My latest Chicago Tribune column is on an unexpected option for Cubs TV next year.

You also could access the column via my Twitter feed at Sherman_Report.

An excerpt from the column:

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Chicago viewers might have to get up to speed on what a multicast station is to watch Cubs games next year.

As the Cubs sort out what to do with the WGN-9 portion of their 70 to 75 television games in 2015, the team is considering an option that is highly unconventional, if not a bit out there: Launching a version of a Cubs network on a multicast station, according to sources familiar with the situation.

This takes some explaining.

A multicast outlet is a sub-channel for local over-the-air broadcast stations. They became more prevalent with cable and satellite providers converting to digital platforms in the last decade. On Comcast’s channel guide, most of the multicast stations are bunched in the mid 300s. Currently, these stations mostly air classic TV shows such as “Bonanza” and “The Brady Bunch,” or syndicated programming such as cooking shows.

The Cubs reportedly are eager to start their own network. They currently can’t do it on cable because of terms of their deal with Comcast SportsNet, which runs through 2019.

However, the multicast stations aren’t considered cable; they are broadcast because they are transmitted over-the-air. That would provide the Cubs the opportunity to start some sort of a team-branded channel. The Cubs would produce the telecasts and sell and keep all the advertising revenue.

Crane Kenney, Cubs president for business operations, and WGN officials declined comment on the multicast possibility. A Cubs source said the team still is considering many options and isn’t close to making a final decision.

Why would the Cubs go the multicast route and leave a powerful and familiar station as WGN-9?

Last fall, the Cubs exercised an option to opt out of their deal with WGN, which ran through 2022. At a minimum, the team needed to sync up their TV contracts so they all conclude after 2019, enabling them to start a network with all their games in 2020 outside Major League Baseball’s national deals.

WGN, which pays the Cubs in the neighborhood of $250,000 per game, reportedly is losing as much as $200,000 per telecast because of record low ratings in recent years. The station wants to continue its long relationship with the Cubs, but also is anxious to stem some of the financial bleeding. Sources say WGN has offered the Cubs a new deal that would include a small rights fee and a revenue sharing component. Fees would remain low for poor ratings during the rebuilding process, but they could be much higher if viewers return in droves for a contending team.

According to sources, Kenney isn’t eager to sign a deal that would give the Cubs considerably less in guaranteed money, especially at a time when the Dodgers are doing a multi-billion dollar local TV contract.

With the World Cup giving Bob Ley yet another chance to shine, I wanted to share this Q/A Jeff Pearlman did with him on his site.

Some great stuff from an ESPN original who never relied on schtick to excel. It should be required reading for sports journalism classes everywhere.

Some excerpts:

J.P.: It won’t shock you to hear me say that I’ve seen m-a-n-y TV people with enormous egos. They think they’re important; they love the airport recognition; love signing autographs and hearing, “Hey, I love your work!” I’ve never heard anyone say a thing about your ego, arrogance, strut, cockiness. Literally, all I hear—repeatedly—is, “Good guy, real pro.” A. Do you disagree with my take on the field? And B. Why no crowing?

B.L.: Well, there is something I call Red Light Fever (borrowing from the old country and western “White Line Fever” written by David Allen Coe) and there is an intoxicating quotient about the attention and immediate feedback of doing this for a living. But at the end of a day, dude, this is just a job. The same as the folks operating the cameras in my studio, the same as the producers in my ear, and the same as the guy who gets up at 3 am to deliver my Sunday paper. A producer buddy of mine once said that getting a bunch of TV talent ( yes, the industrial term for ‘meat puppets’) together is akin to gathering a group of dogs in the park. They all get busy metaphorically sniffing each other, in sensitive areas, and sizing each other up. That’s inevitable. Perhaps part of my approach is that playing to the crowd, which I distinctly differentiate from being polite to folks who approach you, can be a bit of a waste of time. We got plenty on our ‘to do’ list. Maybe twice a month you’ll really nail a show, get a great interview, or illustrate a story ahead of the curve, and the show meetings after a program such as that are filled with the quiet satisfaction of doing what no one else has done that day, and doing it freaking well. OK, meeting’s over, time to go home … and then come back in tomorrow and do it again. And try to do it better. That will keep your chest thumping to a minimum. That, and reading Twitter, which vacillates between a revolutionary digital resource, and vivid proof that Darwin was right, and opposable thumbs can do some really stupid things.

