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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

✈️ Frequent flyers. Mike Tirico and Maria Taylor will be racking up the airline miles come February. Both are set to have extensive roles during NBC’s coverage of the Super Bowl in Santa Clara, the Winter Olympics in Italy, and various NBA duties throughout the month. Tirico will even call the Super Bowl and host NBC’s primetime Olympics coverage right after the trophy ceremony!

😡 Portnoy benched? Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy suggested on a podcast yesterday that the Big Ten is benching him from Big Noon Kickoff during Week 11. All indications point to El Pres being at Penn State-Ohio State this Saturday. But don’t expect him on Fox’s pregame show the following weekend.

⚾ High watermark. Game 4 of the World Series came in as the most-watched so far, scaring up 14.8 million viewers across Fox’s platforms. One would have to think that the combination of a marathon 18-inning Game 3 one night prior and Shohei Ohtani's first start in a World Series game helped combine to raise interest.

️‍🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

Good ratings don’t mean good journalism, ESPN

Regular A Block readers know, this newsletter generally falls under the genre of media criticism. Broadly speaking, media criticism has become a much more crowded space over the years. Many outlets, even those that aren’t media blogs like Awful Announcing or industry publications like Poynter, have crept into the space. That’s natural. The media beat has become so intertwined with everything else going on in the world that it’s hard to avoid discussing. So firstly, thank you for choosing to consume our media criticism when there are plenty of other options out there.

I start with that preamble to say we’re one of many. But we’re also in the fortunate position to have the eyes and ears of many within the sports media industry. And occasionally, some of the things we write illicit direct responses from the people in charge of making decisions at the places we cover.

Yesterday, David Roberts, ESPN’s executive in charge of the network’s daytime lineup, went on the defensive about the network’s handling of last week’s NBA gambling scandal, which we covered right here in last Friday’s edition of the A Block. If you haven’t checked it out, I’d recommend giving it a read. But in short, the piece outlines how ESPN is now woefully unprepared to cover breaking news after gutting its news division over the years. Now, the network relies on opinionists like Stephen A. Smith to navigate tricky developing stories. And, as one could imagine, that didn’t exactly go well last week.

Anyway, a week of chatter about ESPN’s atrophied news division had Roberts defending the network’s coverage in an interview with Front Office Sports. The ESPN executive said, “There’s no second-guessing” the network’s decision to stick with its standard daytime lineup of Get Up, First Take, and The Pat McAfee Show rather than break in with a special edition of SportsCenter to cover the story. Why? Because ratings for each show were up substantially.

Get Up saw a 28% lift, First Take was up 33%, and The Pat McAfee Show was up 35%, per Roberts. Surely, if more people are watching, what’s there to criticize? However, at the risk of stating the obvious, just because the line goes up doesn’t mean the quality of the journalism is going up with it.

“The appetite for different types of programming has evolved. So we’ve positioned ourselves to evolve with those desired appetites of our audience,” Roberts said, defending the network’s editorial choice.

It’s the age-old debate over whether television networks, which are businesses, have only a duty to produce content that attracts the most viewers, or a dual responsibility to produce content that accurately informs.

It’s the same trap cable networks like Fox News have fallen into over the years. In the endless quest to maximize viewership, Fox News’ directive to “respect the audience” cost the network $787.5 million. Of course, that hasn’t stopped Fox News from gutting its own news division in favor of adding more hours of highly-viewed opinion programming to its lineup over the years.

Roberts’ remarks ring eerily similar to how Fox News executives discuss their network. To be fair, Fox News is running circles around its competitors in ratings and revenue. But no one is going to claim the network is a bastion of fact-based journalism. And I don’t think Roberts is looking for ESPN to become analogous to Fox News in that regard either.

But let’s take Roberts at his word. Let’s say ESPN’s focus is on serving its audience first and foremost, journalistic implications be damned. Presumably, that means a heavier dose of programming like First Take, as Roberts implied. Well, believe it or not, the ESPN exec discredits his own point in the very same interview. While citing the substantial gains Get Up, First Take, and The Pat McAfee Show all saw last Thursday, Roberts also revealed how SportsCenter and NBA Today performed later that very same day.

The results? The 2 p.m. SportsCenter saw a 66% increase in viewership. NBA Today saw a 51% bump. What do those shows have in common? Both treated the FBI’s NBA gambling probes like a real breaking news story rather than a half-assed podcast segment. The 2 p.m. SportsCenter was the first time ESPN had a reporter with any sort of expertise in the case on the air, more than six hours after the story had broken. NBA reporter Tim Bontemps, who attended the FBI’s press conference that morning, made his first appearance during that hour. At 3 p.m., NBA Today came on the air, leading its show with ABC News chief investigative correspondent Aaron Katersky discussing the case.

And wouldn’t you know it, both of those hours on ESPN far out-rated their baselines, almost doubling the percentage increases the network’s opinion shows earned. ESPN viewers did not want to hear Stephen A. Smith’s political drivel. They did not want to hear what A.J. Hawk had to say about the case. They wanted someone who knew what the hell they were talking about. The numbers don’t lie.

