Breaking down more from Beijing's five-ring circus media leftovers
Lindsay Soto said during one of her brief non-working hours, she was able to get over to visit the Great Wall of China, just about an hour away from Beijing.
"I'm just walking down the wall with my friends from work and I see a guy in SC gear," she said. "And his wife goes, 'Lindsay Soto?!' It was the wierdest experience ever. I can go to the grocery store in Pasadena and no one has a clue who I am, but I go to the Great Wall of China and run into someone who watches 'Trojans Live.'
Spinning off more from Soto from today's media column (linked here), as well as other Beijing-related material that scatters itself everywhere over the last few weeks:
Soto, working freelance these days for FSN West and FSN Prime Ticket, plans to leave China on Sunday, but only for practical reasons -- she has to work the sidelines at the Sparks' telecast on Thursday from Staples Center, fly to Virginia for the USC football opener on Saturday, Aug. 30, then start a three-day-a-week gig for the NFL Network doing updates from their studio show. She'll still cover high school and USC football for FSN Prime Ticket this fall.
And through all that, she probably won't get to use any of the Chinese language she learned along the way.
"It's amazing how little I've had to use here," she said. "Translators go out with the crews any time you're speaking with Chinese people, but those 13 audio CD lessons I went through before I left wasn't enough to get the job done. I can say things like, 'Would you like to have dinner?' You find yourself saying simple things like 'Hi' or 'Thank you' or 'Good bye,' and the Chinese people pick up on that and it shows you're making an effort to connect with them."
The language came in handy when Soto was sent out to do her first story -- interview a Chinese man in a local apartment complex who had been shaving Olympic rings and the Beijing Olympic logo into the heads of local neighborhood boys who wanted to show their pride.
"All those kids were so excited to meet us and show us what little English they knew," said Soto. "A 14-year-old girl who called herself Alice spoke English really well and was excited to interact. When we left, she said: 'Thank you for coming this day, it has been great for me.'
"You do feel a certain amount of responsbility to be an ambassador. These people have not been exposed to many Americans, and we know many Americans at home have not been exposed to China, so we're trying to give the stories a sense of how things are and elminate some of that mystery that always seems to be hanging over everything. You realize that we do have a lot of things in common, aside from the political differences.
"I'm not sure I had that many preconceived notions coming in, but as Americans, we probably didn't know fully what we were getting into. We didn't know how the people felt about Americans being there. It's really intriguing to find so much commonality."
==As for the take by Chris Marlowe on the TV future of pro beach volleyball, taking the momentum from the American's prime-time performance in the women's and men's finals, it must be noted that the AVP's next televised event on NBC is from ...
Cincinnati?
Actually, the esteemed Linder Family Tennis Center in Mason, Ohio on Labor Day Weekend, Aug. 29-31.
That's also not far from Columbus, Ohio. Home of the Ohio State Buckeyes. Who on that Saturday, are opening their football season at home against Youngstown State.
Great, great timing by the AVP.
Then, nothing from events in Santa Barbara and San Francisco (according to information from AVP webside, linked here) but we suspect the usual tape-delayed programming on Fox Sports Net.
How's that for carrying momentum?
The Manhattan Beach Open, otherwise known as the Wimbledon of beach volleyball, was stupidly pushed back to late September because of the break in the AVP season for the Olympics. Those in Manhattan Beach protested because of the fact the event is now out of the Memorial Day-Labor Day summer season and may not be as well attended. Also, in a new (ridiculous) format, the last four AVP events are an elmination-sort of tournament, where the field for MB is down to 16 men and 16 women on each side -- so if you didn't qualify, you don't even get to play on the fun play-in matches that take place on Thursday and Friday. It's a page taken out of that wildly popular FedEx Cup that the PGA Tour is now doing so, so successfully.
AVP commissioner Leonard Armato told the Sports Business Daily this week that he has lined up Fox -- the big network, not just FSN -- to cover the Manhattan Beach event and it will be stragetically placed with its NFL coverage as a lead-in on that Sunday.
"During NBC prime time, beach volleyball has enjoyed some great ratings numbers," Armato told the publication. "What that tells us is that if (it's) properly promoted and the stakes are meaningful with an Olympic medal, people will watch this sport in mass numbers. I think 20 million people watched Misty (May-Treanor) and Kerri (Walsh) play in their preliminary round pool play match. What we want to do in the future is work with a strategic group that can see the potential and vision in this sport that we've built up under the AVP umbrella."
