Will be out until week of July 21. So you definitely can expect a big sports media story to break soon. They always seem to occur when I’m gone. Look forward to reading about it.
Enjoy your summer.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Should ESPN’s coverage of World Cup be template for other sports?
With the World Cup winding down, ESPN clearly has emerged as the big winner. The coverage has been outstanding.
Michael Bradley, writing for the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana University, brings up an interesting point in praising the coverage. He writes:
With four games remaining (two semifinals, the third-place contest and the final), it’s virtually impossible for ESPN to mess this up. It will expand its pre-game coverage to a full hour, but it won’t ruin the games themselves. The great thing is that because the World Cup means so much to the nations involved, ESPN doesn’t have to manufacture hype, as it does in so many other instances. By letting the soccer stand alone, the hysteria is evident. The constant chanting and singing by the fans stands in stark contrast to so much of the manufactured excitement that characterizes other ESPN efforts, when it works hard to convince viewers that what they are watching is indeed important. Give ESPN credit for recognizing that soccer’s biggest tournament requires no artificial flavoring.
The question now is whether ESPN can apply what it has learned from the World Cup to its other broadcast properties. Can it understand that trying to make a regular-season NBA game into some sort of hardwood Armageddon is not only ludicrous but also irresponsible? Can it tone down its cross-promotional excess in its NFL broadcasts, the better to present the actual winning and losing as more important than the dramatic storylines it and the league want us to consume so hungrily?
The answer to both is probably no. ESPN has done a fabulous job with the World Cup, but it is a stand-alone, and Fox had better be ready to hit the upper 90 in four years when it takes over the telecasts. The standard has been set with this tournament, and ESPN has shown what it can do when it cares more about the competition and less about creating “compelling” storylines and manufacturing stars. This has been a great respite for fans, but there is less than a week remaining before the oasis evaporates.
And we go back to worrying about what LeBron James had for breakfast.
Coming soon to ESPN: LeBron breakfast cam.
Worst day ever: Front pages document anguish in Brazil
Don’t think anyone in Brazil will be saving these front pages. Newseum.org has quite a collection on its site, as the country’s newspapers reacted to yesterday’s nightmare. Here are a few:
Christine Brennan: Tells story of her career in ‘Still No Cheering in the Press Box’
Christine Brennan is the latest entry in Still No Cheering in the Press Box, an on-going project by the Povich Center for Sports Journalism at Maryland. This is the modern version of Jerome Holtzman’s classic, No Cheering in the Press Box.
My long-time friend and Hootie Johnson tormentor tells the story of her interesting and impressive career. Worth a read, especially for young women journalists trying to make it in the business.
Also, the story is worth checking just to see a picture of young Brennan with also young Rick Reilly and Gene Wojciechowski, who had an impressive head of hair.
A couple of excerpts:
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I loved sports, I played sports and played them well. Even though there were no organized teams until my freshman year of high school, I went on and played six sports in high school and could not get enough of it.
While I had this great sports background, I was also a news junkie. I couldn’t wait to read the sports section of the several papers we had delivered to our house. Before the internet, grabbing the sports section was your first look into a game from the previous night. I just loved the news.
I liked writing. I loved the news. I loved sports. Yet, I really thought I’d become a political reporter because, looking back on it now, there were no role models for me of women in sports media. I didn’t see a woman sports byline until I got to Northwestern. I never saw a woman on TV doing sports until I saw Phyllis George, Miss America 1971, on NFL Today in 1975. Phyllis is wonderful, but If you had to be Miss America to be on TV, that was not going to be my career path.
I went to Northwestern wanting to be a journalist and thinking I would be a political writer. Then I did see a woman writing sports at the Daily Northwestern and I started to think maybe this was possible. I had a summer internship after my sophomore year of college and then another after my junior year in the sports department. I started to see that I could do this. I had a couple other internships involved with sports and it felt like I was home.
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I was very fortunate to have parents that instilled in me great confidence from a young age. I am not sure where that came from, but its amazing how parents do these things. I just kind of showed up at the Miami Herald and there was not one ounce of me that was nervous or worried or concerned. I did have to go into my first men’s lockerroom, the Minnesota Vikings in 1980, and I was like ‘I’m doing this.’ I look back now and I am like ‘wow.’ I was 22 years old and I just wasn’t flinching.
