What’s On In Sports, Tonight: February 22nd

This weekend, the purchase of NBC by Comcast will once again cross over into the world of sports. Golf Channel, the Comcast-owned network that covers, well, golf, will begin “producing” all golf events on NBC, starting with the Accenture Match Play Championships. The Championships, which began today, will feature Golf Channel on NBC branding when they jump to the broadcast network for the weekend, similar to ESPN on ABC. Will this really affect anyone? No. Is it still important? Yes. Moral of the story: watch the Match Play Championships at 2 p.m. Thursday and Friday on Golf Channel, and this weekend on NBC.

Oh, and because we’re talking about golf, here’s the obligatory mention of Tiger.

If golf isn’t your thing, find a basketball game. Really, not that hard.

Now on to the rest of the field:

6:30 p.m.

Big Ten Network- MBB: Wisconsin at Michigan.

7 p.m.

CBS College Sports- MBB: Tulsa at Marshall. ESPN- NBA: Oklahoma City Thunder at San Antonio Spurs. Dan Shulman (PbP), Jeff Van Gundy (Analyst) ESPN2- MBB: Temple at Duke. Rece Davis (PbP), Bob Knight (Analyst)READ MORE

What’s On In Sports, This Weekend: February 18th-20th

Normally, the big event of the third weekend of February would be either the NBA All-Star Game (Sunday, 7 p.m., TNT) or the Daytona 500 (Sunday, Noon, Fox). This year, however, NBC has thrown an event into the mix to make it more interesting.

The network has dubbed Sunday “Hockey Day In America,” an obvious interpretation of the name for their football coverage. The main broadcast network, in association with it’s new cable cousin, Versus, will present a total of five games on Sunday. The first games will begin at 12:30, and will feature one of three games: Washington Capitals at Buffalo Sabres, Philadelphia Flyers at New York Rangers or Detroit Red Wings at Minnesota Wild. The second game on NBC will start at 3:30, and will be broadcast nationally, featuring the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Chicago Blackhawks.

Mixing things up for the nightcap, Versus will nationally broadcast the Heritage Classic, the first outdoor game in Canada since 2003. The Montreal Canadiens will play the Calgary Flames at McMahon Stadium in Calgary, with the puck drop scheduledREAD MORE

Running Numbers: Translating The Insane NFL TV Viewership Into “Unique Views”

We’ve all read release after release after release about just how good the ratings were for the NFL this season. Just how good, you ask? Well, according to CBS:

Through 17 weeks of the 2010 regular season (September 9, 2010-January 2, 2011), THE NFL ON CBS regular-season games were seen by an estimated 164.2 million viewers, 10% higher than NBC’s 149.8 million viewers, 1% higher than FOX’s 162.1 million viewers and 48% higher than ESPN’s 110.9 million.

Those cumulative numbers were based on total viewers (P2+) who watched at least six minutes of NFL game coverage. Add in record numbers for the playoffs (take it away, FOX):

Ratings climbed to astonishing levels as the [NFC Championship] game progressed, peaking at a 31.5/53 rating and 59.5 million viewers from 5:30 – 6:00 PM ET as the Packers punched their first ticket to a Super Bowl in 13 years. FOX Sports estimates that 80.3 million Americans saw at least part of Sunday’s game.

Let’s not forget NBC winning every Sunday night (and two weeknights) of the season, en route to recordREAD MORE

NBC and Comcast Have A Plan For Sports. ESPN Should Be Paying Close Attention.

This video was sent out yesterday by NBCU Direct. Here’s the link to their write up, quoted in part:

NBC Sports announced today that John Miller, NBC Universal Television Group CMO, will create and lead a new endeavor, “The NBC Sports Agency,” which will focus on marketing NBC Sports Group assets, including soon-to-be-integrated Comcast properties. The new group will also serve as an agency for NBC Sports’ partners and advertisers, who already use NBC Sports as a marketing resource.

On the surface, this might not be anything more than realigning the furniture to make NBC Sports a bit more feng shui for the new Comcast brass. After all, other than their Sunday Night Football machine (and growing blog presence) NBC hasn’t had the best few years in sports. I guess the golf has done well, but the Olympics? Who knew that a few hundred million dollars could so easily turn a peacock into an albatross.

But now that Comcast’s arsenal (and money) is teaming up with NBC’s backbone, can anyone stop them from taking over the world? In otherREAD MORE

Call of the Weekend: Tom Hammond & Mike Mayock, “Are You Kidding Me?”

Every NFL fan has seen this video six hundred times by now, but it’s still the best play of the weekend. Having said that, is it the best call of the weekend? To be honest, the call itself is probably not. But bear with me on this one…

I think Tom Hammond is a solid announcer for NBC, though whenever I hear his voice I immediately assume I’m either watching Notre Dame or an Olympic Track and Field event. I just don’t think Hammond’s call is as spectacular on this play as some people were saying online after it happened. He does — to his credit — sound as surprised as all of us, which was good to hear from a play-by-play announcer because, let’s face it, who in the world expected that to happen?