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J.P.: I hate watching broadcasters scream at one another—Bark! Bark! Bark! And yet, it seems to be a big thing at your network, at other networks. This whole debate-for-the-sake-of debate thing. How do you feel about it? And am I even right?

B.L.: Our brand is actually a big tent, with many shows, platforms, web pages, and files. Sports, more than anything, is about opinions, and exchanging those opinions plays to the heart of this entire enterprise. Now, are there times that the same issue is sliced eight ways from Sunday on any given day on our various platforms? Surely. We’re even guilty of that occasionally on “Outside the Lines.” It’s easy to criticize both the volume and passion of some presentations. But I’d suggest that, more often than not, having learned about this Talk Thing through the years, we attempt to present Informed Opinion. Where we invite the perception that it’s ‘all too much’ is in the fact that we have so many platforms. But we also have OTL, e:60, The Sports Reporters, smart conversations and interviews, unparalleled story telling, Grantland, fivethirtyeight.com and other similar pieces of the brand. You hold the power, Obi Wan. You have the remote. Find another channel.

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J.P.: What separates a great broadcaster from a so-so one? Voice? Oomph? Knowledge? None of the above?

B.L: You don’t need a voice, you need a mind and a heart; the ability to observe, to write, to synthesize quickly and to tell stories. It helps to have a solid baseline of knowledge beyond sports, so you can explain why these buildings that are your backdrop in Dresden, Germany still have burn marks on them, and why the main street in Soweto is named after Chris Hani, and how tonight’s match is being played in the most dangerous city in the world (San Pedro Sula, Honduras, if you’re scoring at home). Understand that it’s not about you, it’s about the game, or the facts, or the news, or the empathetic story you’re trying to tell. Talk to the audience, not at them, and trust their ability to follow a story. That’s the once advantage we have with decades of credibility. If we tell our audience something is important, they’ll give us the benefit of the doubt. But then we have to deliver.

Richard Deitsch writing at MMQB weighs in with a long piece on the future of football on TV. The possibilities are endless.

Deitsch writes:

Viewers should also expect graphics and animation to continue to evolve at the pace technology allows it. NBC’s Sunday Night Football producer Fred Gaudelli suggested that a football field will be equipped with enough cameras so viewers can see a 360-degree angle of any play from any place on the field. He also speculated about visuals that we can only dream of right now. Gaudelli says he has spoken with scientists and the conversations turn to, “Could we ever get to the point where we could start digitally removing people from the field to see a clear view of what we want to see?”

“Football is a game where you could have 150 cameras, but if the bodies are aligned a certain way, none of those cameras will have an unobstructed view,” Gaudelli says. “So let’s say we want to see if Ben Roethlisberger broke the plane of the goal line but the view is obstructed by a player. Could we digitally remove that player and then, based on GPS data, recreate Roethlisberger’s body on the plane of the goal line so we can definitely say if the ball did or did not break the plane? That is where I think you will get to, manipulating pictures. There are some countries with high-end defense systems that can do that, and that is where I think it will go.”

The video game element:

Aagaard expects networks to have multi-screen capability that can measure anything from how far every player has run on a play to the specific distances between players, to deep, immersive fantasy stats.

“If you look at sports video games, you can zoom in on any one player’s perspective; that will be available in the future,” Aagaard says. “In 10 or 20 years the viewer will have  the ability to view the play anyway he wants. Maybe it’s some sort of joystick and he decides if he wants to watch something from the quarterback’s or defensive back’s point of view. The technology will be there. It will just be about the distribution and cost.”

Gambling in football? I’m shocked.

Regarding the auxiliary shows surrounding games, ESPN coordinating producer Seth Markman sees gambling and fantasy football elements becoming much more overt on NFL programming 10 years from now. “I think in 2024 [gambling references] will be commonplace,” says Markman, who runs ESPN’s NFL studio programming. “I don’t think it will be something people tip-toe around. Are we really serving viewers right now by saying the Patriots are going to beat the Jaguars in the game when everyone wants to know if they’ll win by two touchdowns?

There’s a reason why the Dodgers have recorded the most no-hitters of any team. God wants to hear Vin Scully on the call.

MLB.com has a 7:25 video of every out of the legend’s call of Clayton Kershaw’s big night. It was Scully’s 19th no-hitter. Remarkable at 86.

With two no-hitters, Dodgers’ pitchers are doing their part to put pressure on the distributors to carry SportsNet LA in Los Angeles. Nothing like missing a no-hitter with Scully on the call to get Dodgers’ fans more whipped up about not getting the games.

