SBJ Media: Golf Channel Hunkers Down Before Hurricane

Hello from Chicago, where the NFL is ready to kick off its 100th season tomorrow night at Soldier Field.

HURRICANE DORIAN FORCES ADJUSTMENTS FOR GOLF CHANNEL

• Golf Channel HQ in Orlando was a ghost town today after NBC Sports leadership told employees not to come to work with Hurricane Dorian just off the coast of Florida. “It was the right decision to make sure that things were shut down today just to keep everybody safe,” said NBC Sports Group President Pete Bevacqua. “We wanted to be careful and cautious. It’s certainly better safe than sorry.” Bevacqua and Golf Channel President Mike McCarley have remained in close contact and made the decision together. “Having lived in Florida for six years and having been so aware of hurricanes and the spaghetti models, you never know where they are going to go,” Bevacqua said.
  
  
• Golf Channel did not produce live shows from Orlando this morning, opting to re-air tournament coverage from the weekend. By 2:00pm ET, employees were told that they could return to work if they needed. The full staff is expected back tomorrow. “We were extraordinarily lucky,” Golf Channel VP/Communications David Schaefer said. “Orlando ended up getting what felt like a couple of summer thunderstorms.”

BIG TEN NETWORK JOINS RANKS OF NIELSEN-RATED CHANNELS

Middle Tennessee-Michigan drew 1.1 million viewers in primetime on Big Ten Network

• Michigan’s 41-20 thumping of Middle Tennessee averaged 1.103 million viewers on Big Ten Network on Saturday night. We know this because the channel became the first conference network to subscribe to Nielsen’s national ratings in July. This football season will be the first time we have seen national ratings attached to some of BTN’s biggest events.
  
  
• BTN execs identified three reasons why the channel decided to become Nielsen rated. It’s easier for networks to book ad sales when they are selling verifiable national numbers like ones from Nielsen, said BTN President François McGillicuddy. National numbers will be more accurate than last year, when BTN was measured in only 12 Big Ten markets -- which meant that some conference markets were not being measured. “We’re a live event network,” McGillicuddy said of the more than 1,900 live events on BTN and BTN+.“Finding out an accurate viewer measurement nationally for these events is important to have.”
  
  
• Some more numbers from last weekend: Penn State’s 72-point win over Idaho in the 3:30pm ET window averaged 588,129 viewers. Other weekend games -- like the Terps' big win over Howard -- were carried on overflow channels. Those numbers won’t be available for weeks; last year overflow games added an 8% bump in the time slots they were used. Based on 2018 data, the most-popular TV sports in the Big Ten are (in order): football, men’s basketball, volleyball, wrestling, softball and women’s basketball.

NBC DIGGING INTO HISTORY FOR OPENING GAMES

• The Bears host the Packers in tomorrow night's NFL Kickoff game. Here's what viewers should look for from NBC's broadcast:
  
  
  • “Sunday Night Football” executive producer Fred Gaudelli asked announcers Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth to pick a Mount Rushmore for the Bears. “It was a big fight to get to four guys,” Gaudelli said. “We had to referee that.”
    
    
  • NBC sent a film crew to the Pro Football Hall of Fame to shoot footage of league artifacts. “Tomorrow night, because the ball has the 100th logo, we’re going to go through every ball that’s been used in an NFL game from the beginning,” Gaudelli said. “We’re going to try to have a connection in every game.”
    
    
  • Gaudelli noted viewers for Sunday night's Steelers-Patriots game likely will see a Hall of Fame relic that reaches back to the 1960s: “When Tom Brady goes to his wristband -- as he always does -- we might break out the Tom Matte wristband." Matte, an emergency QB on the Colts in 1965, famously got a wristband with plays from coach Don Shula for the games he had to start.
    
    
  • NFL Films produced the open for tomorrow night's kickoff game, with Bears Owner Virginia McCaskey narrating. “They did a really great job with that,” said Gaudelli.
    

A LOOK AT THE HISTORY OF NFL MEDIA

• This week's issue of SBJ goes in depth on the NFL's 100th season, including a list of the 100 people who greatly influenced the business of the league. Among the media execs and on-air talent on the list are George Bodenheimer, Chris Berman, Steve Bornstein, Terry Bradshaw, Howard Cosell, Dick Ebersol, Frank Gifford, John Madden and Rupert Murdoch.
  
  
• I took a look at how NFL games have become the most powerful programming on TV. NBC wasn't always winning with “Sunday Night Football,” but now the property has been the most-watched primetime series for a record eight consecutive years. ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” also continues to be the most-watched series on cable TV year in and year out.
  
  
• David Halberstam in this week's issue gives readers a ranking of the league's best media personalities through the years.
  
  
• Rich Eisen has been with NFL Network since its launch in 2003, becoming the channel's first on-air hire. Eisen talked to me about his time with the league-owned outlet.
  
  
• The future of NFL Sunday Ticket remains up in the air, but nobody can argue about how the out-of-market package helped grow DirecTV in the 1990s.

SPEED READS

• Cox has agreed to carry ACC Network, leaving Comcast and AT&T U-verse as the only major distributors that do not have deals in place to carry the channel. The network will be on Cox’s expanded basic tier inside ACC markets; it will be on Cox’s digital basic tier outside of ACC markets. All told, Cox has around four million subscribers. It’s not known how many will receive ACC Network.
  
  
• Now that ACC Network is live, I asked Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick how he would characterize the channel’s launch. His answer didn’t focus on distribution deals or programming. “What’s been great has been seeing all the member institutions build out their capabilities in anticipation of this….We’re producing live broadcasts for the network on our own -- with our own facilities, our own staff and students doing it. That’s a great by product of the network.”
  
  
• Vikings Executive Director of Digital Media Scott Kegley told SBJ’s Joe Perez that the team this season is relaunching apps on Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and Roku, while putting an app on Vewd Network, which syndicates to a few smart TV brands. The Vikes also are shifting what traditionally would be over-the-air content to digital. Kegley: “We have a new show, ‘The Voyage,’ which is produced by the Vikings Entertainment Network and our production team and it’s kind of our ‘Hard Knocks.’ It’s going to be a bi-weekly show throughout the entire season.”
  
  
• Another season of "Hard Knocks" is in the books. Final numbers for the HBO series are delayed, but SBJ's Austin Karp sat with writers John Aceti and David Rumsey for a final podcast and reviewed the show's final episode with the Raiders from last night.
  
  
• Bill Belichick has two documentary-related projects on the docket. NFL Network has been given access to the Patriots' operations for the latest season of "Do Your Job," while NFL Films and HBO on Dec. 10 will debut a documentary on Belichick's relationship with Nick Saban. The Pats' coach seems to like docs: he was the debut subject in Season 1 of NFL Net’s "A Football Life" and took part in ESPN Films’ "30 for 30" documentary "The Two Bills" in 2018.
  

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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).