oscars.”

Having said that, fully expect that Silver will make many appearances on Olbermann’s show. It would be a great platform for him.

I know Silver is about much more than sports. But I write about sports media. So naturally I am interested in his sports component.

It’s going to be a few months before his FiveThirtyEight site is up and running. When it debuts, we’ll get a better idea of how sports factors in.

I know this: Silver didn’t sign with ABC News. He signed with ESPN.

Looking forward to Silver crunching those numbers on my White Sox and beyond.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Q/A with Peter King on new MMQB site: ‘An attempt to stay ahead of curve and not get crushed by curve’

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Peter King was straining to remember the name of the movie.

“You know the one where Robert Redford runs for office,” he said.

The Candidate?

“Yeah, The Candidate,” King said. “Remember when he wins the election and goes to a top aide, ‘What do I do now?’ That’s how I feel about this.”

This is the launch of King’s new site, MMQB.SI.com. Sports Illustrated officially hit the button to go at 8 a.m. this morning.

It appears to be SI’s version of the Bill Simmons-inspired Grantland with one difference: The content will be limited to the NFL. Much like Grantland, don’t expect to find tick-tock stories on who’s going to start at quarterback in Philly and a mountain of stats.

King explained in a debut post this morning:

We’ll be the thinking person’s site for pro football. If you follow us this season, visit TheMMQB.com three or four times a day between now and the Super Bowl, read our stories, watch our videos and listen to our podcasts … and if after doing that you don’t think you’ve been enlightened about the sport America loves, well, then I should be fired.

Indeed, this is an expansion of King’s highly successful Monday Morning Quarterback concept. SI gave King an open slate and told him to create a site on America’s most popular game.

Here’s the complete rundown in a post last week.

King, 56, says, “We’re all trying to figure out ways to be reinvented.”

Kings’ way is a bit more ambitious than most. I talked with him last week about the goals and hopes for the new site.

This thing is really happening. How does it feel?

It’s a little bit like when I was a kid on the night before opening day. I was a big Red Sox fan and I’d sit there like a nerd and write out the lineups for both teams. Now I’m deciding what stories to run. It’s sort of like making a starting lineup.

It’s different for me. It’s the next thing I was hoping to do. To be able to make some decisions and to run something my way. Fortunately, I have a lot of smart people around to help me.

Why did you want to do your own site?

The ability to say this is what I would like to do and here are the people I would like to do it with.This is an attempt to stay ahead of the curve and not get crushed by the curve.

In 1997, I got asked to do “Monday Morning Quarterback.” They needed content for SI.com. I had no idea it would be as widely read as it was.

That taught me a lot. Any time there is something new offered to you, you better consider it. You don’t know which way the media is going. Pay attention to new trends. If you don’t, you die.

What is your vision for the site?

What I like to do, and part of the excitement in this, is to bring people inside the NFL. Access. If you look at what I’ve done at Sports Illustrated, that’s a big part of it.

(This week), we have a story about a guy who got cut from Jacksonville in June. I asked him if he would do it. He said he really didn’t want to. Then he decided to do it. I think it is riveting. It takes you inside what it is like to be cut by an NFL team.

This is what I want to do: Experiential journalism.

What will a typical day look like for MMQB?

Once we get into the season, we’re going to post new stories or videos, or a combination of both at 8, 11, 2, and 5 (ET). Obviously, if there’s news, we’ll check in. During training camp, we won’t be as tied to the clock.

We’ll have regular features such as a 3 questions, 3 at 3. Our first subject is Joe Namath.

What about statistics and game coverage?

We’re not going to run NFL statistics. There are plenty of places to find that. We’re still talking about how we’re going to cover fantasy football. We don’t know if we’re going to cover games. We’re still making the decision.

It’s all about figuring out what the consumer of the NFL wants. I don’t know what the consumer of the NFL wants, but I have a gut feeling they want us to get to as many games as possible.

You’ve hired three writers (Robert Klemko, Jenny Vrentas and Greg Bedard), two of whom are in their 20s. What does that say about the direction for the site?

They’re young. They have new ideas. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t have half of the answers. I want young people telling me this is what we should do. I want their ideas.

You are going to use Richard Deitsch to write about the NFL and media. Don’t know if you’ve heard, but you might have to ride herd on him.

