PERSONALITIES: In Toronto, veteran Canadian announcer
Don Chevrier ranked the best hockey "play-callers," and
named Fox's Mike Emrick "in a class by himself," with ESPN's
Gary Thorne at No. 2 and Rangers play-by-play man Sam Rosen
third (William Houston, Toronto GLOBE & MAIL, 5/21).
...Flyers G Ron Hextall will work as a studio analyst for
ESPN2's "NHL 2Night" (PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS, 5/21)....A
cable outage in parts of Utah cut Insight Cable's service 20
minutes into the Lakers-Jazz Game Two (DESERET NEWS, 5/20).
...CBS Sales President Joe Abruzzese told 1,000 onlookers at
yesterday's CBS's fall network sales meeting, "No more
Sunday afternoon movies, no more Sunday afternoon figure
skating. The AFC, .. is on the rise, and so is CBS." CBS
TV President Les Moonves: "The NFL will add male viewers and
make us younger." Abruzzese also said CBS is "on target"
with ad projections of "breaking even this year," and has
$25M in new advertisers for its AFC package (Rudy Martzke,
USA TODAY, 5/21)....SportsLine USA shares fell 13% to 26 5/8
on news "that it may have lost the competition for the
production contract" for NFL.com (HOLLY. REPORTER, 5/21).