f13.net

Comcast/OLN Eyes ESPN's MLB Rights (http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001018603)
August 22, 2005
By John Consoli

Like a hungry shark circling its prey, Comcast and its Outdoor Life Network, now referred to as OLN, is continuing its low-key but determined move to take a bite out of cable sports kingpin ESPN.

Not only did it snatch away cable rights for the National Hockey League for the next several years last week, but now Comcast/OLN has set its sights on landing Major League Baseball’s Sunday-Wednesday-night cable package, the rights to which expire at the end of the current season.

That package also includes the MLB All-Star Game home run derby telecast, which produced hefty one-night ratings for ESPN this season.

“Baseball is the bedrock of ESPN’s summer programming,” said one rival sports network executive. “There is so much baseball and very little other programming to replace it with during the summer. Hockey can be replaced by running more college basketball, but Comcast could deliver a severe body blow to ESPN if it can steal away these baseball rights.”

ESPN does have the Tuesday-Thursday MLB TV rights through the end of the 2006 season, which also includes the MLB division playoff games that Fox does not air. That package was obtained when ESPN parent Disney acquired Fox Family Channel (now ABC Family) and is currently valued at $100 million. ESPN is also currently paying $141.5 million per year for the Sunday-Wednesday rights package.

Sources familiar with the negotiations believe they have been delayed and slowed by ESPN’s efforts to gain broadband and cellular phone rights, among other value-added, nontraditional rights, which MLB has been hesitant to give up.

“It’s late in the process for negotiations to still be going on” for the Sunday-Wednesday package, a competing network executive said. “It seems like ESPN was playing hardball with MLB and didn’t think there would be any other bidders. Now, they’ve put MLB in the driver’s seat.”

The executive added that “for building-block purposes, baseball would be even more important to Comcast than hockey. And having both, plus maybe even the [Thursday-Saturday] NFL package, would give Comcast a year-round presence with major sports.”

Another sports exec also questioned why ESPN decided in May to opt out of the final year of its NHL deal for which it would pay $60 million: “Even if ESPN were losing $40 million on the deal, it seems like a reasonable insurance policy to absorb it in order to keep the big bad wolf out of the hen house.”

Losing a sizable portion of its MLB rights would present problems for ESPN. In particular, it could cause cable operators to push for a reduction in their subscriber fees and would cost the network significant ad revenue. “ESPN doesn’t need to have coverage of every sport, but it cannot lose coverage of its jewels. Major League Baseball is one of its jewels,” said a rival sports net exec.

George Bodenheimer, chairman of ESPN and ABC Sports, acknowledged last week that Comcast and OLN “appear to be setting themselves up as a competitor,” but believes that the competition will push his network to get even better. “Our world is filled with competitors, but the prospects for ESPN have never looked brighter,” he added. “Our brand has never been stronger. We are comfortable with our position in the marketplace.”

Bodenheimer said ESPN’s goal is to renew its Sunday-Wednesday package, although he would not comment on where the discussions stand or why a deal isn’t done yet. He also believes ESPN brings lots to the table for MLB. “Baseball Tonight and SportsCenter are the national programs of record for chronicling baseball,” he said. “And we feel we are in the best position to promote baseball.”

Chris Tully, senior vp of broadcasting, MLB, also wouldn’t discuss the negotiations or why they have dragged out, but said, “Our challenge is to maximize the value of our national telecast packages from both an economic and promotional perspective. The sports marketplace is changing rapidly, and we’re taking a long-term strategic view. Obviously ESPN is not only a key player in that market but also a longstanding partner of MLB, and our continuing discussions with ESPN have been our primary focus to date.”

But sources at MLB said while approving a new deal with ESPN would be a reality if all terms were equal, should another party come in with a more attractive offer, the league would not hesitate to choose that alternative.

ESPN’s exclusive negotiating window expired in June, and sources inside and outside of MLB confirmed that TV rights discussions have taken place with Comcast/OLN.

Another factor in the negotiations is MLB’s plan to start its own Baseball Channel, possibly before the start of next season. Were Comcast to include a provision to carry the Baseball Channel in any rights offer it proposed, it could be a sweetener that might lure MLB.

For its part, Comcast and OLN officials are being careful not to rile ESPN, stating that their only goal is to “grow” OLN’s male audience base where it makes sense. But one sports league exec sees Comcast/OLN becoming a major factor in the sports TV world. “I think they can be a player,” he said. “Not necessarily on the ESPN level, but it doesn’t have to be to have an impact. If I were betting, I would bet that it will be a success story.”