Thanks for the heads up. Richard is going to do a weekly column and then longer pieces about the business. TV and radio, and TV in particular, is how the vast majority of people experience football. We want to make sure he has the opportunity to do the stories he wants to do.

You had options to go to other places. How important was getting the site in your decision to stay at Sports Illustrated?

I could have done this elsewhere. Sports Illustrated wasn’t the only place that gave me the opportunity.

I have a loyalty to Sports Illustrated. I know why I am where I am. I wouldn’t be in this position if not for the platforms Sports Illustrated allowed me to have. Sports Illustrated is the right place to do this.

This is all new. Do you envision the site might look different a year from now?

We’re still making a lot of decisions. We’re still a work in progress. We want to make sure we don’t repeat mistakes if we think we’re making them.

You mentioned The Candidate in talking about this new site. Does that mean Robert Redford will play you in the movie version?

Of course.

 

All-Star Game ratings: Young viewers not tuning in; Rivera’s big moment prevented record low

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Been a busy couple days, but I wanted to re-visit the ratings for the All-Star Game.

Technically, Fox can boast about a 1 percent increase over 2012 with 11 million viewers tuning in. The final rating was at 6.9, up from 6.8, an all-time low for the Mid-Summer Classic.

Yet that’s a disappointing number. The rating should have been higher, given that the game was in the nation’s No. 1 market (hey, there’s Seinfeld) and the Mariano Rivera factor. The New York rating was up 16 percent from last year, and the game peaked at 7.6 when Rivera came on to pitch in the eighth inning.

Take out those two elements, and this year’s edition likely is the least viewed All-Star game of all time.

Even more distressing for Fox and MLB was who didn’t watch the game: Young viewers. According to the TVSportsRatings feed on Twitter, men 50 and over accounted for 34 percent of the audience, the highest ever. In 1993, it was 24 percent.

TVSportsRatings tweets:

Between ’93 and ’13, ASG has lost 51% of its average audience and 63% of its Male 18-49 rating.

Jason McIntyre of Big Lead added more:

NBA AS on TNT had a 5.7 Men 18-49 and 6.37 M18-34. MLB had 4.5 and 3.5. NBA had 8 mil viewers. MLB 11 mil.

As I have been saying for a long time, baseball isn’t growing new fans. I have first-hand evidence in my own home with two sports-crazed teenage sons. They watch only a little baseball on TV and that’s more than their friends, who barely watch at all. It’s all about football, basketball, and even hockey for them with the Blackhawks in the Chicago market.

Clearly, baseball has issues. I will examine it more later on, but I want to leave you with this tweet from Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports on Neil Diamond:

Baseball wants to get a younger fan base. Naturally, it brings out a 72-year-old to sing in the middle of one of its highest-profile games.

Yes, enough with Neil Diamond at baseball games.

 

 

 

 

Hawk Harrelson night on MLB Network: New documentary chronicles most interesting life

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My latest Chicago Tribune column focuses on tonight’s new documentary: Hawk: The Colorful Life of Ken Harrelson. You can access here via my Twitter feed.

The White Sox announcer truly has led a remarkable life, hanging with a who’s-who of sports and beyond. He tells tales about Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Jack Nicklaus, Vince Lombardi, Rocky Marciano, Howard Cosell and more. And those are only the stories that made it into the film.

From the column:

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For one, maybe two generations, Ken Harrelson is known strictly as the voice of the White Sox, the team’s most passionate fan behind the microphone.

Yet there is much, much more to “Hawk.” He was a flamboyant, trend-setting player during a time of great change for baseball in the 1960s. He hung with everyone and anyone in sports and beyond. Heck, Harrelson says he was with Joe Namath the night before Super Bowl III.

And it wasn’t just baseball. Harrelson was a good enough golfer to qualify for the 1972 British Open at Muirfield. Naturally, it was Jack Nicklaus who persuaded him to make the trip to Scotland.

It’s all there in “Hawk: The Colorful Life of Ken Harrelson.” The documentary debuts at 6 p.m. Thursday on MLB Network.

Harrelson said he was flattered that MLB Network wanted to do a film about him.

“They asked me some questions that I hadn’t been asked in years about things that I hadn’t thought about in years,” Harrelson said. “It was really interesting. They brought some things out of me that I just hadn’t thought about.”

Narrator Bob Costas sets the stage early on.

“Baseball has had its share of characters, but few are as colorful and more enduring than Ken ‘Hawk’ Harrelson,” Costas said.