So let’s not hide behind ratings as a defense for ESPN’s poor coverage last Thursday. The network was caught flat-footed. There wasn’t a breaking news team on standby, ready to take over coverage when it became clear Get Up and First Take were in over their heads.

Either there’s no willingness from ESPN to call off the aforementioned programs (and its well-compensated lead personalities) when such situations arise, or there’s simply no longer the infrastructure in place to do so. Either way, it’s a bad look for a network that once thrived in these scenarios.

📈 DATA DUMP 📊

In today’s Data Dump, we’re introducing a brand new addition to our A Block team, Manny Soloway, who runs the ever-valuable TV Media Blog Substack. If you’re interested in viewership data for live sports, Manny’s Substack is a treasure trove.

Anyway, Manny will be a regular contributor to the newsletter, providing his expertise and insights into the wide and wonderful world of sports television ratings. So without further ado, here’s Manny taking us through some of the oddities seen in Nielsen’s much-discussed Big Data + Panel methodology so far.

Nielsen’s shift to measuring TV viewership through “Big Data” has resulted in several record-breaking press releases from networks. But the actual data suggests that viewership increases are not as universal or linear as one might expect.

Beginning Sept. 1, 2025, Nielsen transitioned the industry standard for viewership measurement from its traditional panel-based model to a hybrid system called “Big Data + Panel.” The new system adds viewership metrics from cable, satellite set-top boxes and smart TVs. In theory, this should produce more precise and comprehensive audience counts than ever before.

Many media insiders anticipated that this new system would lead to significant viewership boosts, particularly for live sports. Eric Fisher of Front Office Sports predicted a 5% to 10% increase in viewership, while Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal predicted a 5 to 8% increase.

Two months after implementation, early numbers suggest that Big Data’s effects are mixed. Some major events have indeed benefited, while others have seen little or even negative change.

As predicted, there has been some significant increases for major sports, particularly in college football. Big Data increased viewership 7% for Michigan at Oklahoma, and 9% for Florida at LSU. Both games aired on ABC. Outside of football, Game 2 of the Dodgers-Brewers National League Championship Series on TBS and TruTV increased 9%.

Some less popular sports also saw increases. Despite viewership well under one million viewers, Bruins at Capitals on TNT increased 21% thanks to Big Data.

But plenty of major sports have also seen much smaller gains. In Week 1 of the NFL season, CBS’s 4:25 ET window increased just 1%. Game 1 of the Tigers-Guardians Wild Card Series on ESPN increased just 2%.

There have even been some slight decreases due to Big Data. For college football, this is most noticeable with lesser viewed games on ESPNU. Washington State at North Texas on ESPNU averaged less than 100,000 viewers, and saw a 19% decrease in viewership due to Big Data. Kings at Golden Knights on TNT, and Game 4 of the ALDS between the Mariners and Tigers both also decreased, albeit by around 1%.

When trying to compare Big Data + Panel to panel-only, there are a few key things to keep in mind. By percentage, lower viewership sports will likely see the biggest increases. The Bruins-Capitals 21% Big Data increase was the result of viewership going from 425,000 average viewers to 516,000 average viewers. For higher viewership sporting events, smaller increases are still significant. A 1% increase for the NFL on CBS in Week 1 resulted in 300,000 more average viewers.

As you can see, the Big Data numbers are far from straightforward.

🎺 AROUND AA 🎺

Our second annual Sports Podcast Power List is officially live! Check out which podcasts made the cut!

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Hello darkness, my old friend

Did you think we’d get through carriage season without at least one blackout? That would’ve been no fun, right?

Late on Thursday night, Disney-owned networks went dark on YouTube TV as the two companies failed to reach a new distribution agreement by the midnight deadline.

By all accounts, the main sticking point in this negotiation is the per-subscriber fee YouTube TV will pay Disney. Per a report by Puck’s John Ourand, YouTube TV is angling for a price in line with other major distributors, like Comcast and Charter. Typically, carriers with more subscribers are able to negotiate lower rates. Disney, on the other hand, wants to keep YouTube TV’s fee in line with other similarly sized distributors.

However, with YouTube TV continuing to grow while traditional cable and satellite distributors shrink due to cord-cutting, the Google-owned service is projected to become the largest pay TV distributor in the country sometime next year.

It seems another sticking point, then, is the term of the deal. YouTube TV is looking for a shorter term, maybe one or two years, so they can renegotiate sooner and reset the market as the largest distributor around. Disney would rather ink a more standard-length agreement, maybe a year or two longer.

Unfortunately for YouTube TV customers, if the dispute extends into the weekend, they’ll be at risk of losing key college football games. If this goes on until Monday, football fans may lose access to a (gasp) Dallas Cowboys game.

These disputes have a way of working themselves out. Especially if the main issue is price. Neither side wants to lose the revenue associated with an extended blackout. The question, of course, is how long will it be until one side blinks.