Our latest media notes spillover tests positive for Costas

==A recent story in Editor & Publisher reports that cutbacks in newspapers across the country may make for a more hominiged coverage of sharing and deal-cutting among companies to get everything covered in Beijing. While the Associated Press says it has 319 people working the beat, more papers are sending fewer reporters to China than in year's past. Boston Globe sports editor Joe Sullivan said that the paper would "not assign any photographers to the Olympics and would only send seven staffers." Randy Harvey, sports editor of the Los Angeles Times, said there will be 12 employees in Beijing, down from as many as 20 for past Games. USA Today Olympics Editor Roxanna Scott said that the paper will send 19 reporters.

==Today's Onion Sports take on the Beijing Games (linked here):

Citing Poor Conditions, China Refuses To Send Delegation To Olympics

BEIJING--In an 11th-hour move that shocked the international athletic and political communities alike, the Chinese Olympic Team announced Wednesday that it will not be attending the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing due to "shocking, shameful, and ultimately dangerous environmental conditions" in the host city.
"Given the unconscionably bad environmental state of the area in and around the site of the 2008 Summer Games, we cannot in good conscience allow Chinese athletes to compete in China," said Olympic committee spokesman Sun Weide. "We deeply apologize to China for the bitter disappointment they will feel at not being represented in these Games. However, we place the blame squarely on China for their failure to prepare a suitable venue for international competition."

"Frankly, it seems to me that in terms of air quality, water purity, and general contamination, Beijing is barely even capable of supporting human life, let alone strenuous activities such as team sports, swimming, and long-distance running," added Weide, who has lived in Beijing all his life. "We can only hope our refusal to compete in this city will result in real change for its long-suffering residents."

==OK, one more Onion Sports headline (linked here):

DVDs Of Olympics Somehow Available On Sidewalk Already

BEIJING--Several hours before the opening ceremony Thursday, ambitious Chinese street vendors obtained bootleg copies of the complete 2008 Beijing Olympics coverage, pressed DVD copies of the footage, and sold DVDs for five to seven dollars apiece from blankets spread out on the sidewalk.
"I was really surprised that I was able to get a hold of this so early, especially with all the reports that the Chinese were going to prevent the results from being leaked," said San Francisco resident Todd Saunders. "The footage was pretty grainy and you could tell they just shot it off of a screen with a camcorder, but for the price I thought it was worth it."

**GOLF:

==There's a PGA major going on this weekend? Has Tiger been alerted?
And who'll watch?
CBS has the final two rounds of the PGA Championship (Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.) from somewhere in Michigan.
CBS News and Sports chief Sean McManus admits there may be other programming on a competiting network that will really draw attention away from the Tiger-less event.
"We could take a hit in the ratings," he said. "We factor that in and it's not a big surprise. It is what it is. Alot of the attention also depends on who's atop the leaderboard Saturday and Sunday morning."
Here's breaking news: Tiger won't be.

==In addition to carrying the first two rounds of the PGA Championship on TNT, Turner Sports runs the PGA Championship LIVE video stream element of the online coverage, firing up nearly 120 hours of stuff on PGA.com. The site has four channels of content, some starting as early at 9 a.m. and lasting as late as 4 p.m.

**BASEBALL:

==Thom Brennaman is teammed with Tim McCarver to call Saturday's Angels-Yankees game from Anaheim for the Fox regional contest (12:55 p.m., Channel 11). Some 43 percent of the country will see it, while the other 56 percent see St. Louis at the Chicago Cubs with Dick Stockton and Eric Karros. ESPN takes the Cardinals-Cubs at 5 p.m. on Sunday.

==A statement issued by the Caray family, through TNT, on the passing last week of longtime Braves broadcaster Skip Caray (pictured above, right, with dad, Harry Caray, in the center, and son Chip Caray at the left, in 1991): "We are overwhelmed by the number of friends, colleagues, co-workers, MLB players and people in the baseball community who have reached out to us and so grateful and touched by their support and prayers. We are also deeply appreciative by the outpouring of support from the fans who grew up watching him and shared the ride."
TNT had a rembrance to Caray during Thursday's coverage of the PGA Championship, and have another tribute to air during Sunday's TBS telecast. Caray would have been 69 on Tuesday, Aug. 12. Caray's son, Chip, is scheduled to call Sunday's Red Sox-White Sox contest with Buck Martinez for TBS.

