Going long with more media notes
Whether or not we're under suspicion of paragraph-enhancing drugs, we've got plenty of extra clear-minded and cream-cured notes from today's Daily News media column and even more notes to spill over into blogland:
==ESPN already has announced plans to go completely overboard in covering David Beckham's first MLS appearance, which won't really be an MLS appearance, as the Galaxy face Chelsea of the English Premier League at the Home Depot Center on July 21 at 6 p.m. Even ESPN's own press release calls it the "most expansive initiative ever for a single U.S. domestic soccer event." Dave O’Brien unfortunately has the call, with analysts Eric Wynalda and Tommy Smyth, and sideline reporter Allen Hopkins. Rob Stone will host a 30-minute pre-match show with analyst Julie Foudy from the Home Depot Center. The game will have 19 cameras, including something they'll call a Beckham Cam: Isolated on his every move, and able to view extensively on ESPN360.com. A "Celebrity Cam" will go into the stands to find people of note, including Reggie Bush, who has been roped into an ad campaign by Adidas with Beckham.
==Dan Patrick's "life-changing announcement," which he promised his ESPN Radio listeners would come Tuesday, then pushed it to Thursday and now says it won't come until Monday at the earliest since he's taking a siesta, may have already been revealed on the blog of KLAC-AM (570)'s Joe McDonnell. Responding on the air to our report last week that he'd been asked to audition for "The Price Is Right," Patrick said: "They called and wanted to know if I wanted to audition. I said, 'No, I don't want to audition.'' Patrick's first official life-changing announcement, of course, was when he altered his name from Dan Pugh before joining CNN in 1983.
==Eric Karros , who despite setting the L.A. Dodgers' career home run record during his 13 seasons never made it to an All_Star Game, joins Jeanie Zelasko and Kevin Kennedy on Fox's pre-game show at the All-Star Game in San Francisco, and Angels play-by-play man Jose Mota will be one of two on-field reporters. KSPN-AM (710) has both the MLB Home Run Derby (Monday, 5 p.m.) and the MLB All-Star Game (Tuesday, 5 p.m.) XM Satellite Radio also has both on Channel 176, as well as the All-Star Futures Game on Sunday. MLB Home Plate host Holden Kushner will be on a kayak in McCovey Cove during the Home Run Derby as well.
==NBC has expanded its deal with The All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club to continue televising Wimbledon through 2011, it announced Thursday. This is the 39th consecutive year NBC has done Wimbledon, and apparently the last with Bud Collins as its contributor. Collins, the Boston Globe tennis writer, has had his position basically phased out as post-match interviewer and commentator. The 78-year-old has been doing the last 35 Wimbledon tournaments for NBC. The network has the women's finals Saturday and men's finals Sunday starting at 6 a.m.
Today's Wimbledon coverage on ESPN2 started an hour early (3 a.m. to 9 a.m.) tol include extra matches – all four men’s quarterfinals and a women’s semifinal, compared to the original schedule of simply one men’s semifinal.
==Not that you were supposed to notice, but one of the judges in Wednesday's world hot dog eating contest was a 31-year-old account executive from Queens named James Lamarre. Why does it matter? He redeemed 2,500 rewards points from his ESPN Total Access Visa card so he could do it.
== ESPN's sports auction Jimmy V Foundation fundraiser that goes in conjunction with the ESPY Awards can be access through this ebay link: http://stores.ebay.com/ESPN-Auctions. During ESPN Radio's network programming on Wednesday, KSPN-AM (710) will reveal different auction items each hour. For more info: Go to this ESPN Network link or this KSPN-AM (710) link. Donations can also be made directly to the Jimmy V Foundation at this link.
==The Versus' network 300-hour-plus coverage of the Tour de France starts Saturday at 5:30 a.m. from London and goes every day through the Sunday, July 29 finish. Phil Liggett, known as the "voice of cycling" as he's been covering the Tour de France since 1973, said that all the drug-testing stories surrounding the sport over the last several years -- and the last few months in particular -- shouldn't draw comparisons of the sport to pro wrestling. "It's very different, " said Liggett. "Look at it from the other side. The sport has tried very hard to be extreme in cleaning its own house. And tests aren't completely falable. They make mistakes. There's a lot of misinformed writing done by people who only write about this on one occasional doping story. Otherwise, you never read about or have interest in an appreciation of how these athletes work to get where they get."
Paul Sherwen, (pictured), a seven-time Tour de France competitor and two-time British national champion, also works the Versus broadcast and calls the pro wrestling comparisons "a little harsh. At the end of the day, the effort to win the grand tour still remains the same. It's not chorerographed or predictable. It's still a sport as far as I'm concerned trying to improve its credibility. Cycling is just doing its dirty washing in public. Cycling may have a very naive federation."
As it has the last three years, JetBlue Airways will include free coverage from Versus on the Tour starting Saturday.
== The AVP pro beach volleyball tour jazzed up its website with AVP.com Mosaic, which gives subscribers the ability to watch four live matches at once online for the rest of this season. Major League Baseball Advanced Media powers the thing. For a test run at this weekend's AVP event in New Jersey, use this link for free registration to the Seaside Heights Open, or go to AVP.comTV or AVP.com Mosiac. The AVP is one of the first major pro sports to offer this access. Subscriptions are offered for the entire season or with a four-day pass. “It is an evolutionary process. As things go on, we see what works, and we encourage people to participate on the blogs and tell us what they like and what they don’t,” said Joe Inzerillo, Senior VP, Multimedia & Distribution for MLBAM. “We designed the avp.com Mosaic gathering site to be as flexible as possible so we can have the ability to move if something is historical or something is happening.” Subscribers can see live coverage of the tournament final, access on-demand archived coverage, bonus semifinal coverage from some events, and even get classic AVP matches from years gone by. All events this season are televised either by Fox Sports Net or NBC.
