World Congress 2020: John Ourand

Below is a sampling of the questions posed and his responses, edited for clarity and brevity:

The Olympics have been postponed. How much do NBC and Comcast stand to lose from a delayed Olympics?

[NBC] had sold well over $1 billion in ads. They were setting an all-time record. The big question is going to be how many of those advertisers are going to take the same schedule and just push it by 12 months? Another big question is, what is the advertising market going to look like? Advertisers still want to use sports because they still use sports as the place to hit the most people, of course. But some of these companies are going to have a lot less money. It’s entirely possible that the ad market, while I don’t think it’ll crash, but it might become a lot more affordable for some advertisers.

What impact do you think the coronavirus outbreak will have on regional sports networks?

NBC Sports Washington has been doing an hourlong NBA 2K presentation showing the Wizards against all the teams that they should be playing on their schedule right now. They are trying to do some more replacement programming. … What’s going to happen to the number of cable subscribers right now? As families are tightening their belt and seeing the potential cuts in pay or losing their jobs, is a cable subscription something that they can do without? That would concern me.

I don’t think this is the end of the RSNs. I think the RSNs are still a very good and healthy business and I think the RSNs are going to remain a good and healthy business for the foreseeable future, which is at least five years or so. But there are certainly some questions that I have and that I will be looking at in order to determine the health of the RSNs moving forward.

Are there going to be any trends that we’re seeing in this sports hiatus that might stick around on the TV side when we get back to normal?

We hit on one with Monumental Sports Network and virtual gaming. I sat down and watched one of those games — the Bucks came to D.C. It was great. At the end of the game, the Bucks had won by 20 and the virtual crowd at Capital One Arena booed the Wizards off the court, which made me feel good because the Wizards should have played better. … It was an hourlong show. They brought in some of the talent that normally does Wizards games. They’ve been doing it with the Caps as well. … I can see that as a programming trend.

One thing that I do not see as a potential programming trend is the rebroadcasting of old games. … ESPN Classic is no longer a major TV station for a reason. It’s hard for these networks to get rights. The NCAA owns a lot of those rights. The NFL games, those are all owned by the NFL. It takes more negotiations to get those games. The basic fact is, especially if it goes against live sports, they don’t bring in ratings. That’s a trend that we’re seeing happen during the coronavirus outbreak that we’re only seeing because there is no live sports, and that’s one that I do not expect to stand the test of time.