I was a bit oblivious, I think, in a good way. Maybe a bit naive, but I was just like ‘of course I am doing this.’ I think back now on the hardships and the concern of ‘is a woman’s really going to cover the Florida Gators?’ or being the first woman to cover NFL football for The Washington Post. Those things really hit me as an older person looking back, but I was just going headlong into this, I was made for this.
Programming alert: New Discovery Channel series puts spotlight on unique gym for elite athletes
It isn’t everyday that you get a call from a PR person from the Discovery Channel promoting a new sports show.
I was told that American Muscle “involves sports, but isn’t a traditional sports show.”
Judging from the trailer, it could have some potential. The main character definitely has an unforgettable voice.
And here’s the official rundown from the Discovery Channel:
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This summer, Discovery is teaming up with Mike Barwis, one of the best strength training coaches out there for a brand new sports docu-series AMERICAN MUSCLE produced by Funny Or Die, set to premiere on Wednesday, July 9th at 9pm ET/PT.
At the Barwis Methods Training Center, Mike Barwis and his staff of dedicated, blue collar trainers take on everyone from NFL players, to Wild West bull riders, to paraplegics looking to walk again.
This season on AMERICAN MUSCLE, Barwis and his team of trainers will be working with several professional athletes at the top of their respective fields, including: Richard Sherman (Seattle Seahawks), Nick Swisher (Cleveland Indians), Rashad Evans (UFC), Ndamukong Suh (Detroit Lions), DeAndre Jordan (Los Angeles Clippers), Pierre Garcon (Washington Redskins), Shawne Merriman (former NFL player), Baron Davis (former NBA player), and many more.
Barwis has advanced degrees in Exercise Physiology and Athletic Training, has trained over 500 Olympic and professional athletes in over 40 sporting events, and served over 10 years as head strength and conditioning coach at West Virginia University and the University of Michigan. At his gritty gym just outside of Detroit, there is no such thing as an average day. Barwis uses a combination of science, tough love and just-plain-crazy to train everyone from average joes just getting into fitness all the way up to the top professional athletes in the country.
As talented a trainer as Barwis is, his business is too successful for him to run solo. It’s a team effort at the Barwis Methods Training Center. He’s lucky enough to have a staff that at first glance are unorthodox and unexpected but in actuality are at the top of their game. The professional athletes who make the trek to Detroit to train with Mike Barwis and his staff want the same thing that all of Mike’s other, everyday clients want, to work with the best and to see results. Mike Barwis and his team are the best.
AMERICAN MUSCLE is produced for Discovery Channel by Funny Or Die, where Christopher Farah, Mike Farah and Rebecca Mayer are executive producers, Anna Wenger and Joe Ferrell are co-executive producers. For Discovery Channel, executive producers are Craig Coffman and Sean Boyle.
Beauty of soccer: Fast games, limited commercials; No 4-hour slogs like in baseball
Richard Sandomir of the New York Times writes that no matter how you feel about soccer, you can’t argue about its pace of play:
The World Cup has shown again that soccer is very kind in its brevity. A 90-minute game takes less than two hours to finish. Even one that needed 30 minutes of added time, like the United States’ loss to Belgium, ended in 2 hours 35 minutes — which would get you to the sixth inning of many Major League Baseball games.
With its constant action and lack of natural in-game stoppages, soccer avoids the bloated commercial breaks of other sports; timeouts that turn the final minute of N.B.A. games into dreary, real-time marathons; clock stoppages for first downs in college football; fidgeting pitchers and dawdling batters who should be on a clock; and video reviews. Soccer has its problems — flopping, game fixing, FIFA’s leadership, the choice of Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup — but the length of its matches is not one.
I wonder if ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC would have seen an average of 4.1 million viewers for the World Cup’s first 56 games — a 44 percent leap from 2010 — if there were timeouts and breaks that stretched the broadcasts by 30 or 45 minutes. (Would taking time to make some popcorn or use the bathroom dampen fan enthusiasm by breaking the spell of constant viewing?) If coaches had several sanctioned timeouts to huddle for two minutes, would fans love the event as much? Would letting players rest, rather than having them run until they’ve piled up miles on their sneakers, produce the same game?
