Media Notes

NBC’s “Barbaro: A Nation’s Horse” was slated to air last Sunday, but the double OT Sabres-Rangers Game Three pushed the documentary to this Saturday at 8:00pm ET. In Philadelphia, Stan Hochman writes the film “asks no tough questions” and “elicits no startling answers.” HBO is working on its own Barbaro documentary to be shown before the Belmont Stakes, and maybe that will ask “tougher questions,” including those concerning the safety of thoroughbreds such as “spacing the Triple Crown races further apart,” synthetic surfaces and “banning medications that mask pain” (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, 5/2)....ESPN Radio will carry its first coverage of the Kentucky Derby “as part of an expansion of the radio programming it has streamed over the Internet” (USA TODAY, 5/2).

SI Digital Relaunches FanNation.com

IT TAKES A NATION: SI Digital has relaunched FanNation.com, the social networking and sports news aggregation platform it acquired in January. Based on Omniture data, the Truth & Rumors pages averaged 1.2 million page views per day in the first week of the relaunch last week, a 177% jump from last year, when it lived only on SI.com. Unique users were up 81%, and there was a 53% increase in page views per unique user (THE DAILY).

NOTES: FSN West last night had a conflict between the first ten minutes of Ducks-Canucks Game Four and the “last few innings” of Royals-Angels, so the net “took viewers back and forth and used a split screen when necessary.” The national telecast of Ducks-Canucks on Versus was blacked out locally (L.A. TIMES, 5/2)....According to the winter Arbitron ratings, Chicago’s WSCR-AM and WMVP-AM each earned a 1.5 share among listeners 12 and older, ending a three-book winning streak for WSCR, “which fell from a 2.0 in the fall.” WMVP “held steady at 1.5” (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 4/30).