Sports TV News

Ethan Sherwood Strauss: Something Is Corrupted in ESPN’s NBA Coverage

. It’s corrupted what ESPN is trying to do in terms of entertaining people because they can’t tell stories as well because there is always this neurotic paranoid fear that it will piss off an agent.

Published

1 year ago

July 29, 2022

Ricky Keeler

Ethan Sherwood Strauss covered the NBA for ESPN and for The Athletic over the course of his career. Now, he is writing about topics that interest him the most on his substack, House of Strauss.

Strauss was a guest on the most recent episode of South Beach Sessions, hosted by Dan Le Batard. He said the reason why he decided to leave The Athletic in August 2021 was because he wanted to write about what interested him and that he thought his sportswriting was getting worse instead of better:

“There’s a not so flattering aspect to it which is I thought I was getting worse at sportswriting. I think a lot of people went through this over the pandemic period where they didn’t feel themselves caring so much about their job as they did in the past. For me at The Athletic, I was covering the Warriors. The Warriors are exceptionally well-covered by The Athletic. It’s not just me over there…I felt like I could keep pace if I was tremendously motivated like we just kicked off the 2018 playoffs together.”

“I felt myself kind of getting worse and I thought that eventually the fans, the readers, they feel it, they know it. They know that you are fraudulent at some level. I had a couple of years left on my contract but was I really going to command some sort of salary after that if I didn’t have a following, if my work wasn’t good anymore? It was inspired by fear and I wanted it to be inspired by a different, better fear. A fear of failure.”

That fear made Strauss excited to start up the substack because he felt he needed to take that risk to see if other people were interested in what he was writing about:

“It excited me to start the substack and just know I can fail. To know that maybe I am going to try to talk about the stuff that interests me and it won’t work and it will be humiliating. It won’t just be an ego failure, but it will be a financial failure on top of that. That’s scary as hell. I sometimes think you need something like that in your life in order to force you to be better and to force you to grow. I wanted that sense of risk.”

One of the topics the two of them got into was ESPN’s coverage of the NBA and Adrian Wojnarowski in particular. Not only does Strauss think Woj is not very good on TV, he thinks that the coverage is being corrupted based on what is going on behind-the-scenes:

“He [Woj] has built this empire on the basis of being first and having the news first. He’s in many ways a savvy businessman. He has tried to set it up where it’s almost mechanized where they are coming to him and he’s sending a social media resume around to different sources, to agents, to GM’s.”

“It corrupts the coverage because if the main focus is breaking a news story on Twitter and being first, that will detract from other focuses such as telling the most interesting story, revealing something that might not be flattering to a team or a player, but is of interest to the fans. It’s corrupted what ESPN is trying to do in terms of entertaining people because they can’t tell stories as well because there is always this neurotic paranoid fear that it will piss off an agent. I think people have this sense that something’s not on the up-and-up when they watch ESPN’s NBA coverage. Those stories have done well.”

Ricky Keeler

Ricky Keeler is a reporter for BSM with a primary focus on sports media podcasts and national personalities. He is also an active podcaster with an interest in pursuing a career in sports media. You can find him on Twitter @Rickinator555 or reach him by email at [email protected].

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Final SEC on CBS Broadcast Scores Highest-Rated Conference Championship Game

The broadcast of Alabama/Georgia marked the final game in a partnership that began in 1996.

Published

14 hours ago

December 6, 2023

Jordan Bondurant

The final SEC broadcast on CBS turned out to be the most-watched game of the weekend.

The SEC Championship broadcast on CBS averaged 17.519 million viewers, making it the most-watched conference championship game on any network in five years.

Viewership of the telecast peaked at 22.35 million. The game was the second-most-watched college football game of the season so far behind Ohio State/Michigan.

The game also was the most-streamed college football game ever on Paramount+ across households, minutes, and average minute audience.

Jordan Bondurant

Jordan Bondurant is a features reporter for Barrett Sports Media. He’s a multimedia journalist and communicator who works at the Virginia State Corporation Commission in Richmond. Jordan also contributes occasional coverage of the Washington Capitals for the blog NoVa Caps. His prior media experiences include working for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Danville Register & Bee, Virginia Lawyers Weekly, WRIC-TV 8News and Audacy Richmond. He can be reached by email at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @J__Bondurant.

