By David Barron
The NCAA Tournament is upon us. CBS has the selection show announcement at 5 p.m. Sunday, and CBS and Turner Sports this week announced their announcer pairings for games on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV, with the Final Four airing this year on CBS.
Jim Nantz, Bill Raftery and Grant Hill with Tracy Wolfson return to call the Final Four from Indianapolis. The other regional announce teams will be Brian Anderson and Jim Jackson with Allie LaForce, Ian Eagle and Jim Spanarkel with Jamie Erdahl and Kevin Harlan and Dan Bonner with Dana Jacobson.
The other opening-week teams are Carter Blackburn/Debbie Antonelli, Lisa Byington/Steve Smith, Andrew Catalon/Steve Lappas with AJ Ross, Spero Dedes/Brendan Haywood with Lauren Shehadi and Tom McCarthy/Avery Johnson. Handling the play-in games will be Anderson and Jackson plus the team of Brad Nessler/Steve Lavin with Evan Washburn.
Studio teams once more will be based in New York and Atlanta. The Atlanta team will be Ernie Johnson with Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Candace Parker and Greg Gumbel in New York with Clark Kellogg, Seth Davis and Wally Szczerbiak.
In addition to television, the Tournament also will air on SiriusXM radios and the SiriusXM app. News and feature coverage will air on Mad Dog Sports Radio, ESPNU Radio, SiriusXM ACC Radio, SiriusXM Big 12 Radio, SiriusXM Big Ten Radio, SiriusXM Pac-12 Radio and SiriusXM SEC Radio.
Astros’ TV opener Sunday
If you’re setting up the DVR weekend schedule, don’t forget that the Astros’ spring training game against the Nationals at noon Sunday will be the Grapefruit League’s first game televised by AT&T SportNet Southwest.
The Monday game against the Marlins also airs at noon.
New agreement for NHL, Disney
After a run of several years on the NBC networks, the NHL is returning to ESPN and ABC beginning for the 2021-22 season. The Stanley Cup Final will air on ABC in four of the seven years, 25 regular-season games each year will appear on ABC or ESPN and 75 will be on ESPN+ and Hulu.
It also includes the out-of-market streaming package, NHL.TV, as part of ESPN+, and it includes highlights rights agreements, which assures that you’ll be seeing a lot more hockey on ESPN “SportsCenter” and other news and talk shows.
I have covered one Stanley Cup Final game in my lifetime, at the Meadowlands Arena a couple of decades ago, and the main thing I remember about it is walking in the arena to say hello to Gary Thorne, who was calling NHL games for ESPN at the time. Maybe this new agreement, as Richard Deitsch of The Athletic aptly notes, will signal a return to hockey for Thorne, who along with the esteemed Kevin Harlan has one of the best zero-to-60 voice ranges in broadcasting.
NBA numbers down
The NBA All-Star Game averaged 5.94 million viewers on TNT and TBS, a record low for the event, but outpaced the much-hyped Prince Harry/Meghan Markle interview on CBS among viewers under age 49, according to Sports Business Journal. …
In a similar vein, James Harden’s return to Houston on the Wednesday before the All-Star Game break didn’t exactly do gangbusters on AT&T SportsNet Southwest. The game had a 2.5 Nielsen rating and an average audience of 100,600 viewers, which underperformed my expectations.
Braves honor local favorite
I have been privileged to attend church for many years alongside Ralph Garr, the longtime Houston area resident who was the 1974 National League batting championship with the Atlanta Braves.
Ralph is being honored this week as one of the namesakes of the Ralph Garr-Bill Lucas HBCU Classic between his alma mater, Grambling State, and Florida A&M. He’s a more than fitting honoree, and he is a good friend in good times and in trying times as well.
4 DVRs and Beyond 