Media Notes

Comcast Re-Branding Its TV, Internet, Telephone Services As Xfinity

In Philadelphia, Bob Fernandez reports Comcast will "re-brand its TV, Internet, and telephone services as Xfinity on Feb. 12 to signal to customers that this isn't the same old company." Comcast "will remain as the corporate name, but the company will emphasize Xfinity in advertisements and on 24,000 service trucks and thousands of employee uniforms." The new brand name "will first appear in Comcast ads, around the time of the Winter Olympics, in Philadelphia and 10 other markets and will then appear in Comcast's cable-franchise areas in other parts of the country" (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, 2/4).

CHIEF PRIORITY: The Chiefs yesterday announced a multi-year extension of their radio partnership with KCFX-FM, which next season will serve as the flagship station for the 21st consecutive season. KCFX will broadcast all Chiefs preseason, regular-season and postseason games to affiliates throughout a seven-state region. Announcer Mitch Holthus and analyst Len Dawson will call the action together for the 17th straight season. Meanwhile, the Chiefs also announced a new radio partnership with WHB-AM, which has secured exclusive rights to other Chiefs programming, including the second hour of the official Chiefs postgame show, live press conferences and more. WHB will own exclusive live radio broadcast rights to the Chiefs' weekly in-season press conferences with coach Todd Haley and the team's starting QB (Chiefs).

LET'S GO STREAMING: THE NATIONAL's Keach Hagey reports EPL games "will be broadcast over broadband internet in the Middle East and North Africa from the start of next season." Abu Dhabi Media Company (ADMC) "won a three-year contract for exclusive regional rights to broadcast the EPL last year, but until now had not revealed how it planned to broadcast matches." It was "widely assumed within the industry that ADMC would resell its rights to a pay-TV broadcaster, or sublicence them to terrestrial television in certain markets." But ADMC CEO Edward Borgerding "rejected this model last night" (THE NATIONAL, 2/4).

NUMBERS GAME: In Chicago, Rick Telander writes N.Y. Times sports reporter Alan Schwarz' "dogged, smart, mathematically-grounded pursuit of the rising brain trauma and dementia issues in the NFL has put him at the journalistic forefront of the hottest ethical topic in the football world." Schwarz has now written "over the course of three years some 30 articles for the Times on the connection between brain damage and football -- and, he insists, it is no longer a connection, but a fact." Schwarz, who "graduated cum laude in mathematics" from the Univ. of Pennsylvania, said, "I love numbers as numbers. I see personality in numbers. Numbers to me are a language that tell stories about people" (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 2/4).