Watchdog

Fang's Bites has links to new pieces from journalists I wrote about in recent weeks, Fox's Jay Glazer (in a good way) and GateHouse's Mike Nadel (in a less good way).

Jay here fleshes out in extreme detail the story he told me about his day in the Orlando Airport trying to break the Brett-to-the-Jets story. (Glaze, I thought the three-hour, $300 foot massage was off the record!)

Nadel here wraps up the reaction to his infamous column about a certain ESPN reporter who dressed and behaved a certain way (allegedly) in the locker room of a certain baseball team that last won the World Series in 1908.

I'm done feeding the blog beast for now. It's going to take me the rest of the day how to figure out how to do my expenses the Cablevision way. Bye.

Here's my work strategy for today: Keep the blog beast fed with occasional non-Brett posts while working on Brett stuff for the Friday newspaper. Fair?

Like this, for example:

Fox's Tim McCarver, who will work Saturday's Yankees-Angels tilt, is not backing down from his preseason prediction that the Yankees would not make the playoffs. Why should he? Here is some stuff Fox sent on that subject:

With injury setbacks to starting pitchers Chien-Ming Wang, Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain and Ian Kennedy’s lackluster performance, McCarver’s preseason prediction sounds more plausible than ever. “I still believe that they won’t make the postseason. At the beginning of the year, their pitching was simply not established enough to take on a major league season,” said the analyst. McCarver believes the Yankees need to exercise some patience. “You’ve got to develop your pitchers. The key is to be patient on the day when nobody is patient.”

Here is an item about viewership for the late, late All-Star Game Show on Fox that did not make it into the Sunday newspaper:

It ended much earlier than the infamous Mets-Braves game of July 4-5, 1985, and a little earlier than the Easter Epic between the Islanders and Capitals in ‘87. But viewers who lasted until the end of the All-Star game at 1:37 a.m. earned a lifelong memory and something to brag about to their friends.

How many such people were there? Nationally, the final quarter-hour, from 1:30 to 1:45 a.m. Eastern Time, 6.3 percent of homes still were watching, covering an estimated 9.6 million viewers.

In New York, the rating understandably dwindled in the wee hours. But substantial numbers of people hung in there. An estimated 9.1 percent of homes still were watching at 1:30.

Maybe they were hoping to get to see David Wright pitch in the 17th.

Click below to view a breakdown of the percentages of homes in the New York area that watched the All-Star Game, quarter hour by quarter hour:

I suppose I should do some sort of analysis of my own about the All-Star Game ratings released by Fox this afternoon.

But I don't feel like it. And, really, there is nothing outrageously newsworthy here.

The game attracted a solid 17.1 percent of homes in New York, but the figure was even higher in St. Louis, Minneapolis and Milwaukee.

If you're into ratings arcana, click below for the entire Fox news release on the subject.

You can find the video of Fox's interview with Brett Favre here.

There is a lot of the usual Favre rambling here - which will give him trouble if he ever tries to get into TV - but his account of his conversation with Packers coach Mike McCarthy is pretty good stuff.

It's getting to the point you have to feel a little sorry for this guy.

Michael Strahan's retirement is going much better than Brett's so far.

I've been busy being on vacation and not watching baseball, but fortunately my friend/competitor Richard Sandomir at the Times followed up on the big Joe Buck unpleasantness of earlier this week since I was unavailable. That's why I recommend the Times as an occasionally useful second read after you have enjoyed your morning Newsday.

Here is that story.

Joe says he loves baseball and regularly takes his daughters to Cardinals games. Not on school nights, I hope!

Interesting TV/radio/blogosphere debate going on today in the wake of comments by Fox's Joe Buck in which he expresses his ambivalence about following baseball in its current state.

Awful Announcing follows that up with Skip Bayless' take on the situation.

With Buck set to call Bosox-Yanks this weekend, following up with him on this would have been a slam-dunk column for the Friday newspaper.

Two things, though:

1. I'm on vacation, and thus will not be writing a Friday newspaper column.

2. I agree with much of what he said, and now I don't have to write that and get all of Baseball City mad at me.

Whew. (Let's keep reason No. 2 just between us, OK?)

Fans of the landmark series "When It Was a Game'' a decade ago will find much to enjoy in FSN's new series "Baseball's Golden Age,'' which debuts Sunday night and has a similar look and feel to the original.

That's because it was produced by some of the same people as "When It Was a Game,'' which was built around color home movies from the 1920s through the '60s. It provided an entirely new way of experiencing that era for generations who only knew those players and stadiums in black-and-white.

Steven Stern, who heads Flagstaff Films, said this 13-episode show focuses more on particular subjects and offers more details. The vast majority of footage has not been seen before.

