SBJ Media: Analysts Bash Comcast’s Traditional TV Biz

Let me be the first to wish everyone a happy and, more importantly, safe July 4 weekend. Wear a mask!

TRADITIONAL MEDIA NETWORKS AN ISSUE FOR COMCAST

• File this story under the hazards of running a traditional TV business during a pandemic, especially when there are no sports to fill the schedule. This week, two prominent financial analysts praised Comcast as a whole. But both questioned the company’s devotion to traditional media.
  
  
• On Monday, a MoffettNathanson report focused on Sky’s problems, questioning Comcast’s 2018 acquisition of the company for $48 billion. “The COVID crisis has reignited the controversy that surrounded the acquisition in 2018,” Craig Moffett wrote. “Next to the Theme Parks segment at NBCU, perhaps no business under the Comcast banner has been more impacted by the coronavirus crisis.” Moffett cited the cancellation of sports leagues like the EPL and the implosion of the U.K. ad market as two reasons why “Sky is today worth, in our view, something like $10.5 billion.” 
  
  
• Today, Bernstein analyst Peter Supino created headlines when he called on Comcast to spin out NBCU and Sky into a standalone company. Supino argued that Comcast’s cable business “produced 68% of Comcast’s EBITDA in 2019.” Supino: “The NBCU television, film, and cable network businesses ... have more recently diluted shareholder returns through revenue shortfalls, expense growth, and deteriorating expectations,” he wrote. “Across Comcast’s media portfolio, the status quo is failing as large portions of NBCU and Sky lag their industry’s torrid pace of innovation.” 

SPORTS PRODUCTION GETS CREATIVE DURING PANDEMIC

• Even before the pandemic, TV network execs pushed leagues to give them more access – everything from putting microphones on players and coaches to allowing cameras inside locker rooms. With crowd-less games, these execs now say that leagues and athletes have become more comfortable with providing that access. Once networks get that access, it’s unlikely to go away -- a situation that would become the most defining change for sports TV viewers over the next several years.
  
  
• NBC Sports Group’s Molly Solomon, who helped convince some golfers to be mic'd up during PGA Tour events last month, described the conversations that made it onto air as “fascinating.” Solomon: “There's going to be so many innovations that come out of this that will apply when we get all our toys back, that it's going to prove really, really fruitful.”
  
  
• ESPN’s Mark Gross pointed to the audio from boxing and UFC matches in empty arenas as another type of access networks haven’t seen before. Gross: “What we've found is the [natural] sound of punches landing, and the people in the corner ... hollering at the fighter is compelling. And it's not something you always hear when there's five, 10, 15,000 people screaming in a big fight.”
  
  
• SBJ produced a video on this topic for its “SBJ: The Road Ahead” virtual event. It’s worth five minutes of your time. Give it a watch.

Solomon said of production during the pandemic: “There's going to be so many innovations that come out of this."

BOB SNYDER TACKLES LOCAL PODCAST BUSINESS

• Radio vet Bob Snyder is trying to recreate the popularity of sports radio with a portfolio of local podcasts. The former GM at ESPN Radio in Chicago and WTEM in D.C., Snyder launched his business three years ago with a Bob Ryan-hosted podcast in Boston. Eventually, he added more podcasts in the market: one from Bob Lobel and another -- The Gerry Callahan Podcast -- where he serves as a consultant.
  
  
• Snyder picked D.C. as his second local podcasting market, launching his most recent one in May with former Wizards announcers Steve Buckhantz and Phil Chenier that runs alongside one from Andy Pollin and one called “The DC Coaches Basketball Podcast” that features former Terps coach Gary Williams.
  
  
• Snyder: “This is a run at making monetary fiscal sense of local podcast publishing. Local radio, local TV, local cable, local print -- they all did well. I’m betting on the fact that while some on-air talent will swing big and land big, there might be a place for many of them in a local podcast environment.” Snyder says that he is targeting Miami, Chicago or Philadelphia as his next market. “If we can have some success in two markets, even continuing at that modestly profitable level, then I would probably replicate quickly into the markets I know the best,” he said. “If we can give national-level talent a chance to perform locally, that’s a nice connection."
  