The portion about Harrelson’s broadcasting style will be familiar territory to Chicago baseball fans. Costas jokes, “Above all, (Harrelson is) an objective, down-the-middle broadcaster.”

Yet the heart of the documentary is Harrelson telling one story after another about his experiences in and out of the game. MLB Network interviewed him in the Sox broadcast booth and at his home, where he was wearing a Blackhawks cap.

“I wasn’t interested in doing a five-minute piece on him,” producer Bruce Cornblatt said. “He’s an incredible storyteller. The details are so engaging. We just wanted to turn on the camera and let it go.”

 

No thanks: Lisa Olson declines to be interviewed for ESPN film on women sportswriters

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Lisa Olson declined to be interviewed in the definitive film about women sportswriters.

The directors of Let Them Wear Towels, which airs tonight on ESPN at 8 p.m. ET, used archive interviews with Olson (left in photo) to help tell the story of the infamous locker room incident involving the New England Patriots.

Olson passed when approached by directors Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern.

You can understand why. The backlash was so harsh again Olson, she eventually went to Australia to try to escape some of the madness. Clearly, she isn’t eager to revisit an extremely painful part of her life.

Last month, Olson was given the Association for Women in Sports Media’s Mary Garber Pioneer Award. Paola Boivin of the Arizona Republic did a column on Olson.

Boivin writes:

They broke into her apartment. Slashed her tires. Spit on her at games. The torment was incessant. When her employer, News Corp., offered her an opportunity to work overseas, she jumped at the chance. She intended to remain in Australia for six months. She stayed for six years.

The incident was a watershed moment for women in sports journalism. Even though the NFL had enacted an equal-access policy five years earlier, women in the business were still scrutinized, chastised and ridiculed. The story prompted conversation and inspired teams to take a closer look at the behavior of players.

Australia, meanwhile, suited her well.

“I used to hate the ‘things happen for a reason’ (saying), but … they did,” she said. “I left Boston very sad, not knowing what my career was going to be like. It took me a month there to realize you make of it what you want to make of it, and that there was a whole other world than covering sports in Boston.”

AWSM has the write-up on Olson’s acceptance speech (that’s AWSM’s Meri-Jo Borzilleri on right).

In her acceptance speech, Olson covered highlights — and lowlights — of her career, from being a high school sports editor to her first job and to her time as the first female sports columnist in Australia.

“Live like someone is watching but don’t compromise yourself,” Olson said. “Be kind to each other. Lift each other up. Treat your critics with kindness and remember all who came before you.

“I was so blessed to have this incredible army of women behind me — they’re still behind me.”

 

Why aren’t people watching All-Star Game? Significant ratings decline since ’08

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My latest column for the National Sports Journalism Center site at Indiana University is on ratings and the All-Star Game. They have been in decline in recent years.

From the column:

In 1986, Tim McCarver worked his first MLB All-Star game as an analyst for ABC. Pairing with Al Michaels and Jim Palmer, the game did a 20 rating with a 35 share. An average of nearly 30 million viewers tuned in to watch the American League’s 3-2 victory in Houston.

Fast forward to Tuesday night in New York. McCarver will call his 22d and final All-Star game, this time working with Joe Buck at Fox.

Depending on the quality of the game, there’s a strong possibility Fox’s rating could be one-third of what it was for McCarver’s first All-Star game in 1986.

Now let’s not get into a prolonged discussion on how the TV landscape has changed since the 80s. In 1982, 44 percent of U.S. televisions in use were tuned into the All-Star game on that night. The all-time high was a 53 share in 1976.

OK, those days are long gone. However, this is about recent history. Last year’s game in Kansas City did a 6.8 rating with a 12 share. The game averaged nearly 11 million viewers.

The TV numbers were the worst in All-Star Game history. They are off sharply since the ’08 game in Yankee Stadium, which did a 9.3 rating, 16 share, and an average of 14.5 million viewers.

Since then:

2009: 8.9 rating, 15 share, 14,610,000 viewers.

2010: 7.5, 13, 12,100,000

2011: 6.9, 12, 11,000,000

2012: 6.8, 12, 10,900,000

So what’s going on? Why the major tune-out for the Mid-Summer Classic?

During a conference call with reporters last week, Eric Shanks, Fox Sports’ co-president, tried to put on a positive spin despite the recent declining numbers.