I only reviewed the first episode. The pictures are fantastic, as always, but too often the narration and interviews offer baseball-worship generalities rather than information on the film we actually are watching.

Still, this stuff is a treasure both for the aging generations who watched that era live and in color, and those under AARP age who did not.

Given all the unpleasantness this past week with the Mike Francesa/Chris Russo feud and the Giants' announcement that PSLs are on the way, wouldn't it be nice to send myself off on a brief hiatus with a heartwarming Sunday newspaper column about a father and son working in the sports media business, one in the Evil Empire, one in New York?

I thought it would.

Fox Sports chairman David Hill said Tuesday that despite the addition of a new pregame mouth in Michael Strahan, the other elements of the show will remain in place, including Frank Caliendo, Jillian Reynolds and Barry Switzer.

That's a lot of stuff to cram in an hour. Hill said Fox would like to expand the show to 90 minutes. But that is a complicated process, and it most likely would take at least two or three years to make happen.

That was interesting; this was strange: Hill tried to make the case that because they bring new fans into the sport, the pregame panelists are doing greater things now than when they were winning multiple Super Bowls, getting inducted into the Hall of Fame and football stuff like that.

"As important as they were to the NFL when they were coaching and playing, they’re far more important now,'' Hill said, "because what they have managed to do over the years, God knows how, is to explain the inexplicable, to break down plays and personalities, to viewers who might never think of watching football and convert them into fans, and our research has shown this year in and year out."

Here is my small story in the Tuesday newspaper about Michael Strahan joining the Fox pre-game crew.

I am sure he will have entertaining things to say about all this today, and his comments will appear in the Wednesday newspaper.

Probably even Tuesday night, if you check Newsday.com.

Question No. 1, obviously: In light of all the ---- Tiki Barber took for commenting on the Giants last season, how do you plan to handle that delicate topic, especially if they struggle?

I think Strahan is going to be good at TV, and in the long run he should go to the game booth.

Studio shows will not fully take advantage of his abilities.

I just had a great idea for a future column:

A look inside WatchDog's inbox, in which I share with readers why relentless p.r. people eventually are going to drive me into retirement in a shack in Idaho without indoor plumbing, electricity or MSG Plus.

For example . . . Click below for the release I received this morning with the news Fox College Sports has signed with the National Scholastic Surfing Association to show its championships.

Why not? Sounds more refreshing (and dangerous) than the BCS.

And one of the commentators is Sarah Karges, pictured at left in one of the tamer pictures of her that is publicly available.

I don't know where to begin in giving you the details of the Fox/MLB pre-All Star game extravaganza, the kickoff to what Fox says "is sure to be one of the most memorable nights in sports history."

So I'm just giving you the entire news release.

Click below for that.

I hope to be on vacation that night.

While you were out clubbing Saturday night, I was sorting out what happened at Fox during the final at-bat of the Yankees-Red Sox tilt.

I included some of it in the early edition of the newspaper and more of it in the late edition, but WatchDog readers are the only ones who will get the entire story, via spokesman Dan Bell, who called at 11 p.m. to explain what happened and express Fox's apology to any fans who were confused or inconvenienced.

Click below for the gory details.

I posted a colorful rant the other day in which I wondered why I was giving free pub to Ch. 5 in advance of an appearance by Rod Gilbert and Adam Graves to talk about the hockey playoffs.

What I did not realize at the time was they were there in part to promote the "Garden of Dreams Foundation," which raises money for children in crisis.

That's the kind of free pub I am happy to provide.

Ch. 5 officially named Andy Adler its weekend sports anchor, citing her coverage of the Giants' Super Bowl run, during which I made fun of her for excessive beaming after a playoff victory.

The weekend sports gig remains a pretty good one at the station, with ample time to cover stuff, a tradition that dates to the long-ago glory days of "Sports Extra," presumably before Ms. Adler was born.

But on some weeknights, Ch. 5 still offers comically little time to its sports roundups, even on a busy day and night such as Wednesday.

I like their weather guy, though.

Uh, oh. I'm already starting to get a queasy feeling about the spectacle that will be the 2008 All-Star Game in the Bronx.

The latest wrinkle is that Fox will roll out a red carpet in midtown that evening, complete with a parade hosted by Chris Rose.

Sounds very annoying. But Rose is a good guy. He went to college with Ken Davidoff, so he must be OK.

I assume they made it through by taking mostly courses full of jocks.

Jim Baumbach, Newsday's world famous Web columnist, tipped me off this morning to this historic news out of St. Louis:

The Buck Era in the Cardinals booth is over.

Joe had been cutting way back on Cardinals games in recent seasons, but now he is down to zero, ending a legacy that dates way, way back to his venerable father, Jack.

It was a heck of a run.