==Marlowe and Karch Kiraly ended up broadcasting nearly all 108 matches -- men and women -- starting on the first day of competition, doing as many as five matches a day, from as early as 9 a.m. to some lasting past midnight.
"You know you have to grind it out the first six days, but once you hit the quarterfinals and medal rounds, the load lightens up and you can catch up on some sleep," said Marlowe, who, with Paul Sunderland, did both indoor and outdoor coverage of the sport during the '96 Games.
Considering the younger demo of the beach volleyball crowd, you'd think that matches airing on NBCOlympics.com would have been key, but the sport was one that was embargoed for live Internet coverage, so that viewers would have to wait until the prime-time live showings to see it.
The one element of the success of the near future of the AVP events on TV could come from those who tune in just to watch Walsh and May-Treanor, both of whom indicated they're planning to take next season off to start families. May-Treanor has also said she may not even play beach volleyball again, but go back to the indoor game as an Olympic competitor.
"I think they'll be back again in London in 2012, but I'm not sure if the sport can rely on one team to carry it," said Marlowe in his fourth season doing TV play-by-play for the Denver Nuggets for the Altitude cable network. "The NBA found that out when Michael Jordan retired. Beach volleyball has to keep repopulating with fresh faces. It's important they build on that from Beijing."
==For what it's worth, Walsh and May-Treanor have been booked for an appearance on "Late Night With David Letterman" for Wednesday.
==OK, one more quip from Mary Carillo, that didn't make it on air.
She was on a conference call with a few media members on Wednesday and someone asked her about the events she's covered that she was most taken by.
"My sister called me up a couple a days ago, she was watching team handball. She had never before seen it, and she wanted to know what sport that was where they were cheating in soccer. I was watching it with her trying to explain what's going on."
She was just getting warmed up.
"You know there's just some crazy sports. The steeplechase, it's the nuttiest sport you've ever seen. It looks like everybody in the race has stolen a woman's handbag and they're running away over bushes and into their neighbors little plastic pools. You're thinking to yourself: How did they train? How did they get here? How do you train for something that bizarre? The nice thing about being at the broadcast center 15 hours a day is that you actually get to follow these stories and keep up with them."
And the highlight for her? Hard to say, but ...
"I guess my children within seconds of me eating bizarre foods, they both got dozens of text messages that said 'your mom just ate a scorpion on television.' That one seemed to get a lot of attention."
==Cris Collinsworth, the former All-Pro receiver with the Cincinnati Bengals, on what kind of chance someone like 6-foot-5 Jamacian insane sprint star Usain Bolt has if he wanted to give the NFL a shot:
"I would not want to play defensive back when he's coming off the ball. Bob Hayes (the former 1964 gold medal sprinter who was a four-time All Pro running back with the Dallas Cowboys in the late '60s and early '70s) was such a remarkable guy. And I worked with Renaldo Nehemiah (the star 110-meter hurdler who would have made the 1980 Games but didn't because of the U.S. boycott, then played three years for the San Francisco 49ers in the early '80s) on the (old TV show) 'Superstars' competition. I was trying to tell Skeets about running routs -- go out 15 yards, slam your legs into the ground, then come out -- and he was like, 'Are you kidding me?' The thing you don't understand is how runners in that class want to take care of their legs. And (in the case of Bolt), if you haven't played the game all the way through ..."
Collinsworth then paused.
"But I think I might sign him."
==One more Olympic behind-the-scenes take, from the Sports Business Daily, which staked out the NBC coverage from both Beijing and New York (linked here).
==Two New York Times stories that are media related: One on how the Chinese Central Television coverage has drawn an enormous amount of viewers -- makes sense considering the pool to draw from (linked here), another on trying to put a label on what Bela Karoyli has done for the NBC gymnastics coverage (linked here). Also, a follow up on how NBC has been drawing new viewers, at the expense of the other three networks (linked here).