Problem? What problem?

“The Mid-Summer Classic is still a jewel event,” Shanks said. “At Fox Sports, we look at it as a part of our total baseball business. We still have a healthy local baseball business and very strong demand for our national business and strong demand for the All-Star Game. When you put it in context among all of the entertainment choices out there, this is the top end of the summer. Not just the All-Star Game, but baseball itself. The national game of the week on Saturday nights is winning the night against all networks.  I feel that it’s very healthy.”

Healthy, though, is a relative term. While Fox and MLB might not admit it publicly, a 25-30 percent drop in ratings for the All-Star Game has to be cause for concern.

******

For more analysis, check out my NSJC column.

 

 

Sunday books: Baseball writers talk about covering the beat; author Q/A

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In 1986, I got thrown off the deep end and was named the White Sox beat reporter for the Chicago Tribune. I only was 26 and never had covered a beat. Suddenly, I now was entrusted with one of the most high-profile assignments for the sports section.

Somehow, I survived the endless travel and brutal lifestyle (which I hated). Then there were the endless games, terrible deadlines and a season that didn’t end with Game 162 (not a favorite of those, either). I reported on the White Sox for just under three years before I was moved over to become the Tribune’s national college football writer.

Bottom line: Covering baseball easily was the hardest job I ever had in 30-plus years in the business. It was a great experience that I never would want to do again.

Yet I’m glad I did it once. There’s a badge of honor in this profession to say you once were a baseball beat writer for a newspaper. Given the volume of travel and games, it is the sportswriter’s equivalent of being on the frontline.

The story of baseball writers is told vividly in a new book, Keepers of the Game: When the Baseball Beat was the Best Job on the Paper. Written by Dennis D’Agostino, the book features chapters on 23 baseball writers, many of whom are familiar names in their towns and beyond: Peter Gammons, Hal McCoy, Ross Newhan, Stan Isaacs, Rick Hummel, Bill Madden and more. I was thrilled D’Agostino included Joe Goddard of the Chicago Sun-Times and Dave van Dyck, who covered baseball for the Chicago Sun-Times and Tribune. If not for “Young Joe” and Vandy, who were my “competitors” on the beat, I’d still probably be trying to find the Sox spring training home in Sarasota, Fla.

D’Agostino followed the same format used by legendary baseball writer Jerome Holtzman in his legendary book, No Cheering in the Press Box. He turned on his tape recorder and let the baseball writers provide an oral history of their craft.

Here is my Q/A:

What gave you the idea to write this book?

In my two previous books, an oral history of the New York Knicks and a coffee table book of photos of the old Brooklyn Dodgers, I had really enjoyed using the oral history process to tell a story. I don’t think I’m ever going to write a book that has 50 pages of footnotes or 30 pages of stat tables or endless passages copied out of The New York Times microfilm, which is the way a lot of sports books are done today. I’d much rather seek out the people involved, run a tape recorder, and ask them, “What was it like?” The late Steve Sabol had a great quote from his father Ed that I’ve always remembered: “Tell me a fact and I’ll learn, tell me the truth and I’ll believe, but tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.” I’ve never forgotten that.

Like so many of us, a staple of my growing up was Jerome Holtzman’s No Cheering in the Press Box, which I think my aunt and uncle bought for me when I was in high school. Even then, they knew! What Holtzman did was amazing, interviewing all those old writers from the first part of the 20th century. It’s such a brilliant book that you keep referring to it, over and over again. It never gets old. It’s been on my shelf for 40 years now.

So that book has always been in my head, so to speak. Then, after I did the Brooklyn Dodger photo book, I thought about doing what Holtzman had done, but with who? For better or worse, everybody in baseball, it seemed, had been given the first-person oral history treatment. . .players (starting with Larry Ritter’s classic The Glory of Their Times), managers, umpires, announcers, behind-the-scenes people, even batboys.

Then I realized that the one group who had never been heard from was perhaps the most influential of them all. . .the guys who wrote about the game back when the beat writers were at the peak of their power, before all the technology we have today splintered the media’s influence. Holtzman did his book on general sportswriters and columnists. I decided to center on guys who had made their reputations as baseball beat writers, and the older they were, the farther back they went, the better. I also knew I needed to have a good mix of writers from around the country. It couldn’t be an all-New York or all-Boston book.

