The change in Versus' name to the NBC Sports Network, as well as a "much-ballyhooed update" to the NBC Sports logo, is a "meaningful tweak in an intensely competitive marketplace where billions of dollars are at stake," according to Chad Finn of the BOSTON GLOBE. Now that Comcast has acquired NBC, the "competition with ESPN is particularly compelling." While other networks "have built intriguing rosters of sports programming ... the conventional wisdom is that with the seemingly endless vault of Comcast money behind it, NBC Sports Group has the best chance of cutting into the audience" of ESPN. NBC Sports Chair Mark Lazarus said that he "understands that perception." However, he is "quick to point out that NBC Sports Group not only takes a different fundamental philosophy to presenting sports than ESPN, but he believes it can do it from a wider variety of mediums." Lazarus: “None of our competitors have a broadcast platform, a national cable platform, and the regional platform and the digital platform, if you think it through. Disney has certain parts of that, Fox has certain parts of that, CBS has certain parts of that, but no one has that full complement of assets." Finn notes with the '12 London Games less than a year away, it is "imperative from Lazarus’s perspective that the rebranding becomes familiar to viewers as soon as possible." He said, “We believe that having NBC Sports and the NBC Sports Network will allow us to transfer viewers more seamlessly through the Olympics. And for hockey, for that matter, and everything we do together" (BOSTON GLOBE, 8/5).
PROMOTED TO THE BIG LEAGUES: In DC, Jim Williams writes Versus, "had trouble convincing cable companies that it was a true sports network on the level of ESPN." But as the NBC Sports Network, it "can begin to make up that 24 million subscriber gap that separates it from the ESPN family of networks." Williams adds, "Help will be on the way from NBC, one of the hallmark names in sports since TV started broadcasting sports back in the late 1930s" (WASHINGTON EXAMINER, 8/5). Meanwhile, in L.A., Tom Hoffarth writes rebranding Versus and "moving the channel headquarters from Philadelphia to New York gives Comcast a new spin on charging other cable companies more in subscriber fees, even with the same programming" (L.A. DAILY NEWS, 8/5).