One more no-hitter, and the disputes should be resolved.

There are many reasons why Dave Anderson is only one of three sports columnists to win a Pulitzer Prize. Here’s one:

In 2003, Ben Curtis was the surprise winner of the British Open. After the tournament ended, Anderson and I were trying to get inside the area where they were holding the trophy presentation. We wanted to talk to his wife, caddy and another else to gain insights about Curtis.

Somehow, though, we couldn’t find the entry point. Anderson then saw a small fence in a bunch of high British grass.

“Ed, come here,” he said.

At the time, Anderson was well into his 70s. He could have easily written his column without getting interviews from Curtis’ family and associates.

No, Anderson scrambles over this small fence, handling it much better than me, and he walks briskly through the tall grass to get the interviews in the trophy area.

Now that’s how you win a Pulitzer Prize.

I thought of that story after reading the latest entry of Still Cheering in the Press Box, an excellent series by the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism at Maryland. Anderson is featured, talking about his career and the athletes, writers and editors he has met along the way.

Please read the entire entry. Here are some excerpts:

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Just watching Dick Young taught me the business. He came up with a story every day. Young was the only one of the reporters working for a morning newspaper who regularly went to the clubhouse after a game. The others just wrote what they saw. On the road, Young sat by the pool and worked on stories during the day of night games. I played golf. Growing up, guys like Young, Cannon, Smith and Heinz were more important to me than Joe DiMaggio. They weren’t just great sportswriters, they were great writers. Craftsmen.

The big difference today is the writing. Too many sports columnists today are actors. They have to be on radio and television, so something has to suffer. Back then, the writing was what counted. Sports columnists were special and that doesn’t exist anymore. The nicest thing anyone ever said to me was, “you taught me to read.” Sports is a different world now.

We were decades away from ESPN and talk radio. The newspapers were everything. You had to buy the paper to know what was going on. Vinnie from Queens did not exist. Columnists were special, they had more freedom to write and share their opinions. But the writing counted most. It was the golden era of columnists. People read you and cared what you were writing and how you wrote. What greater accomplishment could you achieve as a journalist? I did it for 56 years and loved it. I still love it.

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The Dodgers’ I covered in the early 1950s spoiled me. Sometimes I’d be the only guy in the clubhouse, sitting on a trunk, talking to Jackie Robinson, with Pee Wee Reese in his rocking chair and Duke Snider and Gil Hodges all there, just talking. That was as good as it gets.

I liked Joe Namath, too, because as big as he was, he never lied to me. The season after he won the Super Bowl, I was at practice one day and could see his passes were floating. I asked him if he was all right and he told me, “No, I have a sore arm.” Of course, I wrote it. The next day, the Jets coach, Weeb Ewbank, was angry and asked me how I could write that? “Weeb,” I said, “Joe told me.” And Weeb says, “Yes, his arm was sore; but he doesn’t have a sore arm per se.”

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There are lots of stories about traveling with the teams in the old days. In 1956, I’m working for the Journal-American covering the Rangers and we’re in Montreal for the start of the NHL playoffs. The five of us working for afternoon papers had to take the team train back to New York that night and we arranged for a Western Union telegrapher to catch our stories packaged together when the train slows at Rouse’s Point (N.Y.) on the border. It’s in the middle of the night, it’s snowing and I’m standing between cars in the dark and toss the package of stories to him and hope somehow he teletypes the copy and it all gets in the newspapers. We arrive at Grand Central Station in the morning and pick up the paper.

There was the story. It was exciting. Even now, when I’m writing, I wake up on a Sunday and still get excited if I’m in the paper.

Not sure what to say about this, other than Chris Russo should be trending fairly soon.

He just posted the following tweets about the Washington situation.

Really? Just wondering who are these Native Americans Russo knows who consider Redskins “a badge of honor.” Guess he missed the anti-Redskins ad that ran during the NBA Finals.

My latest column for the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana examines the ratings from a weekend filled with big events and what they tell us about their respective sports.

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Fathers received quite a gift from the sporting Gods on their big weekend. Assuming they were allowed to do so (never a given with family responsibilities these days), they could have parked in their big recliners for more than 60-plus hours watching one top sporting event after another.

Happy Father’s Day, indeed.