New York has comfortably claimed the crown of Major Market Least Interested in the Daytona 500, comfortably beating out last year's winner, San Francisco.

Among the 56 markets measured in overnight ratings, New York ranked dead last with 3.0 percent of households tuning in on Fox Sunday. The rest of the bottom five: San Antonio (3.9), Los Angeles (4.3), San Francisco (4.3) and San Diego (4.5).

(New York was down from a 4.1 last year.)

The top five: Greenville (24.1), Greensboro (22.5), Charlotte (21.1), Orlando (19.7), Knoxville (19.6).

Archie Manning speculates in this article that Fox showed Peyton often during Super Bowl XLII but not the rest of the family because Archie, Olivia and the rest were sitting in NBC's suite and Peyton was located elsewhere.

Not so. Fox simply (and correctly) determined Peyton's reactions were the best story line. (Apparently Peyton figured he would avoid the cameras if he stayed away from his parents, but the opposite occurred.)

For all you ratings buffs out there . . . click below for the entire Fox news release on Super Bowl XLII ratings.

There's even a funny quote from Fox Sports chairman David Hill that praises the masterful quarterbacking of Ryan Seacrest!

Here is my review of Fox's TV coverage. I have no idea whether or not it is coherent.

The nuttiness of the finish and the deadline situation were not conducive to clear thinking or writing.

One thing I forgot to mention in the review that Fox should have mentioned in the broadcast, given the pivotal role played by David Tyree, is that his mother passed away very recently.

I assume that is why he pointed heavenward after scoring his touchdown.

When Tyree was a rookie I did a feature on the fact he still lived with his mother in Montclair. It was a pleasure to have met her.

Embedded deep inside Fox compound now . . . 11 mobile units, three trailers, four uplinks . . . food way better than the box lunches the reporters inside the stadium get.

Jay Glazer just gave me a tour of the crab legs in the catering tent.

Have to get TV job and ditch newspapers to upgrade pre-game diet . . . maybe next week.

(Check out this blog post from Glauber about Lenny Randle!)

You know how Fox is planning to have Ryan Seacrest interview movie stars at the Super Bowl on a "red carpet" Sunday?

Here's a little game you can play, if you are inclined to watch the entire four-hour pregame:

Write down the names of the stars who are interviewed, then compare that list to the casts of the movies that later are advertised during the game.

WatchDog has it on good authority the two lists magically will overlap nicely.

Hey, for $2.7 million per 30-second ad, you'd like some extra favors, too, wouldn't you?

A source here in Phoenix just informed me today is Kenny Albert's 40th birthday.

If true, Happy Birthday, Kenny (a loyal WatchDog reader).

And if true, the rest of us must be getting really, really old.

(Albert's wikipedia entry is inconclusive. I'd ask him myself if it's his birthday, but this is a blog and we try to avoid that old-fashioned reporter-ish stuff. Passing along second-hand rumor is more fun.)

Nothing Fox information man Jay Glazer has done in his career has generated quite as much attention as his coup in acquiring a copy of the Patriots' "Spygate" tape from Week 1.

But Glazer said he was more proud of reporting before the Redskins-Bills game that Washington would start the game with only 10 defenders in honor of Sean Taylor.

Even coach Joe Gibbs didn't know about it. "I was pumped about that," he said.

What about that tape, though? Where did he get it? Glazer never has said - usually he jokingly says he got it from Ronde Barber - even to his bosses at Fox Sports, chairman David Hill and president Ed Goren.

Glazer said he enjoyed the attention from the story but not the fallout, which he said included a "witch hunt'' by the NFL to try to uncover the source.

"They started going after the wrong people, people were pointing fingers at everybody," he said. "They had no clue."

Glazer told Hill and Goren he would lie to them if they forced him to give up a name. So far they haven't, and he hasn't.

The only other Super Bowl in Arizona was Super Bowl XXX 12 years ago.

That was the last Super Bowl for the Troy Aikman Era Cowboys.

"My kids are 6 and 5 and they've never seen me play,'' he said. "That's hard to get accustomed to when you start saying you're that far removed from the game and 12 years from our last Super Bowl. I have very fond memories of my time here in Phoenix.''

Any particular memory?

"I was on the radio with Michael Irvin and I had to remind him, he didn’t remember it, but what probably sticks out during that week was that Michael took a white stretch limousine to and from every practice that week. I thought that was a little excessive.'' (He laughed.)

Merrick's own Artie Kempner, Fox's game director for Super Bowl XLII, says even in his somewhat mellowed out phase, Tom Coughlin remains TV gold for reaction shots.

"He's still a great picture,'' Kempner said. "He still reacts and emotes to almost any situation. For a TV guy he is the immediate reaction you go to after a big play."