==A story in today's Boston Globe (linked here), noting that the Dodgers sold more than $125,000 worth of Manny Ramirez jerseys before hitting their recent road trip, columnist Dan Shaughnessy does the predictable L.A.-is-clueless throwaway line by saying: "These are the same people who previously knew No. 99 only as Barbara Feldon or Anne Hathaway."
Or, Wayne Gretzky.

**PRO FOOTBALL

==Maybe the best line to come from the NFL Films' reality show, "Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Dallas Cowboys" that aired Wednesday on HBO, was from rookie Martellus Bennett, talking about the cost these days of a gallon of gas: "Pretty soon it will be $4.50, which is a meal at McDonald's." The first of five episodes reairs tonight (11 p.m.), Friday (10 a.m. and 11:40 p.m.), Saturday (11:30 a.m. and 11:15 p.m.) and Monday (10:30 a.m.). The episodes can also be viewed at HBO.com (linked here) starting today and they'll keep it up there for a week.

==The NFL Network has eight live exhibition games, starting tonight (4:30 p.m., Philadelphia at Pittsburgh) and a doubleheader Saturday (4 p.m., Buffalo at Washington, followed by Dallas at San Diego). During the exhibition season, NFL Net has 54 games -- all but the 11 televised by CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC. In light of the Brett Favre trade to the New York Jets, the NFL Network added a live broadcast of the team's Saturday, Aug. 16 game vs. Washington to its schedule.

==ESPN has Green Bay in its radar at all moments, including the Packers' exhibition opener against Cincinnati on Monday (5 p.m., with Mike Tirico, Ron Jaworski and Tony Kornheiser) from Lambeau Field -- the site of the regular-season MNF opener on Sept. 8. ESPN also has a one-hour "Countdown" Monday (4 p.m.) with Chris Berman, Cris Carter, Mike Ditka, Tom Jackson, Keyshawn Johnson and Chris Mortensen.

**COLLEGE FOOTBALL:

==Versus, which had nine college football games on its fall schedule in 2006, and 19 games in '07, ups it to 23 games this season, adding the Ivy League (5 games) to its cherry picking of the Pac-10 (5), Big 12 (5) and Moutain West (8). Its enough for the home of the Tour de France to launch a studio show for halftime (some pre- and post-game shows as well) hosted by Ted Robinson and someone named Roland Williams that originate from Stamford, Conn. For those who aren't aware, Versus has exclusively locked in games such as UCLA's contest at BYU (Sept. 13), USC at Stanford (Nov. 15), Oregon at Oregon St. (Nov. 29) and Yale at Harvard (Nov. 22). "By increasing our college football line-up to 23 games across four conferences and adding a college football studio show, the network is solidifying its position as a destination for college football fans," said Marc Fein, Executive Vice President of Programming, Production and Business Operations for Versus. "We saw tremendous growth last year from our college football package and with our increasing coverage this year we anticipate the positive growth trend will continue." While passing on Robinson, Versus uses the non-discript voices of Joe Beninati, Ron Thulin and Rich Ackerman on play-by-play, along with Glenn Parker, Kelly Stouffer and Dale Hellestrae as analysts. Let's not even get into the sideline reporters (although Lindsay Soto has been added to the stable that includes ... no one you've ever heard of).

**MOTORSPORTS:

==Next episode of ESPN's "Outside the Lines" (Sunday, 6:30 a.m. on ESPN, 9 a.m. on ESPNEWS) examines women and minorities in the NASCAR circuit, in light of a former NASCAR official, Mauricia Grant, filing a discrimination lawsuit against the organization.
"It's a hostile work environment," Grant, an African-American woman who inspected cars, told the ESPN show. "It took a lot of emotional blows. I would have to gear up in the morning to get prepared for that."
"On any given day there is some thing -- or some action or somebody -- that does something that could be perceived as insensitive," says Max Siegel, the President of global operations for Dale Earnhardt, Inc.

