ABC Locally Televised Hoops In New York

By Josh Albarran – February 24, 2013

On Saturday at Noon ET, WABC-TV (Channel 7), the ABC Television Network’s owned-and-operated and flagship station in New York City aired a NCAA College basketball game between Seton Hall and No. 4 Louisville. It was the first time that a regular season hoops game would aired on that station since they last aired as part of the network’s regular-season coverage (those games would moved to sister channel ESPN following the end of the 2008-09 season). That game was produced by ESPN, but was not nationally televised by ABC (it was streaming broadcast instead on ESPN3.com via WatchESPN) while they continued to air the final hour of its Litton’s Weekend Adventure children’s programming block on the rest of its stations. ABC currently holds the rights to air the semi-finals and the championship of the SEC Men’s College Basketball Tournament, which will take place in March, in fact ESPN had took over ABC’s sports operations since the 2006 merger by their parent company Disney.

SportsCenter's Linda Cohn to Speak at OSU

By Josh Albarran

ESPN's SportsCenter anchor Linda Cohn will probably be speaking at Oklahoma State University on March 4th for the Women's Sports Media Club.

Cohn was originally to scheduled to speak for next week, but it was postponed because of her recent short absents at the Worldwide Leader and speaking of that, she hasn't appeared on ESPN since she co-anchored the 11 p.m. ET edition of SportsCenter on the night after the Baltimore Ravens' Super Bowl XLVII victory. This might be the third time since late August of 2012 that Cohn would be homesick from her TV and radio work.

An OSU spokeswoman said in their press release (http://www.ocolly.com/news/osu/article_93103362-7c9d-11e2-b794-001a4bcf6878.html) that “I contacted her agent, Bob Phillip, and he and I have been corresponding,” Thomas said. “She originally planned on coming Feb. 28 and something came up so we had to kind of re-hash everything to make it work.”

It will be known that the homesick Cohn would return to host SportsCenter when she's 100% ready to break the ice, now entering her 21st year at Bristol, Connecticut and she's an 53-year old sportscaster who is an die-hard fan of the New York Rangers, Giants and Mets. Now I know I'll followed Linda at Twitter (http://twitter.com/lindacohn) and I read her book Cohn-Head: A No-Holds Barred Account of Breaking Into the Boy's Club (order it at LindaCohn.net), but as Cohn always said when she started SportsCenter, why wait?!!

UPDATE (03/05/13): Cohn returned to ESPN last Friday morning after 25 days filling-in for Colin Cowherd on ESPN Radio's The Herd as well as anchoring SportsCenter during the weekend and she will be at Oklahoma State this Thursday afternoon to speak to their students scheduled for 2:30pm local time (3:30pm ET).

Josh Albarran reporting for TV SportsNews

Impact Of Blizzard Nemo Cause Program Changes On SportsCenter

By Josh Albarran

In the impact of a blizzard effecting the state of Connecticut (including ESPN’s world headquarters in Bristol). Only three editions of SportsCenter were scheduled for Saturday instead seven editions including the 11pm ET show (which was cancelled due to a blizzard). Michael Kim and Todd Grisham first anchored the broadcast from 1pm till 5pm, when they handed it over to Don Bell and Jade McCarthy until 10pm ET when Stan Verrett anchored solo from Los Angeles to end the night. The 10am, 6pm, 8pm, 11pm and 1am shows were canceled due to both the aftermath of Winter Storm Nemo and the absents of many SportsCenter anchors. On Friday, both the 8pm and 11pm ET shows were canceled as ESPNews re-aired the 6pm SportsCenter with Lindsay Czarniak and Bram Weinstien from 8-11pm while Verrett anchored solo on the 11pm hour in addition to the regular 1am broadcast from Los Angeles. ESPN Front Row reported on the program changes for both Friday and Saturday shows on their website (http://frontrow.espn.go.com/2013/02/espns-winter-storm-nemo-preparations-underway/#more-50030). ESPN hopes to resume all live editions of SportsCenter from Bristol on a regularly-normal basis and most of their anchors returning to work at the campus starting on Sunday.