Sports Business Journal reports that the Nets and YES have quietly settled their local TV rights dispute with the Nets receiving a big bump-up --about double what the team received this seaons-- and YES retaining the Nets' rights through 2031-32, a ten year extension of their original deal.
The Nets and YES await the ruling of an arbitrator on how much in TV rights the Nets will receive from local television rights...but it's not likely to significantly affect the Nets finances. The Nets deal with YES simply isn't that lucrative, and nowhere near as lucrative as other teams in big markets.
The Nets may have doubled their win total this season, but their TV ratings remained the same: the worst in the NBA. The Nets pulled at .29 rating for games on YES, or roughly one-third of one percent of New York area households. That works out to 22,000 viewers per game. The Knicks had a 1.83 rating on MSG, nearly six times higher.
As Dave D'Alessandro writes, daily tasks for Chris Carrino (i.e., tying a tie) are getting more challenging, and he dreads the sight of stairs. Tim Capstraw, his buddy in the booth and out, carries his bags. His muscular dystrophy is progressing, just as his doctor told him it would back when he was 23, 17 years ago.
Chris Carrino, the Nets' radio play-by-play voice for the last 10 years, has been living with Facio Scapulo Humeral Dystrophy (FSHD), a form of muscular dystrophy since college, but has now decided to go public in order to raise awareness and help find a cure. He has set up a website for The Chris Carrino Foundation for FSHD, where people can learn about the disease and donate to the cause.
The additions of Carmelo Anthony and Deron Williams has caught the attention of ESPN programmers and as a result, the Knicks and Nets game March 30 has been moved to ESPN, the first Nets game to be broadcast on either ESPN or TNT in more than two years.
Maybe Mike Fratello has seen the cyrillic writing on the wall. The Ukrainian Basketball Federation on Friday named him as head coach of the national basketball team.
At this point in the Nets' season of change, the two dominant personalities are not players but Mikhail Prokhorov and Avery Johnson. It's their personalities that are driving the organization. In interviews earlier in the week with FOX Sports West, Mike Fratello and Jordan Farmar talked about their roles.
The Post has been listening to what announcers for TNT, YES and MSG have been saying and the bottom line is that the Nets and Knicks' fan bases are energized by a long summer of preparation and anticipation, but don't count on either of them playing beyond mid-April.
Seth Everett, who hosted the mid-day show on ESPN Radio in New York, is joining the Nets' radio team, signing with WFAN to host the team's pre- halftime and post-game shows.
