NASCAR broadcasting rights

[broadrun96]

That article is attempting to discredit ESPN in ways anyone who watches ESPN's coverage of NFL games would know is ridiculous. They aren't allowed interviews that interfere with the original broadcaster's rights there either, so being blocked from trackside interviews makes sense contractually. It's not a slight against ESPN but more likely included in the contract that DURING the event only the broadcaster (Fox or NBC for tv and MRN/PRN for radio) can do interviews. ESPN may not show as long a highlight package but it won't be kicked off of SportsCenter any time soon. And ESPN has to be more selective about what they bid on as they apparently are getting their budgets reviewed by Disney and it has been reflected in the number of both TV and radio personnel that have left for the competition.

NBC won't need to do anything but move some of the events to tape delay, and/or to cNBC which they already did with some F1 events this season. ND football will always remain on the OTA NBC station and for the Olympics they moved coverage around all of the NBC family.

The concerns about NBCSports not being high profile won't be as big a hurdle for them as some networks with Comcast being in the ownership group to increase its profile within their network. On others it could be tough, but it is already in the most common digital tier for most networks. It just needs some advertising which is much easier than getting the channel added or moved to a lower subscription tier.