The menu began with Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final on Friday night; continued with the third and fourth rounds of the U.S. Open on Saturday and Sunday; a steady diet of World Cup games; and concluded with the Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night. Throw in assorted baseball games and auto races, and you have quite a feast.

The big weekend also provides an opportunity to take a pulse on how the respective sports fared in the ratings, and where they rank with viewers these days.

U.S. Open: No Tiger in the tournament, no Phil in contention, no drama, no good for NBC. It is hard to imagine a worse-case scenario for the network than what occurred last weekend at Pinehurst: a German golfer who normally flies below the radar dominating with a 8-shot victory.

Sure, Martin Kaymer was a former No. 1 player in the world before sliding. But his star factor still is so low, he probably could have gone out to dinner at Pinehurst on Sunday night without getting recognized.

Predictably, NBC did a 3.3 overnight for the final round, down big time from the 6.1 the year before. The network deserved better for its final U.S. Open.

Once again, the tournament showed how much golf misses Tiger Woods. Even though he hasn’t won a major since 2008, more often than not, he usually is on the first page of the leaderboard on Sunday. The networks can count on him being in contention, which is considerable.

Get well soon, Tiger.

Stanley Cup Final: Too bad for NBC that this series lasted only five games. Fans wanted more with three of the games going to overtime or double overtime, as was the case for the finale on Friday night.

As expected, the ratings were down 9 percent from Chicago-Boston in 2013, which went six games and featured teams in two hockey-crazy towns. However, the 3.0 rating for the series was the fifth best for a Final since 1994. Obviously, it would have been even higher with more games.

Just as encouraging for the NHL were the ratings from Los Angeles. The Kings’ clincher did a 12.4 rating in LA. It’s a healthy number, giving indications that Southern Cal is starting to catch on to this hockey thing.

NBA Final: Like the NBC, ABC was hurt by having a short five-game series. However, unlike the Stanley Cup Final, the NBA Finals were impacted even more by three straight San Antonio blowouts. Did you see that coming, LeBron?

The series averaged a 9.3 rating and 15.5 million viewers per game. According to Sports Media Watch, it was the least-viewed NBA Finals since Lakers/Magic in 2009 (8.4 rating), and among the 10 lowest rated dating back to 1976.

The numbers probably are higher if it was James and glitzy Miami posting an impressive 4-1 romp in the series. For whatever reason, San Antonio and Tim Duncan still don’t register with sports viewers like they should for a team that has won five titles. It is their loss, because this truly is a team and player for the ages.

World Cup: The ESPN hype machine actually delivered once they actually started playing matches in Brazil. ESPN and Univision, which actually pulled in higher numbers, combined to average 7.5 million viewers per match over the weekend.

It set the stage for ESPN registering an extremely healthy 7.0 overnight rating for the U.S.-Ghana match on Monday night. It was a huge win for the Americans, and an even bigger one for ESPN, as interest figures to soar for their next match Sunday against Portugal.

Believe it: After all these years, soccer currently is the No. 1 sports story in the U.S.

As expected, ESPN did an impressive number for USA’s victory over Ghana Monday. And it only figures to grow from here with Sunday’s game against Portugal.

Hard to believe, but as evidenced by the New York Post, soccer is the No. 1 sports story in the U.S.

From ESPN:

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ESPN’s Ghana vs. USA telecast on Monday, the U.S. Men’s National Team’s opening match of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, averaged a 7.0 overnight rating, the highest overnight rating for a men’s World Cup match on ESPN or ESPN2, according to Nielsen. (Note: ESPN started receiving local ratings for World Cup in 1998)

The top-10 metered markets: Washington, DC (11.8), New York (10.2), Hartford-New Haven (10.1), Boston (10.0), Columbus, Ohio (8.9), Baltimore (8.7), Providence (8.4), Orlando (8.3), San Francisco (8.0) and Norfolk (7.8). Boston’s 10.0 is the highest overnight ever in the market (on any network) for the men’s World Cup. (Note: 16 markets recorded their highest overnight ever for a World Cup group round match (on any network), including Washington, New York, Hartford, Baltimore, Providence and Orlando in the Top-10.)

To date (14 matches), the Top-10 highest-rated World Cup markets on the ESPN Networks are: Washington (5.0), San Francisco (4.4), New York (4.1), Boston (3.8), Orlando (3.7), Los Angeles (3.7), Miami (3.7), Hartford (3.7), Atlanta (3.6) and (all tied) Seattle, West Palm Beach and San Diego (3/4)