Welcome to The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter where you’ll always find the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis.

Did someone share this newsletter with you? Sign up for free to make sure you never miss it.

🎤 QUICK START ✍️

😬 Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy was the latest to weigh in on the Bill Belichick-Jordon Hudson saga, appearing on Megyn Kelly’s radio show to opine about the “awkward situation” and “huge” age gap (which is ironic given his own history). Perhaps surprisingly, Portnoy found Belichick’s “personal and professional” relationship with Hudson as bizarre as most.

📺 Stephen A. Smith is “hopeful” that his First Take sparring partner Shannon Sharpe will return to ESPN for football season. Last week, Sharpe announced his temporary departure from ESPN as he faces accusations of sexual assault and rape in a lawsuit. “He is emphatic that he is innocent of those things,” Smith said of the lawsuit against Sharpe. “But the court of public opinion is what the Disneys of the world and others concern themselves with. That’s a more immediate issue.”

🏠 NFL Network’s Steve Smith Sr. is being sued under a “homewrecker” law for his alleged affair with a member of the Baltimore Ravens marching band. Anthony Martinez, the husband of the band member that allegedly had an affair with Smith, is seeking more than $100,000 in damages. This situation came to public attention in February after an X account under Martinez’s name posted graphic accusations against Smith.

️‍🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

Can Congress fix sports broadcasting?

On Tuesday, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is scheduled to hold a hearing titled “Field of Streams: The New Channel Guide for Sports Fans” that will “examine the policy questions raised by the changing ways Americans are watching live professional sports on television, particularly how traditional over-the-air broadcasts are increasingly supplemented—or even replaced—by digital platforms, subscription services, and exclusive streaming arrangements.”

Representatives from three of the four major North American professional sports leagues will testify, with the NFL being the lone exception. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who chairs the committee, said the following in a release:

“Catching your favorite team on TV shouldn’t feel like solving a puzzle. Games that used to be free or easy to find are now scattered across pricey apps and exclusive deals. This hearing will explore how leagues intend to keep sports accessible and affordable for the fans who make it all possible.”

Awful Announcing will be on-site to cover the proceedings next week, but don’t expect anything revolutionary to come from this hearing. Chances are, if you’re reading this newsletter, you’re more informed about the goings on in the sports media industry than any senators sitting on the committee.

As such, just as any other congressional hearing in which members are not subject-matter experts, there will likely be lots of grandstanding with little actual substance. The league representatives will try to appease the senators by claiming they’re making efforts to increase accessibility for fans by putting games on new platforms. The senators will take a populist view, claiming that it is incumbent upon the leagues to make games affordable and easily accessible to fans.

What this could mean legislatively is anyone’s guess. Professional sports leagues in the United States are currently granted antitrust exemptions under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. This allows leagues to pool their media rights together and sell them in national packages rather than each team selling their media rights individually.

Of course, the act pertains most to the NFL, which sells all of its game inventory nationally, as opposed to the other leagues that still sell most inventory on a local basis. That makes the NFL’s absence at this hearing even more notable, especially considering the league’s ongoing appeal in the Sunday Ticket antitrust case.

The executive branch, via the Department of Justice, will surely have a lot to say regarding the future of sports media too. The next few years will prove very active when it comes to consolidation in media, which will likely draw antitrust scrutiny of its own.

Hopefully, Tuesday’s hearing will provide some answers as to what type of policies Congress is looking towards to help keep live sports available and affordable for fans. Even if the hearing itself is mostly theater, the nuts and bolts of any potential policies matter a whole lot.

🗣️Grade the local 2024-25 NHL announcers🗣️

With the first round of the NHL playoffs wrapping up (and with it, the final local broadcasts of the season), we want your perspectives on how the various local TV broadcast booths did in 2024-25.

You can grade as few or as many teams as you desire, and you can Control-F to find a team you’re particularly interested in voting for. Once you’ve selected your grades, submit them. Feel free to add comments or explanations for your grades, but it’s not required.

Place your votes here! The rankings will be announced at Awful Announcing later next week.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

We got another double-bang from Mike Breen last night, courtesy of Jalen Brunson’s series-clinching 3-pointer for the Knicks to send the Pistons packing.

📈💰INDUSTRY INSIGHTS🧐

• Famed New York Rangers analyst Joe Micheletti is retiring after 19 seasons calling the team for MSG Networks. His partner, legendary play-by-play voice Sam Rosen, announced ahead of the 2024-25 season that he would also be retiring after 40 years calling Rangers games. That booth will be in for a complete overhaul in 2025-26. “From pond hockey in Minnesota, to the bright lights of Broadway, my hockey journey has been a magical ride,” said Micheletti. “My wife Kathy and I have been thinking about this for a few years, and we decided that now is the right time to retire, and we look forward to spending more time with our family.”