Kempner grew up a Jets fan, primarily because his family couldn't get Giants tickets. But his father was and is a Giants fan. He lives in Florida and watched the Giants-Bucs playoff game from the Fox booth, but opted for watching on TV this weekend.

"He said it's better on television, because his son is doing it,'' Kempner said.

Bodog has established an over-under of 6.5 for mentions of Jessica Simpson's name during Fox's broadcast of Sunday's Giants-Cowboys tilt.

This does NOT include pre-game, halftime or post-game.

I would strongly recommend the under if Ms. Simpson does not attend the game. But if I'm wrong I will pretend never to have written this.

I can't help it.

Every time CNN annoyingly calls itself "The Best Political Team on Television," I think of the somewhat similar name of a very dissimilar show on Fox Sports Net, the one that has a mild curse word in its title and features a much higher level of discourse than is sometimes heard on the political campaign trail.

One more boring ratings post, then I'll leave you nice people alone so you can get on your game faces for the Knicks contest against whomever they're playing.

I sense things are about to turn around for them.

As you might have expected given the relative lack of pre-kickoff buzz, the ratings for the BCS Championship Game were less than inspiring.

The LSU-Ohio State tilt attracted 14.4 percent of households on Fox, down from 17.4 in 2007 and 21.7 in '06.

Fox said the game attracted an average audience of 22.6 million. That's still a lot of people. Fox noted the 14.4 rating is better than the season average for any prime time TV show in 2007-08.

Fox's four BCS games averaged a 9.0, down 13 percent from last year.

Get well soon to Fox's Jeanne Zelasko, who will undergo treatment for a form of thyroid cancer after working Thursday night's Orange Bowl.

The L.A. Daily News' Tom Hoffarth wrote about Zelasko's condition in his blog, and also noted she shares an agent with ESPN's Stuart Scott, who is expected to undergo chemotherapy as a precaution after cancerous cells were found when he had his appendix removed.

I am all over the place in my first newspaper column of 2008, with items on Jimmy Johnson's hair, why the Steelers and not the Giants are playing Saturday night, how Giants fans came through in a big way last weekend, a breakdown of the ratings on the four New York channels that showed the Pats-Giants game and how the NHL's outdoor New Year's Day extravaganza nearly went down in the Bronx.

That should keep you occupied and confused at least until 1 p.m., when the Pens and Sabres take the ice in Orchard Park.

Once more, with feeling: Happy New Year everyone!

Spies deep within the sports TV industry tell me the NFL is going to relax some of its usual rules in Week 17, one result of which will be that the Cowboys-Redskins game will be on Ch. 5 despite the fact the Jets have a home game at the same time on Ch. 2.

Is this payback for Fox being left out of the simulcast of the Patriots-Giants game? I don't know . . . yet.

Is this payback for Ch. 9 - part of the same business empire as Fox - losing its broadcast exclusivity for the Saturday night game? I don't know . . . yet.

But who cares, really? You've got an extra game now, New York. Enjoy!

(Update: Good thing I posted this when I did, because now the NFL has announced it officially. So I got to look smart for five or 10 minutes, an eternity in the twisted world of blogging. Click below for the full NFL news release.)

Professionally, sportswriters must keep a safe distance from public relations people and never take what comes out of their mouths at face value.

Personally, sportswriters often end up liking and respecting the p.r. people who help them do their jobs and serve readers.

An example: Fox Sports director of communications Tim Buckman, who has handled much of my New York-based whining on behalf of his L.A.-based superiors.

Buckman will be leaving the network after almost eight years at the end of next week - three days before the BCS title game and four weeks before the Super Bowl - to move from New York to California for a new gig at Callaway Golf.

Thanks for all your help, Tim, on behalf of SportsWatch/Watchdog and their readers. I hope you and Big Bertha are very happy together.

Uh, oh. Sounds like there is some sort of sideline reporter dustup brewing in Philly between Donovan McNabb and Pam Oliver.

I'll go with Pam on this one, because she is the best (and feistiest) in the business.

Oliver is the best argument in favor of football sideline reporters.

Is "feistiest" a word?

Hey, these playoff games are painfully long for network announcers, too. Check out this tale, courtesy of our friends at Sports Business Daily. The set-up, from SBD:

Fox’ Joe Buck appeared on NBC’s “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,'' where he talked about how during broadcasts, his friends text him words “that I have to fit into the broadcast, and depending on the degree of difficulty, that’s how much money is riding on the bet.” NBC’s Conan O’Brien said after you say the word on-air, “your friend is watching at home and is like, ‘Yeah!’” Buck: “No, then he owes me. He owes $20.” O’Brien: “For $20 he just turned you into a human puppet on national television.” Buck: “It’s fun for me. Baseball games are long, so if you can kind of spice it