New Dolphins rights-holder debuts Friday with a conflict. And NFL Draft, Heat media notes
WINZ-940 and iHeart Radio officially debut as the Dolphins’ new radio-rights holder Friday when they air an NFL Draft ‘Happy Hour’ from the Backyard bar in Fort Lauderdale.
But a Marlins game will prevent them from staying on the air for the team’s two picks Friday night.
So it’s kind of like having a birthday party for somebody, but ending the party before the person celebrating the birthday arrives or before cake is served.
Seth Levit and O.J. McDuffie will host the Dolphins draft party from 4 p.m. until Marlins-Cubs coverage begins around 6:30 p.m. The second round doesn’t begin until 7 p.m. Friday.
The first round is Thursday night; WINZ isn’t having a Thursday draft party because the Dolphins don’t have a first-round pick.
Ideally, WINZ would have been on the air for the Dolphins’ picks on Friday and asked the Marlins to move their game to one of iHeart’s other stations (WIOD or an FM station).
Even if WQAM-560 still had Dolphins rights, it wouldn’t have been able to carry draft coverage Friday night because of a Panthers playoff game.
If the Panthers had lost in Boston on Wednesday, Steve Goldstein would have been one of the hosts on WINZ’s first Dolphins draft party. Instead, Goldstein will be calling Game 6 of the Panthers-Bruins series on Bally Sports Florida; he will join WINZ’s draft show remotely for the first 30 minutes.
iHeart Radio will simulcast Dolphins games on WINZ-940 and WBGG-FM 105.9. The Dolphins and iHeart are retaining WQAM’s Dolphins announcers, Jimmy Cefalo and Joe Rose.
Rose declined an opportunity to move his talk show to WINZ, which has mostly national programming, and remains a fixture in WQAM’s morning lineup.
WINZ-940 AM will carry Fox Sports Radio’s national coverage of the first round on Thursday.
AROUND THE DIAL
Michael Irvin won’t appear on NFL Network’s draft coverage and remains suspended, two months after an employee at a Phoenix-area Marriott accused him of “harassing” and making inappropriate comments during a brief exchange the week of the Super Bowl. NFL Network immediately suspended him.
Irvin has filed a $100 million defamation lawsuit against Marriott and the woman. That case is still pending. Marriott is an NFL sponsor.
▪ ABC and ESPN are once again airing different presentations of the draft on Thursday and Friday, with ABC’s tilting more toward human interest stories and the college football perspective.
Mike Greenberg hosts the Thursday and Friday ESPN coverage, with Mel Kiper Jr., Booger McFarland and Louis Riddick.
Rece Davis hosts the ABC Thursday draft coverage with Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard and Todd McShay. David Pollack replaces Herbstreit on ABC’s set on Friday.
ABC will simulcast ESPN’s coverage on Saturday, with Davis, Kiper, McShay, Riddick and longtime draft analyst Matt Miller, who has appeared on ESPN’s NFL studio programming but never before on the draft set.
NFL Network’s set for all three days includes Rich Eisen, Daniel Jeremiah and Charles Davis; Fox lead college football analyst Joel Klatt is the fourth member of the set on Thursday and Friday and Peter Schrager fills that role on Saturday.
Former Stanford coach David Shaw - who was on NFL Net’s main draft set in recent years - this year has moved to NFL Network’s alternate streaming coverage.
▪ Game 1 of Heat-Knicks series will air at 1 p.m. on Sunday on ABC even if both the Warriors and Lakers playoff series go to a Game 7 on Sunday.
If Memphis forces the Lakers to a seventh game, and if Sacramento forces Golden State to a seventh game, ABC would carry the Warriors Game 7 at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday and TNT would get Lakers-Memphis Game 7 at 8 p.m.
Tipoff times for most of the other Heat-Knicks games haven’t been announced, but Tuesday’s game in New York figures to be 7 or 7:30 or 8 p.m.
Game 3 in Miami on May Saturday, May 6 will be on ABC at 3:30 or 8:30 p.m. Games 2, 4, 5 and 7 will be on TNT; Game 6 will be on ESPN.
There will be three off days between games two and three so that one series isn’t on track to end well before the others.
The Heat’s win on Wednesday avoided the less-than-ideal situation of Game 6 of Heat-Bucks airing on ESPNews, which would have been necessary with the Warriors and Lakers games on ESPN Friday and the NFL Draft on ESPN2. Now, Heat-Bucks Game 6 won’t be necessary.
Bally Sports Sun cannot carry any more Heat playoff games, per NBA rules, but will carry extensive Heat postgame shows after each game.
FYI: About 5.1 percent of Dade-Broward homes with TV sets were tuned into Bally’s coverage of Game 5 during overtime at 12:30 a.m. -- a good number for that late at night on a weeknight.
Bally Sports Florida can carry non-ABC Panthers games through the first round. TNT also will have Friday’s Panthers-Bruins Game 6.
▪ ESPN began the second phase of layoffs this week, with off-camera employees comprising the initial cuts. Disney CEO Bob Iger has spoken of laying off 7000 employees.
On-air employees will be evaluated this summer, according to CNBC; some are expected to be let go and others likely will be asked to take pay cuts if they have expiring contracts.
This was ESPN’s sixth round of layoffs in recent years. ESPN is still profitable, but its penetration has dropped from more than 101 million U.S. homes a decade ago to below 76 million now, because many viewers have dropped cable and are opting instead for streaming services.
▪ Ruthie Polinsky, who declined a contract extension at NBC 6, took a job at the sports cable network NBC Chicago. She fills the job vacated when Samantha Rivera left NBC Chicago to join CBS-4’s sports department.
Rivera is No. 3 in WFOR’s sports division behind Jim Berry and Mike Cugno but could move to No. 2 if Berry transitions permanently to news, which is expected at some point. Goldstein, the preseason TV voice of the Dolphins on CBS-4, also contributes to the station’s sports coverage.
Meanwhile, NBC 6 continues to look for a sportscaster to replace Polinsky.
▪ The Marlins will make their only appearance on non-cable network television this season on Saturday when Fox sends Marlins-Cubs to parts of the country at 4 p.m. Here’s the regionalization map.