While preoccupied with negotiating new TV rights deals, ESPN’s Bodenheimer also has to deal with replacing Mark Shapiro, executive vp of programming and production, who oversaw all ESPN/ABC Sports programming.

Haemish I have bad news. The opening OLN game is the Rangers v. Flyers.

It's opening night. It's Forsberg.

Did you expect any less?

Flyers minus
----------------

Recchi (Pittsburgh)
Leclair (Pittsburgh)
Roenick (Los Angeles)
Amonte (Calgary)
Zhamov (Boston)

+

Forsberg
Hatcher
Rathje

I think the Flyers will be good, but again, if their goaltending doesn't stop choking in the playoffs, none of it will matter.

Most 24-year olds with money, fame and women do.

I wonder if I should enter and rock all your socks.

You can -try-.

It's always confused me as to how Haemish can like hockey, seeing as he lives in fucking Mississippi....

Do they even have Ice Rinks in that state, anywhere?

Pearl is well-known in this state as the most trailer-trashy, white trash redneck burg in the world, and directly across from the center field fence is a line of shitty shit shit shit trailers.

Actually, I expected more. There are 15 matchups on opening day. I'd rather see these games played that day over the Rangers/Flyers.

1) Stars v. Kings
2) Wings v. Blues
3) Coyotes v. Canucks
4) Avalanche v. Oilers
5) Senators v. Leafs
6) Bruins v. Canadiens

Any of those are better hockey matchups in my book.

Sounds like a good place for an F5.

Hockey enforcers might become NHL rarity (http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/columns/story?id=2143559)

By Scott Burnside
Special to ESPN.com

Reigning NHL penalty-minutes leader Sean Avery has some advice for his colleagues in the he-man, tough-guy club: Get some wheels or take a seat.

"I think now if you can't skate, you can't play. That's what it comes down to," Avery said after an informal workout with some of his Los Angeles Kings teammates and other players on the West Coast.

"Do you need a Georges Laraque on your team? I don't think so," said the lean, 5-foot-10, 185-pound Avery, who topped all NHLers in 2003-04 with 261 penalty minutes. "You're going to have to have guys who can do something other than get on the ice for five or six minutes a night and bear hug guys."

With NHL training camps less than three weeks away, players and managers are in a state of flux over what exactly the new hockey dawn will bring.

Playing under a salary cap for the first time and with the promise of an obstruction crackdown and a more wide-open style of play, many managers have abandoned the old template for team-building. Gone is the so-called "ghost roster" that included at least one forward line devoted to pluggers, muckers and pure fighters and at least two hulking defensemen. Instead, many GMs are focusing on skill, speed and hockey smarts throughout their lineups.

"You're still going to need toughness. But if you can find players with toughness who can play, that's a very, very valuable commodity," said Detroit GM Ken Holland, whose Red Wings have been the model for combining grit and skill with the likes of Darren McCarty, Kirk Maltby, Kris Draper and Brendan Shanahan.

Given the dramatic redistribution of talent, all but a handful of the league's 30 teams will enter the 2005-06 campaign with a legitimate shot at making the playoffs. Managers are asking themselves whether they can afford to spend even the league minimum of $450,000 on a player whose contributions are limited to five or six minutes a night, a large portion of which will be spent trying to batter an opponent senseless.

"I don't have the luxury of carrying that kind of guy," said Tampa Bay GM Jay Feaster, who has had his hands full trying to return the core of his Cup-winning team under the $39 million salary cap.

But if there is hesitation on the part of GMs to completely abandon the notion of intimidation through physical presence, it's because they are wary that the game won't be as open as they've been led to believe and they'll find they're overmatched physically later in the season or in the playoffs.

The assumption by most GMs and coaches is that early on in the season, games will be chock-full of power plays as the new zero-tolerance on obstruction is employed by on-ice officials.

As the weeks and months pass, the plan is that the game still will be called tightly but players will internalize the new rules and the game will open up.

But that has been the theory in the past.

"I think we're just guessing right now," Holland said.

"We'll find out really by Christmas what the trend is," added Boston GM Mike O'Connell, who fears the openness may just lead to a renewed focus on defensive styles. Nonetheless, O'Connell has built a Boston team three lines deep with offensive capability and better-than-average mobility along the blue line.

The rule changes and salary cap aren't the only catalysts to widespread changes in team building. The NHL is notoriously faddish and teams are quick to adopt trends, as witnessed by the move to mimic the trap and the left-wing lock popularized by the Red Wings in the late 1990s. Thus, the Tampa Bay Lightning's run to the 2004 Stanley Cup using a speed-oriented attack has hastened a move away from traditional role players, including the pure fighter.

