TV MONITOR: Last night's 10:00pm ET 60-minute edition
of FSN's "National Sports Report" led with MLB free agency,
followed by Red Sox P Pedro Martinez winning the AL Cy Young
Award. The first non-MLB report, at 6:10 into the
broadcast, was T'Blazers-Nets. "NSR" had 8:36 of total MLB
coverage. Last night's 12:00am ET 60-minute edition of
ESPN's "SportsCenter" led with T'Blazers-Nets, followed by
an injury update on Warriors F Danny Fortson. The first
non-NBA report, at 2:48, was Harlem Globetrotters-MI St.
Univ. exhibition game, where the Globetrotters lost their
first game since '95. "SportsCenter" had 6:13 of total MLB
coverage. Last night's 11:00pm ET 30-minute edition of
CNN/SI's "Sports Tonight" was pre-empted due to continuing
coverage of Election 2000 (THE DAILY).
WOODS DELIVERS FOR ABC: USA TODAY's Rudy Martzke
reports that ABC's tape-delayed coverage Saturday of the
AmEx WGC from Spain drew a 4.2 preliminary overnight Nielsen
rating, up 62% from last year's 2.6, while Sunday's coverage
produced a 3.4 rating, even with '99. Mediacom's Jon
Mandel: "The fact that plausibly live golf does as well as
last year is pretty darn good" (USA TODAY, 11/14).
DOES KNIGHT HAVE BIG "UPSIDE" ON TV? In Boston, Howard
Manly calls it "too bad" that Bobby Knight will not be a
college basketball analyst for CBS because his "upside was
huge." But Manly adds that CBS Sports President Sean
McManus "played it smart and cautious, and in this day and
age of declining ratings and market shares, there is no
sense in alienating viewers who normally would not watch
college hoops" (BOSTON GLOBE, 11/14).
NEWS & NOTES: FoxSports.com features an updated look
and enhanced features for its network of 18 regional sports
Web sites. Additionally, top headlines and scores will now
be available to mobile and wireless subscribers via AvantGo
(FoxSports.com). Meanwhile, News Digital Media has entered
a multiyear agreement with Phase2Media to represent it for
ad sales to U.S. agencies, including for its FoxSports.com
(AD AGE, 11/14)....The WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE's David
Sweet profiled NJ-based SportsTicker: "No place is better to
study the flow of sports data than SportsTicker." Sweet:
"To get a sense of sports data's growth in the computer age,
consider the characters of data SportsTicker delivers daily.
Stuck at 200,000 a day in 1980, about 50 million characters
are shipped today" (WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE, 11/13).