==A headline from Onion Sports (linked here):
Michael Phelps Returns To His Tank At Sea World
==Another thing for the complain box about with the NBC Olympics setup: Many have noted that the TiVo/DVR use during the Beijing Games has been dicey. For MSNBC and USA Network, the coverage was set up in six-hour increments. So when, for instance, the U.S. basketball men's game was set for a 5 a.m. (PDT) start, the six-hour block assigned to that cut off at 6 a.m., then started up again until noon. For some DVRs, that meant you had to record the entire 12 hours of programming to contain the game. Although, if you know how to program a TiVo, you can record specific start and stop hours, but how can you be sure it'll happen as it's planned? Same problem if you trusted NBC to stay within the 8 p.m. to midnight window each night. Many times, it went five to 10 minutes long -- once, even a full half hour. Live and learn and swear and fire off an email to NBC. If you must.
**TENNIS:
==The U.S. Open coverage actually starts this weekend on CBS (Sunday's Arthur Ashe Kids Day is at 9 a.m. Sunday, leading into a half-hour preview show at 1:30 a.m.) before USA Network peels off the Olympics and hits a quick stride with its daily 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. window, then 4 to 8 p.m., followed up by a 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. replay of the match of the day.
**GOLF:
==Oh, right, the FedEx Cup. And we thought ignoring the PGA Championship last weekend would be enough. The Barclays, the first of four events to determine the made-up champion of men's golf, hits CBS on Saturday (noon to 3 p.m.) and Sunday (11 a.m. to 3 p.m.). For the first time, CBS and the PGA Tour have an online simulcast of the coverage on PGATour.com and CBSSports.com, as well as wireless on CBS Sports Mobile. The usual CBS team will be back for this -- Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo anchor, Peter Oosterhuis (17th), Gary McCord (16th), Ian Baker-Finch (15th) and David Feherty and Peter Kostis on course. The Golf Channel continues its early coverage today at 11 a.m. (to 3 p.m., repeated at 5:30 p.m.). The field is made up of 136 of the 144 top players from the just-ended PGA Tour season -- some, like Tiger Woods, are injured and can't make it -- and 16 will be eliminated before next weekend's Deutsche Bank Championship.
**COLLEGE FOOTBALL:
=="In My Own Words: Rick Neuheisel," where the incoming UCLA coach drones on more about what it's like to return to coach at his alma mater, debuts on FSN Prime Ticket on Monday (8 p.m.) Bill Macdonald is the interviewer.
==No major shakeups in the ABC/ESPN roster of broadcasters for the upcoming season. The network says Brent Musburger, Kirk Herbstreit and Lisa Salters are together for their third season on the marquee ABC Saturday night contests -- meaning Herbstreit continues his scramble between the early morning ESPN "College GameDay" to get to where ever that night's game may be, even if it's a cross-country flight.
Jesse Palmer, once "The Bachelor" on the ABC phoney reality show, becomes a game analyst with Chris Fowler, Craig James and Erin Andrews on the ESPN Thursday night games.
Brad Nessler, Bob Griese and Paul Maguire stay on ABC's Saturday broadcasts (with repoter Stacey Dales). Mike Patrick, Todd Blackledge and Holly Rowe are on ESPN games, as are Ron Frankin, Ed Cunningham and Jack Arute.
On the ABC college football studio show, John Saunders returns with James and Doug Flutie. ESPN's Saturday studio show goes again with (yawn) Rece Davis, Lou Holtz and Mark May.
==There have been several Internet sites (one of them linked here) that claim CBS accidentally released their upcoming college football schedule -- through the entire season. While that seems unlikely, it's probably more of a "wish list" schedule subject to change week to week as the SEC season progresses. A Georgia-South Carolina opener on Sept 13 is followed by Florida-Tennessee on Sept. 20, and Tennessee-Auburn on Sept. 27. Florida, with defending Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, appear to be set for at least five possible appearances.
The one announcement that has come out from the network -- officially -- is that the season on CBS College Sports Network begins Saturday (5 p.m.) with Fort Valley State facing Valdosta State.
**PRO FOOTBALL
==The "Pro Football Preview" on Fox Sports Net that airs during the NFL season will include having its first active player -- San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawn Merriman will fly from S.D. into L.A. for taping at the Pico Ave. not studio (no more of taping it in Denver, as it was last year, or in Irvine at the Fox Sports Grill) on a private jet each Thursday to meet up with Jay Glazer and Eddie George (Jason Sehorn and Tim Brown are no longer with the show), then fly back for practice. Fox says it's the first time an active player has done this kind of studio show, full time, for any sport. "It is one thing to have somebody who played talk about what's going on each week, but to have somebody who is still playing takes our show to another level," Fox Senior Vice President Rick Jaffe said. "The insight he will bring just raised the bar for every NFL pre-game show on television."