==Racing-Live.com, which covers Formula 1 (F1-Live.com), Moto GP & Superbike (Moto-Live.com), Rally (Rally-Live.com), off road rallies (Raid-Live.com) and Endurance Sports-Cars and Kart racing in English, French, Japanese, Italian, German and Spanish, was bought up last week by ESPN to add to its online arsenal.
"Motor racing has a global fan base, and this agreement will allow us to serve fans more motor sports coverage than ever before," said Russell Wolff, ESPN International's exec VP and managing director, in a statement. "We continue to build our online business through key acquisitions like Cricinfo.com and Scrum.com while expanding our current offerings including fantasy and localized versions of ESPNsoccernet.com. Serving sports fans online is priority for us and this acquisition complements our extensive NASCAR and Classic motor sports coverage across our multi-media platforms around the globe."

**MISC.

==Winding down the ATP's star-starved Countrywide Classic at UCLA, Tennis Channel (noon) and ESPN2 (8 p.m.) have the quarterfinals today, they also split the semifinals Saturday (1 p.m.. Tennis Channel; 7:30 p.m. ESPN2) and ESPN2 has the final Sunday (2 p.m.), followed by Tennis Channel carrying the doubles final at 5 p.m.

==ESPN jumps into live "SportsCenters" starting at 6 a.m. Monday, in synch with the Beijing Olympics. Hannah Storm (6 to 9 a.m.) and Chris McKendry (9 a.m. to noon) will have a bulk of the facetime. "We've done more and more of this - go back to Sammy Sosa's corked bat, to a lot of the (Roger) Clemens stuff, to Michael Vick and the other big stories that are happening, and we've fired up the studio," said Norby Williamson, the ESPN chief of studio production. "Now we've had a lot of practice doing this, we've become more strategic with it... and that led us to the decision to allocate significant resources and go live all the time, five days a week."
McKendry said last week that she'd been in to rehearse for the upcoming live studio shows and twice ended up going live on the air with news -- probably just more Brett Favre stuff, but still. "Journalism instincts kick in - if there's a big story out there, you want to be the person delivering it," she said. "You want to be involved in the big stories, so I was prepared and happy to stay."

==ESPN relaunches its "E:60" newsmagazine show with the first of 14 weekly episodes airing Tuesday at 4 p.m. The show, which has been on hiatis since May 13, will have enough material to get it through Nov. 11. The next two shows have features on Olympic swimmer Dara Torres, New England Patriots receiver Randy Moss and his involvement in NASCAR ownership; jailed mixed martial arts fighter Lee Murray and a look at Olympic equestrian eventing, which has been called the most dangerous of Olympic sports (a combo of dressage, cross-country and show-jumping). Reporters Tom Farrey, Rachel Nichols, Lisa Salters, Jeremy Schaap and Michael Smith return to the round table to joust about the importance of their story versus others, playing up the cameras.

==The moments, still never dull with the Arboblog that they've done a marvelous job of trying to hide from the official home page of WeAreSc.com -- you can find it by going to the link to Forums at the top, pulling down to Trojan Football link, then scanning the items that editor Garry Paskwietz (his bio here) has posted (and approved) until you see something that says Arboblog.
The Pete Arbogast prose posted late Thursday night (linked here) deals with his laments about taking a bus to the USC campus to watch practice, a conversation he had with Dodgers owner Frank McCourt (where he refers to "the late" umpire Bruce Froemming, who is retired but still very much alive) and then an update on what media member will be next inducted into the USC Athletic Hall of Fame.
"I made a nomination, a small speech and my nominee was accepted whole heartedly. I thought of bringing up Fred Gallagher, but our honoree fully deserves this tremendous honor. I can't tell you who it is, of course, you'll find out at an October football game."
You can't nominate yourself, can you?

**AND FINALLY

==To say ESPN has been ALLOVER the BFavre story would be a world wide understatement. In fact, when the Green Bay Press-Gazette tried to snap a few shots of Favre showing up at Packers camp on Tuesday, it was tough to get anything without ESPN's Rachel Nichols in the shot.
Check out the slide show (linked here)