"Your depth on your hockey club was always role playing, checking players, tough guys. I think if you look at teams' rosters right now, there are three or four teams that have changed the depth on their team," Philadelphia Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock said at the recent Canadian Olympic orientation camp in British Columbia. "Their depth is skill now. So they've added skilled depth to the back end of their lineup, which I think is necessary.

"I know our club was really focused on that with the changes we made to our roster," Hitchcock added. "Our depth is more on the skilled side than it was on the role-playing side."

Although he didn't set out to become a trendsetter, Feaster says if the movement toward the Lightning's style of hockey helps to eliminate the "dinosaurs" -- the guys who can only fight or haul down other players -- then so be it.

"You can't just have some 'specialist' that doesn't do anything more," Feaster said.

Feaster can point to his own lineup, which includes forward Chris Dingman, who led the team with a modest 140 penalty minutes, and bruising Nolan Pratt on defense; a lineup that has seen players make significant adjustments to be able to play under coach John Tortorella.

Feaster also points to his offseason signing of veteran forward Rob DiMaio, who is only 5-foot-10 and 190 pounds, but can handle himself in tough situations, as a trend in finding players who can fill part of the traditional fighter's role as well as kill penalties and provide some offensive spark.

Hitchcock thinks intelligence, rather than speed, is the sole ingredient at the heart of these systemic changes.

"It's not so much skating but to me hockey sense, transition. I don't think you have to be fast to play this way. But if you're slow thinking, if you're slow thinking defensively, you're going to be in trouble and if you're slow thinking offensively, you're going to be in big trouble. You have to have people whose hockey sense and anticipation is going to have to be good. If you're not able to read turnovers and you're not able to read people behind you, if you have tunnel vision, you're going to have a very difficult time playing with the way the game is now."

Still, for those imagining a hockey Shangri-La with players dropping their gloves only to shake hands at the end of a game, don't hold your breath.

Krzysztof Oliwa rolled up 247 penalty minutes while playing less than five minutes a night in Calgary. Francis Lessard chipped in one goal and 181 penalty minutes while playing 4:28 a night in Atlanta. Andre Roy, formerly with the Lightning, is now in Pittsburgh ostensibly to protect Sidney Crosby.

The fact that players like these still have jobs is an indication teams aren't ready to completely forsake the notion of toughness as a deterrent.

"I would say it's not going away by any stretch," Blue Jackets GM Doug MacLean said.

Jody Shelley, the NHL's penalty-minute leader in 2002-03, has been working out with high-performance athletes in Columbus, Ohio, in the hopes of improving his foot speed.

MacLean will look to Shelley to provide a physical presence on the forecheck for a revamped Blue Jackets team that expects to be in the middle of its first playoff run this season.

Said Shelley: "You can't just be one-dimensional. I think that goes pretty much for all the guys in my role. It's definitely something I've been thinking about. What it amounts to -- who knows?"

Scott Burnside is a freelance writer based in Atlanta and is a frequent contributor to ESPN.com.

I still insist the NHL should have scrapped the Instigator rule.

I'd take Cliff Ronning for third or fourth line duty any day. Unfortunately it'd more than likely be fourth, seeing as we have a stable of young talent, some of which you'd want to give time on the third.

Shit no, you'll find five on three in the defensive zone, or at best, five on four - and defensemen back out of the play. Not firing shots, not creating offense, not keeping the puck in the zone. Ever watched Sweden vs. Switzerland or anything else like that in international play? Probably not - but I promise you, IT'S FUCKING TERRIBLE HOCKEY.

Might be so, we'll have to see… …I do think the college game is more exciting to watch than NHL, much more skating and offensive play…

Of course, the League could go really radical, and go to four skaters (like they do in OT) full game, and implement inline hockey offsides rules — center line is only offsides line, but a player is permitted to skate the puck into the zone and teammates already in the offensive zone are OK then. Then we'd be seeing the average goals per game doubled…

Damphousse retires after 18 seasons (http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/news/story?id=2153983)

Associated Press

TORONTO -- The NHL lost the second of its top eight active leaders in games played in as many days.

Vincent Damphousse announced his retirement Wednesday, one day after New Jersey Devils captain Scott Stevens called an end to his 22-year career.

"I loved getting up every morning and heading to the rink, and I will miss being in the dressing room with the guys," Damphousse said in a statement released by the NHL Players Association, where he now serves as vice president. "However, I'm looking forward to the next stage of my life."

