In Orlando, Josh Robbins reported the Magic and FS Florida have "finalized a 10-year contract extension" that will make the net the team’s local TV rights holder through the '25-26 season. Sources said that the Magic "will rank among the top quarter of NBA teams in local television revenue." Team officials "never negotiated with other potential networks because they were still in their exclusive negotiating window" with FS Florida. But Magic CEO Alex Martins said that the team "considered forming" its own RSN. Martins: "We studied it extensively" (ORLANDO SENTINEL, 10/26).
PAST MY BEDTIME: FS1 chose to start Saturday's Washington-Cal college football game at 8:06pm PT, and UW AD Scott Woodward said of the late kickoff, "It's frustrating as heck. ... There are four, five games a year (in the Pac-12) that they can go to 8 o’clock with, and unfortunately they drew us. And it’s frustrating. It’s tough on our fans. I don’t know what we’re going to do, but it will be addressed and talked about (before) the next television contract. But, that being said, that’s why they’re paying us a big premium -- for those eyeballs late at night" (SEATTLE TIMES, 10/27). ESPN has aired one UW game in a late-start time slot this season, with the Washington-Stanford game on Oct. 5 beginning at 7:41pm PT. FS1 also had a 7:00pm start for Boise State-Washington on Aug. 31 (THE DAILY).
A RAW DEAL? In N.Y., Bob Raissman reported SiriusXM on Friday fired Mad Dog Sports Radio host Dino Costa, an "incredibly dumb move by people who have reduced some of their talkies to antidotes for insomnia." SiriusXM execs "never understood they had a singularly unique personality" in Costa. He said, "I have zero regrets. Hopefully the next time SXM runs into a talent such as myself they’ll know how to go about promoting that talent and maximizing the skills of a guy like me" (N.Y. DAILY NEWS, 10/27).