The more I thought of it, the more it appealed to me. These guys produced so much copy, wrote so many words, had so much power, and yet — with rare exceptions — their own stories had never been told. These were guys I had grown up reading in the papers and The Sporting News, and then, when I went to the AP and the Mets, many became mentors and friends. That was a long time ago, and in a way, this book is a thank you note to them. My only regret is that I didn’t get everyone into the book that I wanted to. I can name at least a half-dozen guys who should be there but aren’t. Maybe in the paperback edition!

At one point, being the baseball writer was the best job at the newspaper. Why?

I’m thinking of two lines by Dick Young. . .”I don’t want to be a millionaire, I just want to live like one”. . .and “At what other job do you spend most of your time laughing?”

It’s really impossible to imagine how influential the baseball writer was at one time. Baseball was king, and it was the daily coverage in the newspapers that helped make it so. The beat writer was in every way a local (and even national) celebrity. And baseball was quick to realize it. When baseball needed official scorers, or a body to select its major award winners, who did they turn to? When the Hall of Fame started, who did baseball ask to come up with a voting process and make the selections?  When you watch an old baseball movie, who’s the most trusted friend of the star? (think Walter Brennan in The Pride of the Yankees). Later on, when baseball expanded and teams relocated, who were the biggest movers and shakers not only in the media but also among the politicians, helping their cities get major league teams?

In addition, the baseball beat writer enjoyed unparalleled longevity. Every city, it seemed, had a handful of writers who’d been there since the beginning of time. Guys like John Drebinger and Fred Lieb covered Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and Marvelous Marv. Who would want to give up a position of such prominence and influence?

How has the job changed? Deadlines, relationships with players/managers, etc..

You begin, obviously, with the technological revolution. Look at how things have changed just in the last 20 years. Twenty years ago, no one had ever heard of the internet. Ten years ago, no one had ever heard of Twitter or Facebook. Yet those things, combined with ESPN and talk radio, have changed everything. Now the beat writer, who used to be the undisputed source for all your baseball information, is just one of many, many options. And those options are growing every day.

I wanted guys in the book whose careers spanned so far back that they could tell me about sending stories by Western Union and via teletype. I figured that a concept like that would be so foreign to the readers of today that, unless you were around back then, you wouldn’t believe it was done that way. Most of those guys qualified, and so many told me about walking the streets in the dead of night, looking for a Western Union office. Stan Hochman went into great detail about that, all the way down to a legendary figure named Shorty who would receive Stan’s copy in the middle of the night at Western Union in Philadelphia, then ride his bike to hand-deliver it to the paper. That’s how far we’ve come.

Just about every guy lamented that the relationships between the writers and the guys they covered — the players, managers and executives — is nowhere near as close and trusting as it was back then. Several reasons for that. One is the sheer number of media people that now surround a baseball team; much, much more than at any other time because of all the new media. Athletes are much more distrustful now as a result. I had a few guys who had covered the Mantle-Maris home run chase, like Stan Isaacs, Phil Pepe and Jim Henneman, and they all said that for all of the stories about Maris being besieged by the media, the sheer numbers of people in the clubhouse weren’t anywhere near what they are today. There were a lot more writers, maybe, but that was it.

Another thing just about all of them pointed out was the travel. Back then, the writers all traveled with the team. . on the bus, on the plane, everywhere. They all stayed at the same hotel. That produced a closeness that’s impossible to imagine today. Also, the subject of access came up a lot. Guys like Henneman and Bob Hertzel told me about being able to sit with the manager in the dugout right up until the national anthem, almost. That certainly isn’t the case today, where the manager and players are available only at specific times.

One more thing. There was a lot more, for want of a better word, schmoozing back in the day. Many of the guys I interviewed pointed out that, with the internet, today’s writers are producing copy almost 24 hours a day, and there’s almost no time to get to know the guys you’re covering. Hochman told me that often he’d just pull up a chair in the clubhouse and talk to a guy, face-to-face, for a half hour. Not a lot of that is done today.

Did you get a lot of “It was better back then…” responses?

Yes, including several along the lines of, “Now, I swore that I’d never be one of those guys who’d say that it was better in the old days, but it WAS better in the old days.” It’s a natural reaction. That period when you were young and full of energy, learning the business and being a vital force in the paper every day. . .naturally, you’re going to look upon those days with great fondness. Leonard Koppett once had a great quote about every baseball fan having his or her own personal golden age, when everything about the game was the absolute best it could be. Same with these guys.