==CBS brings back its A-team of golf broadcasters for this weekend's AT&T National from Bethesda, Md., because Tiger Woods is the host and is playing against Mickelson, Furyk, Singh, etc. KCBS-Channel 2 has third and final-round coverage Saturday and Sunday, noon to 3 p.m. each day.
Meanwhile, the Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman has a three-part interview with Woods that starts Sunday on Golf Central Primetime (6 p.m.) and continues Monday and Tuesday on the 4 p.m. Golf Central show. Fatherhood is, of course, the main topic of conversation, followed by his recent performances, what's on his TiVo when he travels and what kind of chores he does around the house.
==Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant and Lennox Lewis call the Wladimir Klitschko-Lamon Brewster bout Saturday at 2 p.m. live from Cologne, Germany, with a replay later that day at 10:30 p.m.
==TNT's coverage of the Pepsi 400 NASCAR Nextel Cup race Saturday from Daytona at 5 p.m. will have what the network calls "wide open coverage" -- meaning no national commercial interruptions, only three local commercial breaks per hour and an on-screen video box where 10 sponsors will get the chance to plug their products through video vignettes that run from 60 seconds to two minutes in length.
== The new Big Ten Network will officially launch at 7 p.m. (Central Time) on Thursday, Aug. 30, having received commitments from more than 75 local cable systems serving eight states where Big Ten schools play. The first Big Ten football game of 2007 comes two days later with regional coverage of Michigan vs. Appalachian State, Ohio State vs. Youngstown State, Penn State vs. Florida International and Northwestern vs. Northeastern. Later that day, it's Indiana vs. Indiana State and Minnesota vs. Bowling Green. The Big Ten Network has a national distribution deal with DirecTV and the new AT&T U-verseSM service. For more info: www.BigTenNetwork.com.
==Updates on athletes who've committed to the X Games 13 at Staples Center/Home Depot Center from Aug. 2-5 can be found on the official Games site, www.expn.com.
==To fill all those empty hours in post All-Star Game mode, Fox Sports Net Prime Ticket has decided to re-run all 12 "Trojan Rewind" shows from 2006 between 4 and 10 p.m. on Wednesday, and then all 12 "Bruin Rewind" shows from last season between 4 and 10 p.m. on Thursday.
FSN West also debuts its next "Before The Bigs" show, focusing on the Angels' Jered Weaver, after tonight's Angels-Yankees coverage at 7:30 p.m. Hosted by Bill Macdonald, the show starts when Weaver grew up in Simi Valley sharing a bond with his older brother, Jeff.
==The Championship Gaming Series begins live TV coverage on DirecTV's Channel 101 starting Monday at 7 p.m. from the Raleigh Studios in Manhattan Beach. Free tickets for spectators are available at http://www.hollywoodtickets.com/ShowPages/ChampionshipGamingseries.asp
==Thank goodness, ESPN will show the USA Rock, Paper Scissors Championship on Saturday, with Trey Wingo hosting it (after it was taped last May in Las Vegas).
==And finally, in response to last week's column on WFAN's 20th anniversary of switching to all-sports format: LARadio.com's Don Barrett emailed a copy of the column to his clients. One who responded to Barrett's email was Howard Freedman, the former program director at XTRA-AM (690): "I'm amazed that Tom forgot that XTRA SPORTS 690 was So. Cal's first All Sports station, launching in 1990, and helping to destroy KMPC and drive them out of the format. XTRA SPORTS 690 always beat KMPC in LA, and dominated the coveted demo of Men 25-54, with only a partial LA signal. Further they were a top ranking male station in San Diego with Mason/Ireland, Rome, Cannons, and Hacksaw. This is especially surprising since I consider Tom a media friend who always gave XTRA SPORTS 690 their due back then. XTRA SPORTS 690 launched the careers of rookies Jim Rome, Steve Mason, John Ireland, Steve Hartman, Jeanne Zelasko, Michelle Tafoya, and of course the already established Lee Hacksaw Hamilton. Plus they had the LA Kings, Chargers, Angels, UCLA, SDSU,etc. ... Hey Tom, what are we missing here? Maybe you could forward him the History of XTRA SPORTS 690 piece from a couple years ago."
Thanks for the response, but the point of the column was comparing how the old KMPC, at the moment of its creation in 1992, used the WFAN model to try to make things happen in Los Angeles. Was KMPC's eventual demise because of a stronger lineup at the San Diego-based station? The competition should have helped make KMPC's efforts even stronger, but in the end, the station didn't get the instant results it anticipated and its own structure fell apart.
XTRA, indeed, was a force. Again, based in San Diego but with a foothold in L.A.
One other correction, as several pointed out: It was 1540-AM, not 1150-AM, that eventually took the call letters "KMPC" after 710-AM was bought by Capital Cities and changed to Disney stations. 1150 was another XTRA sports affiliate that tried all-sports before switching operations over to 570-AM, where it still runs as KLAC-AM.
============================================
For those reading the Daily News website version of the media column and weren't able to find the What Chokes and What Smokes notes, our sister paper, The Daily Breeze, has it on its site at this link.
=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x
More in the media today:
New York Times' Richard Sandomir reviews ESPN's coverage of the hot dog eating contest, noting that Spike TV seems to be relishing the fact it can take it over since ESPN's contract has run out ....
Suzanne Halliburton of the Austin American-Statesman writes about Versus' Tour de France coverage ...
More from the New York Times and Matt Higgins about televised surfing and the X Games ...
Michael Hiestand at USA Today writes about Bud Collins' departure from NBC's Wimbledon coverage ...
The Dayton Daily News' Marc Katz reviews HBO's “Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush” documentary ...