A six-pack of media notes on a Wednesday:
▪ What does the television rating for Inter Miami’s first regular-season game tell us about local interest in the team?
It’s actually quite encouraging.
In the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market, the team’s opener on ESPN against Los Angeles FC drew a 1.5 local rating, equal to 25,870 homes.
As perspective, Heat games are averaging a 2.9 rating in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market, with a season-high 3.9 for Monday’s game against Milwaukee.
The most-watched Marlins game in 2019 received a 1.7 rating. The most-watched Panthers game this season drew a 0.7 rating, less than half what Inter Miami’s opener drew.
And Dolphins games last season typically drew between an 8 and 11 rating, which were the worst for the team in many years, perhaps ever.
Incidentally, an Inter Miami spokesperson said Tuesday night that the team does not have a local radio deal in place but is working on it. The opener at L.A. FC had no local radio coverage.
Univision will have TV coverage of Saturday’s game at DC United, with local sportscaster Chris Wittyngham handling the English SAP call on Univision, which will also be available on Twitter.
▪ NBA notes: After watching the Heat beat the Milwaukee Bucks for the second time this season on Monday, ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins said: “The Miami Heat got the Milwaukee Bucks’ number. They got the bodies in Jae Crowder. When I was on the ‘08 Celtics team and we were playing a team we could possibly see in the playoffs, we wanted to put doubt in their mind. That’s what the Miami Heat is doing. I looked at Giannis [Antetokounmpo’s] face, and I see fear. I see fear.”…
ESPN assigned Ryan Ruocco, Doris Burke and Jorge Sedano to Friday’s Heat-Pelicans game, which will also be on Fox Sports Sun.
▪ As we reported on Twitter last week, ESPN continues to explore alternatives to upgrade on “Monday Night Football” analyst Booger McFarland, but attempts to land Tony Romo failed when Romo opted to stay at CBS for a reported $17.5 million per season.
After CBS was able to keep Romo, ESPN reportedly reached out to Peyton Manning, but it’s unclear if he wants the job.
ESPN’s other options could include Louis Riddick, Dan Orlovsky (the network holds him in high regard); Matt Hasselbeck (considered for the job two years ago), Kirk Herbstreit (I’m not sure ESPN would move its lead college analyst to the NFL) or someone from another network.
McFarland, who was a field analyst during ESPN’s MNF coverage in 2018, replaced Jason Witten in the booth last season when Witten decided to return to the Dallas Cowboys. McFarland was adequate last season but had an underwhelming playoff game, prompting ESPN to explore other options.
It’s unclear whether Joe Tessitore will remain on play-by-play or move back to college football.
▪ Former Marlins president David Samson, who learned he was being dumped by Derek Jeter from a media report in October 2017, has bristled for two years at his perception that the Marlins blamed all of their ills on him and that everything the new regime tried were bold new ideas, when Samson contended that many of their ideas were merely recycled from his tenure under Jeffrey Loria.
Those tensions boiled over the past 10 days, beginning when owner Bruce Sherman stood before cameras at the team’s spring training complex and announced that the “past regime is irrelevant. When we closed in October 2017, it was irrelevant. They [past Marlins ownership] were interfering with the day-to-day management. We let them [current employees] do what’s necessary to win. We’ve come a long way in the last 27 months.”
Then Sherman said the Loria/Samson approach — without referring to them by name — was a “silly” way to run a business.
Those comments elicited quite a reaction from the former Marlins president on his weekday podcast, “Nothing Personal with David Samson.”
“Bruce, I don’t care what you say about me,” Samson said. “I don’t care that you fired me. I just care that you wired the money to our owner… because I want my hometown team to do better. Your current president of baseball operations [Michael Hill] was there under us. The players you traded were players we signed or drafted and those were the players [for whom] you got all these… young prospects, where you now say how happy and proud you are that your farm system is in the top five and not ranked 30. You say you want a sustainable winning team. Everybody wants that, Brucie.”
“You haven’t owned a team long enough to have any idea what you’re talking about,” Samson added. “When you’ve been in the game 18 years, I want you to look back and tell me how many championships you have. When you’ve been in the game 18 years, I want to know how many players you drafted and developed who became superstars and MVPs…. Stop blaming the past regime for all your problems.”
The old ownership drafted and developed past MVPs Christian Yelich and Giancarlo Stanton. With the new ownership, it’s obviously too early to know.
A Marlins spokesman said the team had no reaction to Samson’s comments.
▪ Tidbits: ESPN hired Chipper Jones as an analyst on 20 MLB Wednesday games… Former Marlins coach and MLB player Eduardo Perez will preview Miami’s season with former Nationals general manager Jim Bowden in a special on Sirius XM Radio’s MLB Network at 5 p.m. March 12….
ESPN removed Jessica Mendoza from its Sunday night MLB booth (she will remain at the network and handle other assignments) but kept Alex Rodriguez and Matt Vasgersian…. XFL ratings haven’t been awful, but they have dropped every week, from an average of 3.1 million viewers in Week 1, to 1.6 million in Week 3, to 1.4 million in Week 4.
▪ South Florida hasn’t had a full-time female TV sportscaster on the NBC, CBS, Fox or ABC stations in several years, but we hear that’s about change. NBC-6 is hiring Ruthie Polinsky — a sports anchor at the CBS station in Providence, Rhode Island — to replace Chris Fischer as its full-time sportscaster.
She will start later this month and join a sports department featuring anchor Keith Jones, who splits his time between news and sports.
The Fox (now Sinclair-owned) regional sports networks employ multiple full-time women sportscasters in South Florida, including Jessica Blaylock and Kristen Hewitt.
But Polinsky, 27, will be the first woman full-time sportscaster at a Miami-Fort Lauderdale non-cable affiliate since Courtney Fallon for NBC-6 in 2014.
In 1969, WTVJ (then Channel 4, now Channel 6) hired Jane Chastain, making her the first female sportscaster at a local station in U.S. television history. Through the years, several women sportscasters have left South Florida for network jobs, including Karie Ross, Suzy Kolber and Siripipat.