I explored the Chipmunk thing quite a bit with guys like Stan Isaacs, Phil Pepe, Maury Allen and Hochman. Back then, the older, established writers complained that the Chipmunks had no respect for the game or the profession, that they were young egotistical guys bent on upsetting all the traditions. Well, now the Chipmunks are all retired and they’re complaining about the same thing from today’s journalists. And I guarantee you that, 40 years from now, the bloggers and the social media experts of today will be complaining about whatever new technology exists, saying, “You know, it was so much better in the old days. . .”

What stories stood out for you?

To an extent, they all did. I’m so grateful that every one of those guys spent so much time with me and gave so much of themselves. In that sense, I don’t want to single anyone out.

A couple of guys got so emotional that they actually broke down a little bit while they were talking to me. I won’t mention who, but that really got to me.

I do mention in the book that Bill Conlin’s interview was the most emotional, the funniest, and the loudest of everyone I talked to. If you know anything about Conlin, you know what I’m talking about. Because of what happened with Conlin later on, I elected not to include his chapter, which was a shame for so many reasons. But I had to make that call.

Dave van Dyck was very interesting in that he didn’t talk too much in terms of specific memories or about his career in detail, but rather about the overall experience and about how quickly time flies when you don’t even realize it. He mentioned that when he started, he felt that there was no way he was ever going to last writing baseball nearly as long as Jerome Holtzman or Dick Dozer of any of those Chicago guys. . .and then he woke up one day and, bang, it had happened.

I loved the story Bob Hertzel told me. When Hertz was covering the Reds, Pat Corrales, the backup catcher, lived right next door and every morning after a game he’d show up on Hertz’ doorstep with the paper and critique what he’d written. I don’t think any writers live next door to players today.

In your mind, what makes the writers who have been at it for decades special? How do they do it?

The daily grind, for one thing. These guys were in the paper every single day and they were the undisputed link between the game and its fans. They were so well-known. . .remember the “Meet the Press” section that every team used to have in its yearbook? There’s a line from Holtzman in the book where he says that being a beat writer was much better and more advantageous then being a columnist, because the beat guy was read every single day.

Many of the guys told me how they hated to take days off, which is incredible when you think of the grind of a six-month season. But the best writers realized that baseball is a daily soap opera. Every day is a different chapter, and what happened yesterday does affect what happens today, and the day after that.

These were the guys who were in the trenches every day. They didn’t write the history of the game off clippings or Google searches, like many do today. They did it all on deadline, and the best ones did it with a style and professionalism that set them apart.

Not too long ago I came across something on ebay. It was a trading card set someone had put together a few years ago called “Great Baseball Writers”. Make no mistake about it, there were some big names in that set, guys who have written baseball classics in fiction and whatnot. But not one of them, not one, was a newspaper beat guy. I looked at that and said, “Someone’s missing the point here.”

Finally, what is it like to be married to an NHL Hall of Famer (Los Angeles Times hockey writer Helene Elliott)?

Well, I certainly married up. . .or as someone once said, I outkicked the coverage. She’s every bit a legend. I mean, she used to hang out with Royko, for goodness sake. Our dinner conversations usually center on the relative merits of Pierre Pilote, Keith Magnuson and Clark Gillies.

Technically, Helene is a “media honoree” in the Hockey Hall of Fame, just as the guys who have won the Spink Award aren’t technically enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. When she won the Elmer Ferguson Award in 2005, she was the first woman honored by the media wing of one of the “Big Four” sports Halls of Fame. I think she beat Lesley Visser by six months.

Frankly, I think I’ve always been more excited about it than she is. She always tries to downplay it, while I insist she always be introduced as “Hall of Fame writer Helene Elliott”, and stuff like that. She has a Hall of Fame jacket that I think she’s worn twice. It changes your life, but as she’ll tell you, you still have to go to work every day and crank it out.

And it does have some real advantages. When the Kings won the Stanley Cup last year, we got the Cup at our house for a few hours. At the start of the playoffs this year, the neighbors were already asking if we were going to get it again. Right now, it looks a little dicey.

Golf Channel’s Molly Solomon: On making history, role models and working with husband

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Molly Solomon making history at the Golf Channel is the subject of my latest column for the National Sports Journalism Center site at Indiana.

