Fox’s 4-year BCS packages a hit

Who needs a college football playoff? Not Fox, apparently, which has become the darling of the ad community following a successful run-up to the Bowl Championship Series. Fox’s four BCS games — ABC/ESPN is selling the Rose Bowl — are 95 percent sold out for this year, and 70 percent sold ac ...

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When ESPN takes HD to Hawaii, assembly will be required

ESPN will air a college football game from Hawaii in high-definition for the first time, thanks to a makeshift high-definition control room made out of three office trailers. The broadcast of the Cornerstone Bancard Hula Bowl in HD on Jan. 14 means ESPN will air all but one of its college ...

Wooden’s Bruins lead 4-pack of HBO docs

HBO Sports is planning to roll out a slate of four documentaries next year, starting with a look at UCLA’s college basketball team that won 10 national titles from 1964 through 1975. The documentary “Dominant Decade: The UCLA Basketball Dynasty” is set to debut at 10 p.m. March 26, in the m ...

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USTA buys into Tennis Channel

Spurred on by the growth of single-sport networks such as the NFL Network, NBA TV and The Golf Channel, the U.S. Tennis Association has decided to invest in The Tennis Channel as a way to grow the network and the sport. The USTA, the governing body for the sport in the U.S., is set to anno ...

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Cox adds ESPNU, near deal with The mtn.

Cox is spending the holiday season filling its digital sports and information tier with college sports networks. The country’s fourth-largest cable operator signed a deal last week that puts ESPNU on its digital tier, a move that will add up to 2 million subscribers to the service. The de ...

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Will NFL fans defect to satellite?

Now that the pregame bluster is over and the NFL Network has started airing live regular-season games, industry watchers are keeping an eye on whether subscribers will churn away from the multisystem operators that aren’t carrying the network. KC and Denver kicked off li ...

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ESPN, AFL work on details

The Arena Football League is in serious talks with two networks about a national media rights deal just over two months before it kicks off its regular season. ESPN would grab a stake in the Arena Football League as part of the media rights deal that’s being discu ...

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New sponsors for ‘50 Greatest’ and MSG NY

MSG’s two-month-old rebranding already is starting to pay ad sales dividends, as the network has signed multiple sponsors for both its “50 Greatest Moments at Madison Square Garden” and “MSG NY” shows. A New York HMO will sponsor the series, which features MSG moments ...

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Booyah, mate! ‘SportsCenter’ goes down under for ESPN Internation ...

"SportsCenter" Markets United States Pan-Latin America Mexico Brazil Canada Pan-Asia India ...

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Carriers ready for long fight

Italia Commisso Weinand’s face lit up last week when a reporter approached her at a black-tie dinner for cable executives in Washington, D.C., and asked whether her company would carry the NFL Network this year. The senior vice president of programming for the country’s seventh-largest mul ...

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