As the story of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s missing plane
developed on Saturday, TV "did what television is supposed
to do," and moved sports broadcasts "aside," according to
David Barron of the HOUSTON CHRONICLE. ABC's coverage of
the British Open was moved to ESPN and it began at 11:30am,
90 minutes after its scheduled start time of 10:00am. ABC
Sports Dir of Media Relations Mark Mandel said the decision
"took a lot of effort." Mandel: "There is a lot riding on a
decision like this. We have advertisers who are involved
and sponsors who are involved." But Mandel noted, "News has
priority, and news makes the decisions what makes air."
NBC, which moved the LPGA JAL Classic and a WNBA game to
CNBC, gave local affils the option to pick up either the
news or sports feed. Barron notes that NBC News anchor Tom
Brokaw noted the moves "several times during the afternoon."
CBS "had no place to put" its Ameritech Senior Open and
"thus had to cancel its coverage" Saturday. Fox "took the
opposite tack," and stuck with MLB while Fox News Channel
followed the Kennedy story. Barron concludes that "the fact
that the search [for JFK Jr.'s plane] was not successful and
that Saturday's news programming did tend to get repetitive
doesn't mean it was the wrong decision" (HOUSTON CHRONICLE,
7/19). USA TODAY's Michael Hiestand writes that Saturday
provided the "latest example of why broadcast networks need
cable TV outlets" (USA TODAY, 7/19). MLS's All-Star game
was moved from ABC to ESPN2. For more, see (#10).
AFFILS BOX SCORE: The HOLLYWOOD REPORTER's Stephen
Battaglio cites NBC Sports Senior VP/Programming Jon Miller
as saying that "about half" of NBC's affils "took the news
feed" on Saturday rather than the sports feed (HOLLYWOOD
REPORTER, 7/19). In Houston, Ron Nissimov wrote that "most
of the calls" received by Houston-area TV stations "were
critical of the continuous coverage" of the Kennedy story.
KTRK-ABC Assistant News Dir Pat Burns: "Most of our calls
were from people wanting to know why the British Open was
not on." KHOU-CBS News Exec Producer Willy Walker said that
the station "received positive and negative calls" about the
preemption, as "probably more callers asked us to go back to
regular programming" (HOUSTON CHRONICLE, 7/18).
