Obsession with politics propelled news viewing, already a sizable portion of live and same-day TV universe, to a 12% gain in 2017 compared with 2016, according to a new report. Sports programming, once thought to be unassailable, declined 6% last year even when the Rio Olympics are taken out of the year-to-year…

Research firm SNL Kagan has discouraging news for sports networks, pay TV distributors, and subscribers who don’t watch sports, in a new deep-dive study of the market. Sports programming costs consumed 24.1% of the revenue distributors typically collected from each subscriber last year, up nearly a percentage point…

EXCLUSIVE: Media execs who’ve invested heavily in sports will find some reassuring, and some worrisome, data today in the first study of sports fans from USC Annenberg’s Center for the Digital Future and digital sports media company ThePostGame. The encouraging news? About 86% of the population (92% of men and 80% of…

Demonstrating its continued appetite for diverse content, Li Ruigang's China Media Capital is to pay a record $1.3B for broadcast rights to Chinese Super League soccer, the Financial Times reports. The five-year deal is a massive increase from the roughly $8M per year that is currently being paid. This is a…

It took a while, but the FCC today finally voted — unanimously — to end its sports blackout rules, following up on the rulemaking notice it issued in December. They were adopted in 1975 primarily to help broadcasters and the NFL by barring cable and satellite services from offering games in the teams’ markets if the…

Sports execs had better pray that pay TV’s programming bundles stay intact. Rights payments from television networks and other media will grow 37.8% from 2013 to $17.1B in 2017, according to a study out today from PwC. That makes it the fastest growing source of revenues ahead of gate receipts (+10.9% to $19.1B)…

The FCC enacted the rules in 1975 to help broadcasters and the NFL: Regulators say that if a sports league requires a TV station to black out a game — usually a football match that isn’t sold out — then cable and satellite distributors can’t offer it in the community either. But that may not serve the public interest…

This could come as a helmet to the ribs of the uber-lucrative NFL broadcasting-streaming game and the notion of sponsorship vs. rights deals. Not to mention possibly expanding the broader sports world's ever-growing "TV everywhere" game plan. Verizon today finalized a $1B extension of its deal with America's dominant…

Pay TV subscribers who don’t watch sports likely will have to cut the cord if they want to escape the rocketing costs for programming rights and new channels. At least that’s one of the conclusions I take away from RBC Capital Markets’ David Bank’s smart, 91-page report this morning about the state of sports media. He…

BREAKING… Another new TV sports season, yet another labor squabble. The National Hockey League locked out players one minute after their union pact expired at midnight ET time, the AP reported. The clock struck midnight, and the NHL turned into another sports league closed for business. So much for NBC last year…

The long-controversial BCS format that has crowned college football’s national champion since 1998 is being replaced by a four-team playoff beginning in 2014. That plan was approved today by a committee of university presidents. The start date is no coincidence: ABC/ESPN paid $155 million for rights to the current BCS…

Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett says it’s possible in a provocative, and well timed, note this morning. The escalation in TV sports costs has “gone to unimagined proportions,” he says. If unchecked, he adds, it could  “blow the entire media model apart.” And the business does appear to be unchecked. The huge…