That said, this is the call of the weekend for one reason: Mike Mayock, who has quickly established himself as a better-than-solid in-game color analyst. There’s a lot to be said, clearly, for someone who seems prepared for every situation…even the inexplicable.

“Are you kiddingREAD MORE

Take That, Peyton, Gruden & Monday Night Football. Baseball Wins The Night

Peyton Manning up against a division rival should do a pretty good number on a Monday night, you’d think. Not as good as baseball did yesterday, according to FOX Sports PR man Lou D’Ermilio:

World Series Game 5 did a 10.6/16 overnight and was the highest rated sports event of the night. #mlbonfox #mlb

In other words, WE BEAT ESPN’S NFL GAME THAT HAD PEYTON MANNING IN IT!!!!!

I mean, come on, it’s not like he’s bragging about beating local hockey and basketball games. It is interesting, though, that D’Ermilio doesn’t specifically mention that the clinching game of the World Series beat an NFL telecast. FOX and the NFL have a pretty good relationship, after all. No need to poke the needle at them, even if the tweet was a slight dig at ESPN (and an obvious reaction to the night before when Sunday Night Football crushed Game Four of the World Series.)

And just to show how sports can dictate everything on TV: this will go down as one of the lowest-rated World Series ever, but it stillREAD MORE

NBC’s Inane Decision to Tape Delay the Ryder Cup

When you wake up Saturday morning, fresh off a fun Friday night and getting ready for an afternoon of college football, you should be greeted with an exciting surprise.

The Ryder Cup should be live, giving you the opportunity to to see matches finishing up across the pond, hoping for your team to gain a couple of extra points before the all-important Sunday singles matches. That should be what happens.

But it won’t. Nope. Not with NBC. The network that decided to tape delay Michael Phelps’ run for Olympic history, and continued delays of the Winter Olympics and Wimbledon, has decided once again that live coverage be damned. On Saturday, the second day of the three-day team matches pitting 12 Europeans against 12 Americans, NBC will show the coverage on tape delay.

It’s interesting to point out that on Friday, when ESPN has the rights to the opening matches, golf will be live. The coverage will kick off at 2:30 AM ET (11:30 PM for west coasters!!), and go until the matches conclude. This will give those real golf fans aREAD MORE

DL440: Craig Calcaterra of NBC’s HardballTalk on MLB, Braves & Phils, Playoff Pressure & More

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Craig Calcaterra from NBC’s baseball blog HardballTalk joins the show to talk about the race to the playoffs. We taped the show on Wednesday afternoon, before the Phillies swept the Braves, so there would have been a bit more rubbing in than I did had I known the outcome of last night’s game (he’s a Braves fan.)

We start with a little social media talk, discussing the Twitter awkwardness of not following people you should be following. It’s like a whole online societal power structure unto itself.

We also talk about the start of NBC’s blog network and how ProFootballTalk changed the model. Calcaterra has nice things to say about NBC’s model, while admitting that they were late to the blog party. He does suggest that being one of the last houses to create a blog format has allowed them to do it right. It sounds more genuine and far less company line when he says it as opposed to me writing it. Maybe.

We spend a lot of time talking about the PhilliesREAD MORE

Call of the Day: “Game, Set and Match. Marc Colombo, Get Well Soon.”

For a game that wasn’t all that interesting for 58 minutes, the last minute of each half in the Dallas-Washington Sunday Night Football game was about as exciting as you can get. First, the inexplicable fumble and touchdown recovery at the end of the first half had everyone at NBC — from Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth in the booth to Rodney Harrison and Tony Dungy in the studio — questioning the play calling, when it seems like the only mistake was the fact that Tashard Choice didn’t just fall to the ground once he realized he was boxed in. To fight for yards in that situation was the only real error.

There can’t be a bigger mistake than what Choice did, but the more magnified mistake clearly came on the final play of the game. Tony Romo played escape artist to find Roy Williams (note: on my fantasy team this week) for what should have been a game-tying touchdown (with PAT to potentially win the game with no time remaining) but it was called backREAD MORE

Call of the Day: Anyone Else Hate How Al Michaels Says “New Or-lee-ans”?

Let’s get this out of the way right up front before I get accused of hating on the best (not hyperbole) play-by-play announcer in this country’s history: Al Michaels is, in my opinion, the best (not hyperbole) play-by-play announcer in this country’s history.

Have I disclaimed enough? Okay then, CAN SOMEONE GET AL MICHAELS TO STOP PRONOUNCING THE NAME OF ONE OF AMERICA’S FINEST CITIES, ‘NEW OR-LEE-ANS?’

The Saints host the Vikings tonight to kick of the NFL season and NBC has the prime time call. I’ll set the over-under on the number of times Michaels says “New Or-lee-ans” at nine…and I’d immediately take the over if I was able to take action on a line I personally set. It’s really the only thing Michaels consistently does that makes me cringe. People in that city don’t even call it “New Or-LEENS” — using a more colloquial “New Or-lins” or even “N’awlins” — and Michaels goes and adds an extra vowel to the word for seemingly no reason whatsoever. Why does he do that?

Here’s a completely unscientific conversation fromREAD MORE