Fox earned a 1.3 overnight for Chelsea’s win in penalty kicks over Bayern Munich in the UEFA Champions League final on Saturday. That figure is down from a 1.8 overnight for the FC Barcelona-Manchester United match, but up from a 1.1 for the Inter Milan-Bayern Munich match in ’10. Miami-Ft. Lauderdale and Austin topped all U.S. markets with a 2.6 local rating (Austin Karp, THE DAILY).
CUTTING CLASS: The AP’s David Mercer noted five years after its launch, the Big Ten network is “running less academic coverage than ever as it generates tens of millions in revenue for the conference and boasts of 51 million subscribers.” Because of “low ratings and poor production quality, the network and university presidents agreed to slash academic programming and emphasize quality and ratings over quantity.” League officials said that the goal of 660 hours of university-produced non-sports content “turned out to be impractical.” Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said, “Most of them didn't have the resources to produce the shows. It was always set up to be at their cost, not the network's. We were willing to give the time, but the universities had to create the shows. When we came up with the number of hours, we didn't know what the schools were capable of producing” (
AP, 5/17).
A WIDE NET: In Miami, Michelle Kauffman noted Middle East TV net Al Jazeera “is delving into international sports -- soccer, in particular -- and Miami is expected to be one of its American broadcasting hubs.” During the past year, Al Jazeera, “under the trademarked name ‘be IN Sport,’ has been acquiring the rights to Europe’s pay-TV market, including French rights to the French Ligue 1, Italian Serie A, German Bundesliga and Champions League matches.” Sources said that the net is in “negotiations to acquire the U.S. TV rights to Spain’s La Liga, Serie A and the French Ligue 1.” Al Jazeera also is "in talks" with Imagina US, a Miami-based production company that would "provide studios for the broadcasts of the European matches Al Jazeera acquires." The net would "go after English- and Spanish-speaking announcers and commentators in the United States to broadcast the matches and host shows” (MIAMI HERALD, 5/20).
