ESPN

Alabama’s 52-24 rout of Ohio State in the College Football National Championship game drew 18.7 million viewers for ESPN’s family of networks on Monday. That puts it on pace to be the least-viewed championship game in college football’s era of staging an end-of-season matchup to determine the national champion.

Even though games may look the same, most of the processes around broadcasting the games have changed. Interviews for pregame features are being done remotely, announcers are socially distanced while being separated by plexiglass, and sideline reporters are in the stands.

One of the most recognizable figures in sports news, ESPN anchor Scott Van Pelt announced on his Twitter account Thursday that he has contracted the coronavirus and will be taking some time off.

ESPN and Major League Baseball are closing in on a TV deal that would provide the network exclusive rights to the first round of the playoffs. Now all that is needed is a first round of the playoffs. That needs to be negotiated between MLB and the Players Association, which is to say that, while an ESPN-MLB deal is close, they are still far from knowing when — and even if — there will be playoffs expanded from 10 to likely 14 teams to include a best-of-three first round.

A new 10-year deal makes ESPN the exclusive media rights holder of SEC football and men’s basketball, and will end the conference’s relationship with CBS after three decades. CBS has been airing the league’s Saturday afternoon centerpiece game and football championship since 1996.

The AKC National Championship will be presented on ABC for the next three years under an agreement between the American Kennel Club and ESPN announced Monday.

Getting return video to talent in the field, particularly those working from at-home studios, has been one of remote production’s biggest challenges. Japan’s Techno Mathematical Co. (TMC) is using low-latency encoding and decoding technology that has become indispensable for the likes of NBC and CBS stations. Above, By using a TMC encoder, WCBS New York is able to keep the end-to-end delay low enough to allow meteorologist Lonnie Quinn to present the weather map remotely from his home Weather Barn.

As part of a “megacast” of a wild-card playoff game in January, ESPN will produce a version of the telecast for Freeform, Disney’s cable network targeted at young women. The game will also air on ESPN, ABC, ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes.

ESPN has re-set its senior executive team in the wake of Connor Schell’s exit and Jodi Markley’s retirement. (Oh yeah, and those 500 cut jobs last week.)

ESPN’s chief said the Disney sports-media division would eliminate 500 positions – 300 employees and 200 posts that are currently unfilled – in a bid to free up resources for streaming, digital and other kinds of video experiences designed for the new ways fans are engaging with sports.

Once Disney’s cash cow, the cable giant is shedding linear subscribers while the high cost of live sports rights is hindering its transition to a direct-to-consumer future.

Joe Morgan, the Hall of Fame second baseman and sparkplug of the Cincinnati Reds’ Big Red Machine who went on to spend more than two decades as an ESPN analyst alongside Jon Miller,  died Sunday. He was 77.

ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC averaged 1,836,000 viewers for 16 broadcasts in Major League Baseball’s expanded wild-card round, drawing far more viewers for 16 games but an average down vastly from the single-knockout contests in previous years.

Dialing up its wagering efforts around sports, ESPN has made two separate sports betting partnerships — one each with DraftKings and Caesars Entertainment to promote sports gambling content. ESPN will offer content linked to both gambling companies’ sports booking operations.

ESPN and Fox shared bragging rights as the 41st annual Sports Emmys were handout out Tuesday night. They tied atop the network leaderboard with seven wins apiece. ESPN scored one more nod to lead all sports groups, as it came into the night with the most nominations (58) to Fox Sports Media Group’s 48. CBS’s coverage of the Masters won the marquee Outstanding Live Sports Special category, and the network also scooped the Outstanding Live Sports Series for its NFL on CBS.

The heavens opened up on Major League Baseball’s opening day in more ways than one Thursday night. With Biblical rain coming down on National Park, the long-awaited and coronavirus-delayed face-off between the New York Yankees and Washington Nationals was cut short. However, if the record-breaking viewership on ESPN is any indication, fan fervor in a live sports-deprived America was hot and heavy.

The fuboTV streaming service has finally nabbed ESPN for its sports-focused package offerings, while also retrieving a slew of Disney entertainment channels, including FX and NatGeo, after they were dropped following The Walt Disney Co.’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox assets last year.

After a towering rating success on the Michael Jordan 10-part documentary The Last Dance, ESPN is working with Tom Brady and Religion of Sports on Man In The Arena, a nine-episode multi-platform series coming in 2021. It will be Brady’s first-hand account of the most iconic moments of his NFL career.

Network executives knew the first weekend with multiple live events would draw good numbers but for the most part they exceeded expectations. The Bundesliga’s return drew record numbers on Fox Sports 1, Saturday night’s UFC card on ESPN was one of the top shows on cable television and Sunday’s NASCAR race on Fox was the most-viewed non-Daytona race in three years.

ESPN shot up a documentary that it believed would score big with audiences. How did it work out? In the words of ESPN NBA announcer Mike Breen: “Bang!” The Last Dance — ESPN’s 10-part documentary about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls — was a smashing success for the network. It was critically acclaimed, generally adored by sports fans if Twitter is the judge and a ratings success. The original airings of all 10 episodes averaged 5.6 million viewers, making The Last Dance the most-watched documentary ever on ESPN.

“I can’t think of a single player move ever that adjusted requests and turned the process upside down as much as this,” said Fox Sports SVP Michael Mulvihill about Brady signing with Tampa Bay. “I think the league treated everyone well with Tampa Bay because they knew how great everyone’s interest was. It was a significant curveball.”