The experts weigh in:
“I haven’t seen anything to suggest that American sports are at a disadvantage because their duration is longer,” said Mike Mulvihill, senior vice president of programming and research at Fox Sports Media Group, whose networks such as Fox Sports 1 will carry the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. “But I do think the pace of soccer is an advantage; there are so many demands on people’s time, and it’s hard to get their attention for extended periods of time. To know a game will end in two hours respects their time.”
And this:
How much soccer’s brevity adds to the number of people watching is not known.
“If the format of soccer itself really had a major impact on viewing, we’d see a bump in ratings in league play,” said Scott Guglielmino, ESPN’s senior vice president of programming. “But as a soccer fan who played in college, I enjoy the uninterrupted halves where you get engrossed in the ebb and flow that is part of the lure of the game.”
The World Cup hasn’t transformed me into a soccer guy. I still don’t get all nuances of the game.
However, I do appreciate knowing that if I commit to watching a game, it is going to be completed in neat two-hour package, assuming no extra time. Reminds me of an era when baseball games used to last only between 2-2:30 hours.
Oh, for the good ol’ days.
Tom Hoffarth: Sports media columnist embarks on career change for noble cause
The good news is that Tom Hoffarth will continue to write about sports media for the Los Angeles Daily News as a part-time contributor. However, he has embarked in a new direction that sounds really interesting.
I’ll let Tom tell you about it:
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I may have told you that for the last couple of years I’ve been involved with a group that started a non-profit called Ten Thousand Villages South Bay. We wanted to launch a store that helps people. It’s as simple as that. The company sends representatives out to developing countries, finds artisans who make pretty incredible things, and sets up what’s called a Fair Trade arrangement. They get paid up front, we work with them on developing more craft items that we can sell, they start their own business and have an established way to empower themselves to get out of poverty, send their kids to school for the first time, get health care, build a house for themselves …. It’s pretty phenomenal hearing their stories.
Our small part on our end is joining this network of stores called Ten Thousand Villages, and if you take a look at their website — TenThousandVillages.com – you can see the things for sale, the videos of their stories.
So as our story goes, we finally raised enough in donations and opened a store — 1907 S. Catalina Ave., in the Riviera Village area of South Redondo Beach. Since we’ve opened the doors on Friday June 27, it’s been fantastic response. Especially with the women buying up jewelry, baskets, wall hangings … It’s tough to keep things on the shelves. We need to reorder ASAP.
And who’s going to do that?
I’ve stepped away from my full-time writing to become the store manager, without much business background, but learning every day how to do inventory, customer service, merchandising, bank deposits … how do you re-glue a large wooden herron when it breaks in half? Those kind of things that aren’t on my journalism resume. It’s scary and crazy and exciting at the same time.
The career change is well worth it. The plan for now is to continue to write media columns on Friday when I’m free and do the Monday’s Play It Forward feature of the week ahead. I still have a lot of training to do, but at the end of the day, all this sweat and angst is going to a much greater cause. And I think I can finally sit and enjoy a sporting event now without worrying too much that I’m doing actual work instead. Like watching Game 5 of the Stanley Cup final. I was driving home from a training shift in Pasadena that Friday night, going right past Staples Center as the game was in OT on my radio, feeling bittersweet, but knowing this is where I’m called to go for now.
Please come by and visit the store and check us out. As a non-profit we continue to take donations (we can accept them via PayPal at our first website, www.southbayvillages.org,) but we also have a new website www.tenthousandvillages.com/
World Cup ratings still strong even without U.S.
Looks like a healthy of portion of the U.S. audience still is watching the World Cup even though our boys lost.
From Sports Media Watch:
The Brazil/Colombia FIFA World Cup quarterfinal earned a combined 11.8 million viewers on ESPN and Univision Friday afternoon, the top audience of the round. ESPN alone earned a 3.6 U.S. rating and 6.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen fast-nationals, making the match the most-watched World Cup quarterfinal ever on a single U.S. network. Univision finished not far behind with 5.5 million for its coverage.