  
• Describing his business as “modestly profitable,” Snyder says that he sells advertising against the combined number of downloads for podcasts in a given market. Snyder said that he needs to get between 50,000 and 100,000 downloads to attract advertiser interest. “In some markets, that could be three or four shows,” he said. “In other markets, it may take more.”

SPEED READS

• I heard from several of my old cable industry sources yesterday when news broke that YouTube TV was raising its monthly price by a whopping 30% to $65 per month. Most of the comments sounded like former Fox exec Sean Riley, who now is CEO of Barvanna Network. Riley: “Sports fans in particular are realizing that (surprise) the 'TV & Broadband' bundle from AT&T, Comcast, Spectrum or Cox is actually a pretty decent value at a comparable cost versus the ‘new’ entrants. When they launched, YouTube TV promised to deliver what most of us in the TV business knew was impossible: a robust channel lineup similar to cable, plus DVR for only $35 per month. Since then in just a few years, YouTube TV has nearly doubled their prices.”
  
  
• Even the NFL is not immune from the alarming rise in COVID cases across the country. The league canceled two of its four preseason weeks -- Weeks 1 and 4, according to sources cited by SBJ's Ben Fischer this afternoon. The big question is whether the planned regular season start on Sept. 10 is in jeopardy. Fischer quotes insiders as predicting that the NFL and NFLPA will agree training camp changes to ensure “a slower ramp up into full practices to account for an offseason that was completely virtual because of COVID-19.”
  
  
• National TV ad revenue in May improved on March and April, but Adweek cites data from Standard Media Index showing that the absence of sports programming amid COVID-19 "continued to deal a serious blow to the industry." May would normally include the playoffs for the NBA and NHL, regular season for MLB and MLS and  two Triple Crown races in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. Without those events, May national ad revenue for sports "plummeted 66.1%, to $52.8 million weekly." With sports programming removed, the May national ad revenue "would have been off 15%, instead of 23%."
  
  
• Two-time Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali is set to play boxing legend Jack Johnson in an upcoming HBO limited series titled "Unruly." The series will be based on Ken Burns'  documentary "Unforgivable Blackness" and Geoffrey C. Ward's companion book. EW.com notes one of Ali's first professional acting jobs was portraying Johnson in a 2000 stage production of "The Great White Hope."
  
  
• No sports? No problem. ESPN will carry an Eagles concert Sunday night at 8:00pm ET. Bristol’s resident Eagles fan Chris Berman will introduce “Live From The Forum MMXVIII,” which was shot Sept. 12, 14 and 15 with 14 4K cameras.
  
  
• Longtime cable exec Bill Goodwyn is back in the business. Goodwyn accepted a gig as CRO and Exec VP/Business Development & Ad Sales with Curiosity Stream, where he will team up again with his Discovery colleagues John Hendricks and Clint Stinchcomb.

THE LAST WORD

• I’ll give the last word today to sports TV vet Len DeLuca, who emailed me Monday night after I wrote about how rarely networks opt out of sports rights deals. DeLuca pointed me to 1988, when ABC picked up the Rose Bowl from NBC when the network still had two more years left on its contract. Earlier, the Rose Bowl announced plans to move to ABC in 1991.
  
  
• DeLuca: “Dennis Swanson was the ABC Sports president and an Illinois man. He loved the Rose Bowl. Dennis and David Downs made the deal. With NBC doing Seoul and getting involved in their Olympic bids, their only college football were the bowls: Orange, Fiesta and Rose. NBC Exec VP Ken Schanzer and Downs made a deal for ABC to pick up the 1989 and 1990 New Year’s Day games. ... The Rose Bowl game was on NBC for 37 years, from 1952-1988 and had four men on play-by-play: Mel Allen, Lindsey Nelson, Curt Gowdy, and Dick Enberg. The Rose Bowl Game has been on ABC and ESPN since 1989 with three play-by-play: Keith Jackson, Brent Musburger and Chris Fowler. That’s seven voices in 60 years when you count the next one, Jan. 1, 2021. Pretty good.”

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Something on the Media beat catch your eye? Tell us about it. Reach out to either me (jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com) or Austin Karp (akarp@sportsbusinessjournal.com) and we'll share the best of it. Also contributing to this newsletter is Thomas Leary (tleary@sportsbusinessdaily.com).