Sports TV News

NBCUniversal CEO Mark Lazarus: People Have Said Sports TV Rights Bubble Would Burst for 30 Years

“For 30 years everyone said, the sports [rights] bubble is gonna burst, it’s gonna burst. You’re starting to see rights fees growth moderate.”

Published

14 hours ago

December 6, 2023

Jordan Bondurant

Courtesy: NBCUniversal, Inc.

Value is power when it comes to sports rights, and NBCUniversal CEO Mark Lazarus understands that. It’s why newly completed media rights deals across sports, and college sports in particular, command billions of dollars from networks each year now.

Next TV reported that Lazarus, in a conversational interview with TODAY host Hoda Kotb on Tuesday, said while the price for rights to properties like the NFL, NASCAR, Notre Dame, and the Big Ten are astronomical, the cost is starting to level off in some ways.

“For 30 years everyone said, the sports [rights] bubble is gonna burst, it’s gonna burst,” Lazarus told Kotb. “You’re starting to see rights fees growth moderate.”

Lazarus mentioned that there are no individual content budgets for sports, news, and entertainment at NBCUniversal. Those three divisions have a single budget executives work from. Executives are responsible for finding content audiences will consume and a platform to house it on.

“What’s the best content and where can it be successful in our portfolio?” Mark Lazarus said. “It’s a combination of art and commerce.”

“We reach massive amounts of people, we have reach and scale,” he later added, pointing out the company reaches 65-70 million homes on pay TV and another 30 million on Peacock.

“That’s great for our distribution partners and that’s great for our advertising partners and it’s really important for our audience.”

Mark touted Sunday Night Football, which is a ratings juggernaut and averages 22 million viewers. The NFL streaming on Peacock has also seen strong numbers this season, with this past week’s Chiefs/Packers game having an average minute audience of 1.86 million viewers. That’s between Peacock, NBC Sports Digital, and NFL Digital platforms. It marked the second-largest streaming audience ever for a regular-season Sunday NFL game for NBC Sports.

Jordan Bondurant

Sports TV News

CBS Sports Shares Details of Spongebob-Themed NFL Broadcasts

Noah Eagle and Nate Burleson return to the booth for both games alongside Dylan Schefter and Young Dylan.

Published

20 hours ago

December 5, 2023

Jeff Kotuby

Get ready for some Turtles on Christmas and some SpongeBob on Super Bowl Sunday. CBS Sports and Nickelodeon are teaming up to deliver two alternate NFL broadcasts this year — one for the Monday night “Nickmas” game between the Las Vegas Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs, and then a second, SpongeBob Squarepants-themed broadcast for Super Bowl LVIII.

Noah Eagle and Nate Burleson return to the booth for both games alongside Dylan Schefter and Young Dylan. The live-action hosts will be joined by two groups of Nicktoons depending on the game.

SpongeBob and Patrick (voiced by Tom Kenny and Bill Fagerbakke, respectively) will join Eagle and Burleson in the booth for Super Bowl LVIII, while Sandy and Larry the Lobster will provide some additional flair from the sidelines. The Bikini Bottom crew will be joined by Dora the Explorer and Boots the Monkey, who will explain penalties to the younger viewers. During the “Nickmas” Game on Dec. 25, the crew will be joined by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’s Raphael in the booth, while Donatello will join Schefter on the sidelines.

The Christmas Day game will be Nickelodeon’s first regular-season game, as previous Nick alternate broadcasts were all during Wild Card Weekend. Last year, Nick aired an alternate broadcast of Cowboys/49ers, which drew an audience of 41 million viewers. The games have also become a social media phenomenon from adult viewers watching tongue-in-cheek.

The Nickelodeon Super Bowl telecast and Nickelodeon NFL Nickmas Game are produced by CBS Sports in association with Nickelodeon Productions.

Jeff Kotuby

Jeff Kotuby is a nationally-published journalist with bylines on many popular broadcasting and pop culture sites, including The Streamable, eBaum’s World, Twin Galaxies, and more. Jeff grew up in the shadows of New York City and cultivated his love for sports media with the classic broadcasting voices of the area, like Mike & The Mad Dog, Mike “Doc” Emerick, and Michael Kay. You can reach Jeff on Twitter @JeffKotu3y.