On Saturday, the Netherlands/Costa Rica match drew a similarly strong 10.9 million across the two networks, including a 3.4 U.S. rating and 5.8 million viewers on ESPN — the second-largest audience for a quarterfinal on a single network. Again, Univision was close behind with 5.1 million.
Prior to this year, the top mark for a single quarterfinal telecast was 5.7 million for Argentina/Germany on ABC in 2010.
And this from ESPN.
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ESPN’s presentation of Saturday’s Netherlands vs. Costa Rica match, a 0-0 tie in which Netherlands advanced after extra time in a shootout at Arena Fonte Nova in Salvador, was seen by an average audience of 5,791,000 viewers based on a 3.4 fast national rating, according to Nielsen, making it the second most-watched FIFA World Cup quarterfinal match on ESPN, ESPN2 or ABC. The television audience fell behind only Friday’s Brazil vs. Colombia, seen by 6,349,000 viewers based on a 3.6 fast national rating.
On WatchESPN, the match reached 1.1 million unique viewers and 60.4 million total minutes, and Argentina vs. Belgium reached 756,000 unique viewers and generated 31.9 million total minutes.
Top-10 markets for Netherlands-Costa Rica: San Francisco (6.6), Washington, DC (6.4), Miami-Ft. Lauderdale (6.2), San Diego (5.8), Baltimore (5.6), Las Vegas (5.6), Los Angeles (5.4), New York (5.4), Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg (4.6) and Hartford-New Haven (4.5).
Argentina vs. Belgium:
The earlier match on Saturday (Argentina vs. Belgium on ABC) delivered an average audience of 5,183,000 viewers based on a 3.2 rating. Top 10 markets: Miami-Ft. Lauderdale (5.5), Los Angeles (5.4), Washington, DC (5.3), San Francisco (5.2), San Diego (5.1), New York (4.8), Atlanta (4.7), Albuquerque-Santa Fe (4.5), Columbus, Ohio (4.3) and Richmond-Petersburg (4.3).
Quarterfinal Average Audience:
In all, two of the four 2014 FIFA World Cup quarterfinal matches rank among the top five matches in the round by audience across ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC. Brazil 2014 quarterfinal matches averaged 5,582,000 viewers, reflecting increases of 29 percent vs. 2010 (4,337,000) and 68 percent compared to 2006 (3,318,000). The 3.3 US household ratings average for 2014 are up 18 percent vs. 2010 (2.8 US HH rating) and 43 percent over 2006 (2.3 US HH rating).
Most-watched World Cup Quarterfinal Matches on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC:
| Date | Matchup | Viewers | Network |
| July 4, 2014 | Colombia vs. Brazil | 6,349,000 | ESPN |
| July 5, 2014 | Netherlands vs. Costa Rica | 5,791,000 | ESPN |
| July 3, 2010 | Argentina vs. Germany | 5,714,000 | ABC |
| July 10, 1994 | Romania vs. Sweden | 5,666,000 | ABC |
| July 9, 1994 | Brazil vs. Netherlands | 5,580,000 | ABC |
Significant Television Viewership Increases Over 2010 and 2006
Through 60 matches of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC are averaging 4,190,000 viewers based on a 2.6 US household rating per match. The 2014 audience reflect increases of 42 percent and 114 percent (vs. 2,947,000 in 2010 and 1,961,000 in 2006) in viewers, and 37 percent and 86 percent in ratings (vs. 1.9 in 2010 and 1.4 in 2006) (Note: Ratings and viewership numbers are based on the specific match windows, not including pre-match studio coverage)
The highest-rated markets for World Cup matches on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC: Washington DC (4.6), New York (4.3), San Francisco (4.1), Los Angeles (3.7) and San Diego (3.7), Hartford/New Haven (3.6), Orlando (3.5), Miami/Ft. Lauderdale (3.5), Richmond (3.4) and West Palm Beach (3.3).
Did Brazil chief media official really get suspended for punching a player?
This is truly bizarre.
