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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🤼‍♂️ WWE on SC. Corporate synergy is hitting SportsCenter. After securing exclusive rights to WWE’s Premium Live Events starting this month, ESPN has taken to airing highlights of the pro wrestling promotion on its flagship news show. This on a day where there was plenty of football, tennis, and baseball to cover. Nothing beats a bit of cross-promotion!

👋 Millman says goodbye. Nearly eight years after joining the company at its start, Chad Millman announced his resignation from The Action Network. Millman formerly served as editor-in-chief of ESPN The Magazine. He thanked his colleagues in a social media post announcing his departure, adding, “I leave with gratitude for a life-altering experience.”

🐘 Let Saban go! ESPN’s favorite SEC provocateur Paul Finebaum is sounding the alarm on Alabama’s second-year coach Kalen DeBoer after the Crimson Tide’s upset loss to Florida State over the weekend. Finebaum even went so far as to suggest ESPN should let Nick Saban out of his College GameDay contract to return as head whistle in Tuscaloosa.

️‍🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

ESPN poured it on Bill Belichick and the Tar Heels

To the surprise of absolutely no one, ESPN laid it on thick with the Bill Belichick love during last night’s North Carolina-TCU broadcast. The network kicked things off by bringing some of its heavy hitters to the on-site pregame show. Pat McAfee, Nick Saban, Desmond Howard, and Tedy Bruschi joined host Matt Barrie on the panel. The hour-long pre-show might as well have been rebranded as Bill Belichick’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Accomplishments on the Gridiron.

And who’s to blame ESPN? I, for one, wouldn’t have had nearly the same level interest in the North Carolina Tar Heels’ season opener if it weren’t for the 73-year-old head coach patrolling the sidelines. Apologies to TCU fans, who had to deal with similar circumstances during Deion Sanders’ Colorado debut on Fox a couple seasons ago, but few were tuned into this one for any reason other than Belichick.

Rightfully so, ESPN leaned in. Holly Rowe scored a Belichickian interview during the pregame which had me questioning, again, how the six-time Super Bowl winning head coach was genuinely charismatic during his numerous television gigs last season. Before the game started, ESPN tracked Belichick’s entrance during his team’s run out of the tunnel. (He walked, emotionless.)

Then, as the game got underway, the cuts to Belichick were frequent. After the Tar Heels stormed down the field to score a touchdown on their first drive, the first thing fans saw was Belichick’s (non)reaction. Quick cuts to North Carolina’s “dignitaries” followed. Roy Williams, Michael Jordan, Lawrence Taylor, Randy Moss, and yes, Jordon Hudson, were all shown on the broadcast. ESPN understood the assignment. And even as the powder blue sputtered throughout the remainder of the lopsided affair, Belichick’s stoicism was on full display (though there were a few animated moments as his team lost the plot in the second half).

Again, you can’t blame ESPN for making it all about Bill. These types of opportunities don’t come around often. Belichick was a huge storyline this offseason, both for on-the-field and off-the-field reasons. He’s arguably the most successful NFL head coach in history taking on an unlikely final act at a rebuilding college program. The script writes itself.

And predictably, ESPN is expecting big time viewership for last night’s game. But whether Belichick can pull Coach Prime-like numbers throughout the remainder of his first season in Carolina blue is looking like a questionable proposition now. Much of that equation, of course, comes down to the on-field product. If Belichick’s team proves noncompetitive, like they were last night against the Horned Frogs, viewership will fizzle out within a few weeks. If they rebound into a contender in the ACC, people will stick around.

ESPN has the opportunity to air double-digit games featuring the Tar Heels this season if they choose to do so. No doubt, they’d like to see some wins pile up to capitalize on the full potential of Belichickmania. Right now, that seems like wishful thinking.

💬 AROUND AA 💬

The mission to prove winning doesn’t matter in college football is succeeding

College football season is just beginning, but expect there to be a season-long discussion about the College Football Playoff committee’s new formula to evaluate teams. Strength of schedule will seemingly rule the day as actual wins and losses become diminished, all in the name of protecting the sport’s biggest brands.

Awful Announcing’s Sean Keeley examines the media’s role in this change, and how coverage of the sport can all but guarantee a self-fulfilling prophecy, where blue bloods are protected and Cinderellas are neglected.

📱 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

SNY’s Gary Cohen went there with ESPN’s Monica McNutt when the Mets game cut to a fan wearing a Barry Sanders jersey on Monday.

Here’s how ESPN handled the first touchdown of the Bill Belichick era at North Carolina.

🔥THE CLOSER🔥

We don’t talk about the Murdoch succession drama enough

An interesting piece of news crossed the wire over the long weekend courtesy of the Financial Times. Last summer, at the annual Sun Valley conference where all the world’s top media and tech executives schmooze among the idyllic Idaho skies, Fox Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch discussed a sale of his television empire to fellow media mogul John Malone of Warner Bros. Discovery.

The potential deal never went anywhere, owing to the ideological differences between the two men’s news divisions, Fox News and CNN. Per FT, the deal “probably would have happened” if they could’ve figured out how to fit both cable news channels under the same umbrella.

Alas, that assuredly did not happen, and both companies are going their separate ways. Fox recently introduced its direct-to-consumer streaming app, Fox One, and continues to make strategic new media acquisitions like the right-wing podcasting company Red Seat Ventures. Warner Bros. Discovery is heading towards a split that will keep its film studio and streaming service, HBO Max, under the Warner Bros. umbrella, with cable assets like TNT Sports headed for Discovery Global.

But in summer of 2024, a deal made all the sense in the world. Warner Bros. Discovery was reeling from the likelihood that it would lose its NBA rights (it did). It needed marquee live sports inventory, like the NFL and college football, that Fox could provide.

Crucially, each company had something the other desperately needed. Fox had the ever-attractive reach of a broadcast network, which Warner did not. And Warner had the allure of a mainstream digital platform, HBO Max, at a time when Fox had barely entered the space.

As far as media mergers go, this one seems to have made plenty of sense on paper. And although it isn’t happening, it is a reminder of what is going on behind-the-scenes at Fox as Murdoch, 94, lives out his final days.

Some will remember late last year, Murdoch and his four eldest children descended on a Nevada probate court over a change the nonagenarian was attempting to make to his irrevocable family trust. The decades-old trust is set to equally divide Murdoch’s media empire between his four oldest children upon his death.

The problem? Murdoch is worried the fate of his beloved Fox News could fall into the arms of his more politically moderate children. The change to the family trust would’ve ensured his oldest son Lachlan, the current CEO of Fox Corporation who endorses the status quo at Fox News, would remain in control of the company after he passed away.

It turns out, irrevocable family trusts are pretty difficult to, well, revoke. The motion failed, and now Murdoch has to consider his other options. And with his own legacy hanging in the balance, Murdoch might favor a sale of the remainder of his media empire over a future that involves his four kids jostling for control after he dies.

After all, Murdoch found the wherewithal to sell a huge portion of his businesses to Disney back in 2019, substantially reducing the reach of the Fox brand but securing a $71.3 billion deal that looks better with each passing day. Maybe he has one more mega-deal left in him?

Given the most recent reporting, it seems like it has at least crossed his mind. A partnership between Fox and the aforementioned Discovery Global would still make a lot of sense. Perhaps there’s a deal to be had with Comcast’s new spinoff, Versant, which itself could use a broadcast network and NFL programming.

We’re in an era of transactions when it comes to legacy media companies, and Fox is firmly in play.