The announcement trumps the one made earlier this week by Showtime -- that recently retired star Warren Sapp has been added to the new "Inside the NFL" studio show (formerly on HBO), joining Cris Collinsworth, James Brown and Phil Simms.
==Dan Fouts, out of work since ABC/ESPN let him go from his play-by-play duties following last season, has landed back at CBS, back as an analyst, on both NFL regional contests (with Dick Enberg, Don Criqui and Bill Macatee) as well as college games (SEC, on the main network, other games on the CBS College Sports Network). Fouts worked at CBS on NFL games from 1988 to '93, partnered with Dick Stockton and Verne Lundquist. Fouts was Keith Jackson's broadcast partner at ABC, starting in 1997. He switched to play by play in 2006 and '07. Fouts also had a two-year stint on ABC's "Monday Night Football," with Dennis Miller and Al Michaels, before going back to college games (more specifically, the Pac-10) when the network brought in John Madden.
Also, it was announced Friday that Fouts will work for the syndicated Sports USA Radio network (linked here), the Larry Kahn business that covers college and NFL games. Fouts will start as an analyst for Howard David on the Jacksonville-Tennessee NFL opener on Sept. 7, and also do play-by-play on college games throughout the year.
==The NFL Network will let Sterling Sharpe try his tongue at play-by-play, with Marshall Faulk and Deion Sanders as his "analysts," when it covers Sunday's Buffalo-Indianapolis exhibition game (5 p.m.).
==Part of the promos now running on NBC during the Beijing Games for the upcoming Sunday Night Football package include singer Faith Hill inviting players like Torry Holt, Ray Lewis and Bob Sanders to her "house" to hang out in the kitchen and cook. There's even a shot of the new Sunday Night Football Cookbook -- a subliminal crosspromotion of an actual book that's for sale for $27.95 (linked here). Hill and John Madden are listed as the authors (as well as NBC and Time Inc), with 150 recipes in it, including some submitted by Madden -- no turducken, but a BBQ hot-beef sandwich -- as well as (reportedly, but we couldn't find it in the index) Bob Costas and Tiki Barber.
"These aren't your run-of-the-mill tailgating recipes, though," says the sales pitch on Barnes And Noble. "The Sunday Night Football Cookbook redefines football food, transforming traditional dishes into super-tasty recipes and adding the nation's regional tastes to the gameday table."
**BASEBALL:
==The Dodgers' weekend series in Philadelphia draws some regional and national attention, with Fox taking Saturday's game (12:55 p.m., Channel 11) and ESPN carrying Sunday's game (5 p.m.). Fox uses Kenny Albert, Tim McCarver and Ken Rosenthal on its coverage to 37 percent of the country (39 percent see Tampa Bay at the Chicago White Sox with Josh Lewin and Eric Karros, while the other 23 percent get Atlanta at St. Louis). Sunday's TBS contest (11 a.m.) also goes with Tampa Bay-Chicago.
==Another edition of "Costas Now" with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays is scheduled to debut on Tuesday, Sept. 30. Bob Costas met with the two baseball icons for a recent live roundtable that aired the Wednesday after the July All-Star game. Once the show ended, they stayed onstage another 40 minutes for an HBO.com webcast. In the hour-long special drawn from that night -- most of which was not aired -- Aaron and Mays continue on talking about some of their most memorable moments in the game.
==A new digital rights deal between MLB and ESPN gives the World Wide Leader a bunch of access -- mostly to now stream its Sunday, Monday and Wednesday night telecasts on ESPN360.com.
**MISC:
==Brent Musburger does the title game Sunday (12:30 p.m., Channel 7) with Orel Hershier, Stacey Dales and Pedro Gomez from Williamsport, Pa., the last of 32 games televised by the Disney family. Saturday, Musburger, Hershiser and Orestes Destrade do the International championship (9:30 a.m.), with Musburger and Hershiser on the U.S. championship (noon) to determine Sunday's matchup. Karl Ravech, Destrade and Gomez do the consolation game (Sunday, 9 a.m., ESPN).