From The Guardian:
Brazil’s chief media officer, Rodrigo Paiva, has been banned for three matches and fined 10,000 Swiss francs (£6,500) by Fifa following a half-time bust-up in their last-16 match against Chile in Belo Horizonte on 28 June.
Fifa’s disciplinary committee handed Paiva the ban – with a further one match suspended – after he was involved in a fracas in the tunnel at the Estádio Mineirão.
The Chile striker Mauricio Pinilla accused Paiva of punching him in the face – Paiva admitted slapping him.
The match ended in a 1-1 draw and Brazil won the shootout to advance to the quarter-finals.
In a statement issued on Saturday, Fifa said that as he had already missed the match against Colombia on 4 July, Paiva would not be involved in Tuesday’s semi-final against Germany or either the third-place playoff on 12 July or the final on 13 July.
The disciplinary committee imposed the fine in accordance with Article 48 of the disciplinary code which stipulates “at least two matches for assaulting (elbowing, punching, kicking etc) an opponent or a person other than a match official.”
So let me get this straight: You are the chief media official for a team that is on the verge of winning a World Cup being held in your country. And you get suspended for punching a player.
Can anyone think of anything comparable occurring in the U.S.?
Remembering Jim Brosnan: His book ‘Long Season’ was groundbreaking
Before there was Jerry Kramer’s Instant Replay and Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, there was Jim Brosnan’s The Long Season.
In 1959, Brosnan, a journeyman pitcher, kept a diary of his year with St. Louis and Cincinnati. His subsequent book was the first inside account from an active player on the ups and downs of life in the big leagues.
It was a groundbreaking book and one of the most important ever written on sports. For many young fans of my generation, it was among the first relevant books we read.
Brosnan, 84, died on June 28. There were several obituaries and tributes filed about him during the holiday weekend.
From Bruce Weber of the New York Times:
In 1959, Brosnan, who played nine years in the major leagues, kept a diary of his experience as a pitcher, first with the St. Louis Cardinals and later, after a trade, with the Cincinnati Reds. Published the next year as “The Long Season,” it was a new kind of sportswriting — candid, shrewd and highly literate, more interested in presenting the day-to-day lives and the actual personalities of the men who played the game than in maintaining the fiction of ballplayers as all-American heroes and role models.
Written with a slightly jaundiced eye — but only slightly — the book is often given credit for changing the nature of baseball writing, anticipating the literary reporting of Roger Angell, Roger Kahn and others; setting the stage for “Veeck — as in Wreck,” the vibrant memoir of Bill Veeck, the maverick owner of several teams; and predating by a decade Jim Bouton’s more celebrated, more rambunctious (and more salacious) pitcher’s diary, “Ball Four.”
“The first workout was scheduled for 10 o’clock,” Brosnan wrote, in a typically arch passage, about the first day of spring training. “The clubhouse was filled by 9, and we sat around for an hour, anxious to go. But first came the speeches. Spring training has a convocation ceremony that follows strict patterns all over the baseball world. Manager speaks: ‘Wanna welcome all you fellows; wanna impress on you that you each got a chance to make this ball club.’ (This hypocrisy is always greeted by an indulgent and silent snicker from the veterans of previous training camps.)”
Dave Hoestkra on his site recalled spending time with Brosnan.
Mr. Brosnan quietly kept notes on a pad while sitting in the bullpen during a game. He never showed his manuscripts to anybody. Not even his roommates. Besides writing books, Mr. Brosnan wrote book reviews for the New York Times and the Chicago Daily News. For 25 years he was the baseball writer for Boy’s Life magazine. In the spring of 1968 he wrote articles for the Chicago Tribune magazine like “Moe Drabowsky Leads the League in Supernonproductive Outs,” and the eternally hopeful “Bonehead Baseball is Out, Out, Out at Wrigley Field.”
On road trips Mr Brosnan would pack books by Dostoevsky (not Drabowsky) and John Updike. He also carried a blue-gray 1960s portable Olivetti typewriter.
The typewriter broke in early 2004 when it fell off a shelf. He did not own a computer. He did not have e-Mail. Mr. Brosnan said he stopped writing after his typewriter went down. I wish I had made the effort to stay in touch with him.