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Charleston Daily Mail

By Jack Bogaczyk

IF phone calls to a newspaper sports department mean anything, there seems to be some reader - and viewer - confusion about the statewide telecast schedule for Marshall football.

Read on to learn where you can find the Herd.

The four West Virginia Media Holdings stations have a four-game Herd football telecast schedule that made its debut with MU's Sept. 23 loss at Tennessee.

The other games are set the next three Saturdays - this week at 3 p.m. at SMU, on Oct. 21 at 7 p.m. at UAB, and a 4:30 start for Memphis' visit to Huntington for homecoming.

There have been questions whether the games air on digital or analog stations in the various markets. The easy answer is both. Here's the market-by-market rundown, as received from the West Virginia Media programming department:

* On WOWK in Charleston-Huntington, all three Marshall games will air on Channel 13. If there is a conflict with the Southeastern Conference game from CBS (Saturday and Oct. 28), the SEC telecast will be fed through regional cable on (Suddenlink Channel 22 and Comcast Channel 68).

* WBOY in Clarksburg-Morgantown, an NBC affiliate, carries all three Herd games on Channel 12. There are no conflicts with national Notre Dame telecasts on NBC.

* In Wheeling, CBS affiliate WTRF will air only the Memphis- Marshall game, on WTRF-DT (Channel 2).

* In Beckley/Bluefield, WVNS will take the SMU and UAB games over Channel 59 (analog), but the Oct. 28 Memphis date slides to the WVNS digital channel.

Marshall's Nov. 4 home game with Tulane is a CSTV national telecast. In the region, WSAZ will televise the Nov. 11 Herd game at East Carolina, through a WSAZ agreement with a sister station in Greenville, N.C.

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WITH THE Major League Baseball playoffs approaching the halfway point, it's a good time to consider how different they will play on the tube starting in 2007.

It also is worth keeping fingers crossed that ESPN's days of televising postseason baseball aren't over. October without the quality work of ESPN lead team Jon Miller and Joe Morgan just wouldn't be the same.

ESPN's postseason baseball contract ended with the Division Series. In future seasons, all Division Series games will air on TBS, with overlapping games going to TNT. ESPN has been splitting Division Series coverage with ESPN.

Fox is retaining World Series rights, and will alternate annually through 2013 on the National or American League Championship Series. Baseball still has an annual LCS deal (alternating leagues with Fox) on the bargaining table.

ESPN could go for that, but TBS and Versus (formerly OLN) also are said to be in the ballgame.

ESPN began an eight-year contract this season to continue regular- season baseball coverage through 2013 (up to 80 games annually). Much of the rest of the regular-season telecast future of the "national pastime" will change.

Fox will expand its Saturday afternoon package from 18 to 26 weeks, moving most starts to 3:30 p.m., rather than 1 p.m. Then, beginning to 2008, TBS will begin a weekly Sunday afternoon game, but gone will be the regularity of Atlanta Braves' national telecasts.

Next season, TBS will air 70 Braves' games, about the same number as this season - or about half the number of the days 2-3 decades ago when TBS founder and then-Braves owner Ted Turner used the team as a primary programming staple.

So much for the days of Biff Pocoroba, Rafael Ramirez and "America's Team."

ESPN's regular-season deal has been reported at $295 million annually, with the new Fox contract at $250 million per year (down from $415 million). TBS' deal is reported in the $75 million range annually.

So, baseball will enjoy a hike of almost 20 percent annually in national telecast dollars, even before the pending LCS deal is made.

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NEXTEL CUP viewers got the lowdown at Lowe's Motor Speedway on Thursday on the new announcing team when NASCAR returns to ESPN and ABC in 2007.

Former Winston Cup champion Rusty Wallace was named to the team last winter. ESPN announced that Brent Musburger will be ESPN/ABC host for Nextel Cup coverage, with Dr. Jerry Punch handling the race calls. Former crew chief and team owner Andy Petree joins Wallace, for the ESPN version of Fox's popular Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds.

ESPN and ABC will air the final 17 races of each season through 2014 (ABC gets all 10 Chase for the Cup events). Fox, TNT, ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC will split Nextel Cup coverage starting next year.

ESPN and ABC were shut out of the last Nextel Cup telecast deal, which ends next month. To display the sport's growth, NASCAR will be getting $560 million annually in the new, eight-year contracts ($4.48 billion total), compared to the $467 million per year currently (six-year, $2.8 billion total).

One thing hasn't changed - how the TV money is divvied up. The sanctioning body keeps 10 percent. The tracks get 65 percent. The teams (and drivers) take 25 percent.

(c) 2006 Charleston Daily Mail. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.