==Maybe it's a reaction to NBC's NFL pregame show. Maybe it's not. But ESPN will have Chris Berman host the 4 p.m. edition of "SportsCenter" starting Sept. 7, which will basically be the day's NFL action leading into analysis and other banter -- the same kind of stuff Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick will be hired to do on the Peacock leading into their 5:15 p.m. kickoff. This may be a bit of a bone to throw at Berman, who did the "NFL PrimeTime" highlight show with Tom Jackson from 1987 through 2005 -- when NBC pulled the plug on that with its new contract.
==The first of 19 high school football games to be carried on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU goes Saturday when Indiana rivals Cathedral faces defending state champion Carmel (noon, ESPN). Dave Ryan, Tom Luginbill and Sara Kustock do the broadcast. During the schedule, two games air on ESPN, three on ESPN2 and 13 on ESPNU.The NFL Network will also carry six high school games (starting Aug. 31), while Versus has three (starting Aug. 30). The only nationally televised games involving California teams -- Mater Dei vs. Carson, Sept. 3, on ESPN2, after Clovis East hosts Colleyville (Tex.) Heritage on Sept. 1 on NFL Net.
==The L.A. based SlamBall -- that's basketball played on a trampoline court -- has a deal with CBS to air eight games on Sundays starting Aug. 31, as well as the title game on Nov. 2 after the network's NFL coverage. SlamBall owner Mike Tollin says plans for 2009 include a league to be played in eight cites.
==Chris "Mad Dog" Russo, who recently broke up with Mike Francessa in their 19-year partnership on New York's WFAN sports-talk radio, signed a five-year deal this week (reportedly worth a total of $15 million) to start a show on Sirius XM satellite radio. Because of the recent FCC approval to unite Sirius with XM, both Sirius channel 123 and XM channel 144 will relaunch as "Mad Dog Radio," giving him the apparent kind of freedom that Sirius did when it signed Howard Stern on a few years ago.
"Mad Dog's fans are passionate about their sports and passionate about where they get their sports news and commentary from - these are the listeners that any audio entertainment company would want," said Scott Greenstein, President and Chief Content Officer for Sirius XM Radio. "Having Mad Dog on SIRIUS and XM will fuel subscriber growth and create new and exciting opportunities for advertisers. Choose whatever sports analogy you want - this is a big win."
Russo's show will go live from New York each weekday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (PDT) starting Sept. 15.
"No other sports talk radio comes close to what I will be able to do," said Russo. "I get to create a whole channel of my kind of sports talk."
He told the Newark Star Ledger: "I'm not going to deny that money was a factor (in leaving WFAN). But the bottom line is the challenge of the show is the most important thing. Listen, they gave me a channel. ... You can't turn that down."
Sirius XM CEO Mel Karmazin said that because of the publicity Russo's arrival has received, his contract "has paid for itself already, in my opinion."
==Apparently you do have to see it to believe it, so Colin Cowherd's weekday show on ESPN Radio (heard locally on KSPN-AM 710 from 7 to 10 a.m.) will start a live simulcast on ESPNU, following the path that the Mike Greenberg-Mike Golic show has taken on ESPN2.
==Next episode of HBO's "Real Sports" (Tuesday, 10 p.m.) includes a pice on Donald Trump's controversial golf course that he's building in Scotland. Bernard Goldberg reports on how Trump's vision of creating the greatest luxury resort on the planet, spending $2 billion, with a hotel, condos and homes, has been held up by a man named Michael Forbes, a local fisherman and farmer who won't sell his 23-acre plot of land. The city is also debating whether to let him develop on its environmentally designated sand dunes.
**AND FINALLY:
==I've been asked several times this week, including a stint on the "Joe McDonnell Experience" on KLAC-AM (570), for an opinion on what the Dodgers' Jeff Kent had to say about Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully in recent editions of T.J. Simers' column in the L.A. Times.
I could speculate. I could read Simers' follow-up in Wednesday paper. I could speculate more.
It's not worth disecting.
But if you must, we defer to Jon Weisman's Dodger Thoughts Blog (linked here) and note that Scully has been ranked No. 5 on the LA Radio.coms latest reader poll of the Best On-Air L.A. Radio People of 2008. This, as Scully only does three simulcast innings a game on KABC-AM (790).
There's also some more opinion from Phil Wallace on LAObserved.com (linked here), where Kent is referred to as "an absolute disgrace" and Scully as "the greatest announcer in the history of sports."
Enough said. And written.
About this blog
Leave a comment