The futures of veteran free agents Mark Messier, Ron Francis and defenseman Al MacInnis -- who are first, second and sixth, respectively -- also are in doubt.

Eighth on the list of games played among active players with 1,378, Damphousse began his 18-year career in 1986 with Toronto, which drafted him sixth overall prior to that season.

A four-time All-Star who registered 12 career hat tricks, Damphousse is 30th on the all-time assists list with 773. His 432 goals gives him 1,205 points, good for 38th all-time.

Damphousse, who also played with Edmonton, Montreal and San Jose, has surpassed the 20-goal plateau 12 times, including a career-high 40 with the Canadiens in 1993-94. The previous season, the 37-year-old former Montreal captain helped the club to its 23rd Stanley Cup championship.

After recording 12 goals and 29 assists with the Sharks in 2003-04, Damphousse signed a one-year contract with Colorado but never played for the Avalanche due to the NHL lockout. A free agent again this summer, the Montreal native had discussions with Pittsburgh last month with hopes of continuing his career.

Wings: Datsyuk as good as gone (http://www.freep.com/sports/redwings/wings7e_20050907.htm)

Dish slashes Comcast's NHL channel (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051021/tv_nm/comcast_dc)
By Andrew Wallenstein
Fri Oct 21, 1:39 AM ET

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - A three-way brawl over National Hockey League games has broken out among Comcast, Cablevision and EchoStar, which on Thursday ejected the Comcast-owned OLN channel from its Dish Network lineup.
 
Earlier this month, Comcast began replacing NHL games scheduled on the channel with other OLN programing on systems run by Cablevision and EchoStar. The two distributors were put in Comcast's penalty box because they put OLN on channel tiers available to fewer than 40 percent of their subscribers, according to a Comcast spokesman.

Sources said EchoStar stunned Comcast brass by yanking the channel without warning. Company executives flew to the satellite service's Denver headquarters Thursday to negotiate a truce, but after 10 minutes of discussion, EchoStar ended the meeting, citing an unspecified crisis.

By the time the Comcast delegation's plane touched down at its home base in Philadelphia, EchoStar had issued a statement signaling its intent to pull the plug.

In a statement Thursday, EchoStar blasted Comcast's "strong-arm tactics," explaining that moving OLN to a more accessible tier would result in the satellite service having to pay more for the channel, a cost it would be forced to pass on to customers.

"We work hard to provide choice for our customers and to keep prices low," EchoStar senior vp programing Eric Sahl said in the statement.

OLN countered with a statement of its own. "We are surprised and disappointed that Dish has unilaterally chosen to stop providing OLN to its customers. ... We are also disappointed that EchoStar cut off the ongoing discussions with OLN."

MORE BAD NEWS FOR HOCKEY

The OLN blackout represents a setback for the perennially struggling NHL, which signed away its TV rights to Comcast in August for a three-year deal estimated to be worth $200 million. After ESPN declined to pick up another hockey season amid poor ratings and a lockout that canceled the 2004-05 season, the league suddenly is seeing its visibility reduced in key markets like the New York-New Jersey area that Cablevision serves.

Thus begins another contentious face-off between programing and distribution in the subscription-TV world, which, like hockey itself, is occasionally marred by nasty battles pitting combatants capable of landing low blows.

EchoStar chairman and CEO Charlie Ergen has shown that he is more than willing to pull the jersey over a programmer's head. In March 2004, he removed all Viacom-owned channels from Dish Network for 48 hours before reaching a new carriage deal with the conglomerate. In January 2001, it took a federal injunction to keep EchoStar from dumping Walt Disney Co.-owned ABC Family in a similar fracas.

But now EchoStar is going toe-to-toe with Comcast, the biggest cable operator in the country and owner of a growing portfolio of channels, including E! Networks, Golf Channel and G4.

Cablevision has no plans to pull OLN, according to a spokesman. But the operator isn't giving up the fight, either. "We continue to carry OLN, and we continue to call upon them to cease their illegal electronic blocking of hockey games in New York," the spokesman said.

EchoStar currently slots OLN on its America's Top 180 channel package, which isn't as popular among its 11.4 million subscribers. Cablevision slots OLN on a separate sports tier that costs an additional $4.95.

Comcast wants to see both distributors upgrade OLN to channel positions that will put them in front of 40 percent of their subscriber bases, commonly accepted as the baseline for pro sports programing.

Formerly known as Outdoor Life Network, OLN is available in 65 million homes.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

The OLN coverage is a little on the amateurish/cheap side, or at least it seems to be.