• Alanna Rizzo is joining NESN as a reporter and host covering the Boston Red Sox following the cancellation of her MLB Network show High Heat. The veteran reporter and commentator has been working with the crew at Foul Territory and with the Toronto Blue Jays on SportsNet, but will now also have a role locally with one of baseball’s biggest teams. The veteran MLB personality will also co-host some alternate broadcasts for NESN.

• Local NBA viewership declined by 9% this season, according to Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal. Per Friend, eight teams saw year-over-year increases, with the top five being the Cleveland Cavaliers, Portland Trail Blazers, Boston Celtics, Houston Rockets, and Detroit Pistons. The bottom five included the Philadelphia 76ers, Chicago Bulls, Phoenix Suns, Utah Jazz, and Miami Heat. While distribution played a key role on a team-by-team basis, the league’s overall trend can be chalked up to the ascension of small-market teams, and the underachievement of large-market teams. The gains made by teams like the Cavs and Trail Blazers weren’t enough to offset major losses by teams like the 76ers and Bulls.

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

How different could NFL Sundays look when the league strikes new deals?

The NFL’s plans to opt out of its current set of media rights deals come 2029 is the worst kept secret in sports media.

While still a few years off, the league’s option can be seen as a ticking time bomb for traditional media companies that rely on NFL programming to float affiliate fees from cable and satellite providers; fees that ultimately keep the lights on for their declining businesses. Come 2029, when the NFL can seek new deals with other partners, it’s safe to expect an enormous shift in the overall media landscape.

Negotiations for the NFL’s media inventory will be fascinating. You’ll have the tech giants — Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix, etc. — with deep pockets and an interest in securing the most valuable programming this country has to offer. Then you’ll have the legacy media companies — particularly Fox and CBS — desperate to retain NFL programming as an existential matter.

One analyst predicts the NFL will use this dynamic to its advantage, and that Sundays will look radically different as a result.

Robert Fishman of the media research firm MoffettNathanson appeared on The Main Event with Andrew Marchand podcast and suggested that the NFL might sell its most premium inventory to a streamer, while letting the legacy broadcasters fight for scraps.

“If [the streamers] are interested in sports and the NFL opts out, which I think we’re all expecting will happen after ’29, why won’t the NFL try to redo some of their packages so that NFL can still say that they’re going for the premium package, the most eventized type of package, but just looks different from what we know today,” Fishman suggested. “So it’s not just the holiday package, but maybe it’s the best games every week. And that doesn’t necessarily have to be a certain day or night, but it can be almost like the Premier League, where they get the premium teams.

“And then think about who else is going to be left over for the broadcast networks and the traditional media guys to compete and fight over that type of package. So, to us, it just looks maybe different than what we all know today,” the analyst said.

“So when you look at it, you’re saying they could just get a lot of Cowboy games, basically, the Super Bowl champion. How do you foresee that working? And obviously, the other partners are not going to be happy about that. How do you see that?” Marchand asked.

“Well, right. I mean, clearly the other partners won’t be happy losing premium games, but it comes back to what can they afford to pay up for the next time the NFL is looking to renew their deals,” Fishman replied. “And if they opt out early, I think we all would expect the NFL to continue to have the leverage here.

“So on this new negotiation…how can the NFL structure these deals differently so that there still is a package that some of the traditional media guys can still afford to pay up for? So, pay up for more, but get less. That seems to be where traditional media guys are going. We just saw that over the last negotiation. So at the same time, when we think about going forward, I think the NFL will restructure their deals so that you will have Netflix compete with Amazon for those premium type of rights.”

What Fishman is suggesting here is a total upheaval of the status quo. Rather than keeping the traditional packages of games together, like Fox’s NFC-centric and CBS’s AFC-centric packages, the NFL could choose to take its marquee teams, like the Dallas Cowboys and the Kansas City Chiefs, and sell those games as “premium” inventory to a streamer.

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that NFL fans probably wouldn’t be super receptive to this. But, if it’s what makes the NFL the most money, it’s hard to see why they wouldn’t do it.

The streamers want “events.” The best of the best. Broadcast networks in 2029? Well, they’ll probably be willing to pay as much as they can for NFL games — even if that means lower-wattage games — just to stay alive.

That’s a very lucrative combination for the NFL to take advantage of. And even if they aren’t completely shameless by selling a “Cowboys package” or something similar, it’s likely they’ll try to simulate this quality split between the streamers and legacy broadcasters. The league knows where its future revenue is coming from, and it’s not Fox and CBS, at least in the long-term.