SBJ Media: Cubs' RSN Takes Charter Flight

I will be sitting in Jackie Robinson Ballpark tomorrow night, watching the Daytona Tortugas star left fielder -- and my nephew -- Drew Mount.

MARQUEE SPORTS NET GETS FIRST CARRIAGE DEAL

• The Cubs’ planned RSN -- Marquee Sports Network -- quietly negotiated its first affiliate agreement with Charter Communications. It’s not a big deal -- Charter operates small systems in Indiana that would carry the channel -- but it’s one that potentially sheds some light on how Sinclair, which co-owns the RSN with the Cubs, plans to convince distributors to carry the channel when it launches in February.
  
  
• Many observers in the media business expected to see bruising carriage battles around this RSN. After all, the dominant cable operator in Chicago is Comcast, which currently holds the rights to the Cubs games on its NBC Sports Chicago network. That deal ends after this season, and it always seemed unlikely that Comcast would turn around and cut a deal with the same team that spurned it to partner with Sinclair.
  
  
• While Sinclair is known for its tough negotiating tactics, its Charter agreement suggests that Sinclair may be taking a kinder, gentler approach. Its deal to buy the Fox Sports-branded RSNs still is awaiting DOJ approval, making it likely that Sinclair does not want to engage in public carriage battles right now, according to Matt Cacciato, an affiliate sales veteran who has worked with ESPN, Fox and YES Network. “Sinclair is likely being more gentle on price as a strategy as motivation to do deals early,” he said.
  
  
• It’s not just Sinclair. Comcast, which operates several RSNs, also has an incentive to stay out of a public battle over RSNs. “They want peace in the valley as much as anyone else,” Cacciato said.
  
  
• The Charter pact was part of a larger deal in principle that the cable operator reached to renew the RSN affiliate deals for the Fox Sports-branded RSNs that Sinclair bought from Disney. Those carriage agreements also include some of the local broadcast channels Sinclair operates in those markets, I’m told.

SPIRIT OF COOPERATION AT PEBBLE BEACH

After a call from Fox's Eric Shanks, CBS' Sean McManus quickly agreed to let Nantz visit the Fox set

• It was unusual to see Jim Nantz -- the face of CBS’ golf coverage -- appear on Fox’s U.S. Open coverage -- so much so that Fox PR sent me a text Saturday morning to tell me that it was about to happen. At the end of Fox’s Thursday coverage, host Joe Buck said that he wanted to get Nantz, a Pebble Beach resident, on air. Fox Sports’ Eric Shanks called CBS’ Sean McManus on Friday to make it happen. McManus quickly said yes. The CBS Sports chair told Richard Deitsch: “There was no reason not to do it.”
  
  
• Speaking on Barstool Sports’ "Pardon My Take" podcast after the tournament, Buck was effusive in his praise of Nantz. Buck: “I’d rather listen to him do golf than myself. ... The condition was it was going to be 10 minutes -- really [CBS] wanted 5. Had that stipulation not been there, I would have demanded that he stay and call it with Paul Azinger. I could just read a promo here and there. He’s the best to ever call golf in my lifetime."
  
  
• Nantz appeared on "The Dan Patrick Show" today to discuss his cameo. "Everyone that I knew in my sphere was, ‘Hey, are you going to show up? Are you going to do this?’ Well, of course I’ll do it. It was a nice invitation.” Nantz said he spoke with Fox Sports Producer Mark Loomis and they both decided Saturday "would be better.”  

THIS WEEK IN SBJ

• My colleague Ben Fischer and I took a look at the NFL Sunday Ticket deal with DirecTV. The league can opt out of the deal before September, and it has to choose whether to stick with the status quo or court new digital players and their younger audiences.
  
  
• Jason Witten may have left the booth, but the biggest change at “Monday Night Football” this season may take place in the ESPN production truck, where Jimmy Platt takes over as director for Chip Dean. Platt: “I don’t know if it’ll finally sink in until I hear Hank Williams play on game one."
  
  
  

SPEED READS 

• The N.Y. Post broke the news that Authentic Brands has sold Sports Illustrated’s print and digital publishing rights to The Maven -- a digital startup headed by Jim Heckman, who is bringing his longtime friend Ross Levinsohn on board as CEO of the SI media line. The news reminded me of this David Folkenflik piece on the duo from last year, which could offer a window into SI’s future. “As Heckman told NPR, Maven offers the kind of content a digital publisher "might want to ease its reliance on its papers' newsrooms.” Make sure to read this.
  
  
• Between the Raptors taking home the title and the Lakers trading for Anthony Davis, it feels like my Twitter feed has been all NBA lately. But which of those two events actually had more chatter on the platform? SBJ's Austin Karp spoke with Twitter, and their data shows that when comparing a 24-hour period after each event happened, the conversation around the Raptors' title win was three times (3x) larger than the conversation around the Lakers' trade. O Canada!
  
  
• Josh McCown has never been out of a job long -- playing on 10 NFL teams during a 17-year career. McCown also found no problem getting gainful employment after retiring from the league today. Just after The Players’ Tribune posted a piece on his NFL exit, ESPN quickly snapped up the journeyman QB, who will join Bristol as an analyst starting Wednesday.
  
  
• Pebble Beach and a primetime finish was kind to Fox this weekend. After back-to-back years where Sunday viewership was near record-low levels for the U.S. Open, a return to the West Coast this year helped deliver the best final-round audience for the major since 2013 on NBC. While next year's event is back on the East Coast at Winged Foot, Fox will get another crack at primetime in 2021, when golfers tee it up at Torrey Pines outside San Diego.

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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@sportsbusinessdaily.com) and we'll share the best of it. Also contributing to this newsletter is Thomas Leary (tleary@sportsbusinessdaily.com).