Latest in TV Sports

The Olympic Channel, which NBCUniversal launched five years ago as a destination for its Olympic programming, is going dark on September 30. "In order to best reach our target audiences, we are reevaluating our programming distribution strategy regarding the content that currently airs on Olympic Channel: Home of Team…

UPDATED with confirmation: USC and UCLA made it official Thursday: the schools are moving from the Pac-12 Conference to the Big Ten Conference in 2024. The jump, which both schools confirmed late in the day amid swirling media reports of a deal in the works, is the latest major disruption of the college sports…

Fox Sports, a few weeks after making a splash by announcing Tom Brady would be joining the network as an NFL analyst when his playing career is over, has confirmed its lead announcing talent for 2022. As expected, Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen have been named lead play-by-play announcer and analyst, replacing Joe…

Wasserman has acquired The Montag Group, a sports agency known for repping the late NFL coach and color commentator John Madden and hundreds of other broadcasters and athletes. As part of the deal, the agency will continue to operate as The Montag Group, with Sandy Montag, Maury Gostfrand and their staff joining…

Nielsen has informed its clients of an “error” in its measurement of out-of-home viewing of sports and other live TV programming, with the issues dating back to September 2020. The out-of-home segment has gained importance as screens have proliferated and cord-cutting continues. Covid shut down bars, restaurants and…

Tom Rinaldi has a Christmas wish. All Madden, the documentary he co-directed about NFL coach, broadcaster and video game namesake John Madden, will premiere Christmas Day on Fox. Rinaldi, a broadcaster for Fox Sports, made the film with his network production executive colleague, Joel Santos. The 85-year-old Madden…

ESPN Classic will go dark on January 1, ending a nearly three-decade run of nostalgic pay-TV sports programming. The network was founded as Classic Sports Network in 1995 and was acquired by ESPN in 1997. The decision to shut it down follows several years of declining distribution. Several major providers had dropped…

UPDATED with ViacomCBS response. ViacomCBS joined the chorus of TV networks objecting to Nielsen’s plan to delay plans to include out-of-home viewing in overall ratings reports. "Nielsen's abrupt delay of the long-planned integration of OOH viewing into the national TV currency less than two months before it was…

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…