From the column:

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Molly Solomon never was into the notion of role models until she went on a trip to New York this spring.

Last summer, Solomon made history when she was named executive producer for the Golf Channel. The appointment made her the first woman to assume that role for a sports division.

Initially, Solomon downplayed the distinction. She insists she never saw herself as a female sports producer.

“I just wanted to be known as a producer,” she said.

Solomon’s attitude, though, changed a few months ago. During a trip to the Sports Emmy Awards in New York, Solomon visited her former staffers at NBC.

Solomon said she had “an epiphany.”

“I was talking to these young women at NBC Sports,” Solomon said. “They were saying how much I meant to them and how they missed me. It really meant a lot to me.

“Now, I get it. It is important to have role models. To be there and show them that there are no barriers based on gender.”

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Solomon on Dick Ebersol and the need to “over perform”:

Looking back on her career, Solomon credits former NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol for always pushing her to do more.

Recently, she thought of Ebersol while reading Sheryl Sandberg’s bestseller, “Lean In.”

“Sandberg said (to women), ‘Just raise your hand,’” Solomon said. “If only somebody gave me a copy of that book when I was 22. Girls don’t raise their hands. Dick forced me to raise my hand.”

It wasn’t always easy. She admits being a woman in a male-dominated field might have pushed her to greater heights.

“You do feel like you have to over-perform,” Solomon said. “You don’t want to stop. You have to work even harder. It propels you. You are determined not to fail.”

*******

Solomon on another epiphany:

In 2010, she made a presentation for NBC to the International Olympic Committee.

At the end of the meeting, a woman from the IOC approached and presented her with a scarf.

“I said, ‘What’s this for?’” Solomon said. “She said, ‘I’ve never heard a woman give a major presentation in this room before. I’m very happy about that.’

“Wow. Sometimes you really don’t know. You’re just doing your job. Then you realize how meaningful it is to someone else.”

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Also, Solomon’s new job comes with a unique challenge. She is working just down the aisle with her husband, Geoff Russell. The former editor of Golf World now is the Golf Channel’s senior vice-president and executive editor.

“I feel closer to him than ever, but it’s harder than you think,” Solomon said. “We never fight, but we have had some spirited discussions. Our biggest problem is turning it off when we get home. We’re so passionate about the Golf Channel. We have it on all the time. Finally, one night, our daughter said, ‘Can we stop talking about golf.'”

 

My Chicago Tribune column: WSCR winning ratings battle over WMVP

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In my Chicago Tribune column today, I write about the sports talk radio battle in Chicago. Here’s the link for Tribune subscribers. For those who can’t access directly, you can get the link here via my Twitter feed.

From the column:

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With the baseball teams floundering, the most interesting crosstown rivalry might be between the town’s two sports talk radio stations.

The Arbitron spring ratings were released Tuesday and, on one level, WSCR-AM 670 would appear to be as dominant over WMVP-AM 1000 as the Cubs were over the White Sox this year. However, unlike baseball, there are various ways to spin radio numbers to make them look more favorable.

In men ages 25-54, the prime advertising demographic for sports talk radio, WSCR ranked fourth in the market with a 4.7 share (percentage of Chicago listeners tuned into the station); WMVP was 16th at 2.4. WSCR ruled in morning drive, as “Mully & Hanley” were third at 6.8; “Mike & Mike” were 10th at 2.9 on MVP. In the afternoon, “Boers & Bernstein” were second at 5.2, while “Waddle & Silvy” were 16th at 2.6 in the first three months of their new time slot for WMVP.

The wide gap is a sharp departure from a long period when the stations ran neck-and-neck in the ratings, with WMVP occasionally coming out ahead. WSCR program director Mitch Rosen says his station was able to surge ahead in the last 18 months thanks to continuity in its lineup and a larger focus on Chicago sports compared to WMVP, which airs ESPN national programming from 5-10 a.m.

“We’ve stuck with the same lineup for several years,” Rosen said. “People get into habits when it comes to listening to stations. Continuity makes a big difference in radio.”

*******

Full disclosure department: I am the co-host of “The Scorecard,” a Saturday morning golf talk show on WSCR, and station personalities Mike Mulligan and Dan McNeil also are special contributors to the Tribune. Several Tribune reporters also regularly appear on WSCR as guests or as substitute hosts.