The National Basketball Association and WGN-Ch. 9, thought to have ended their legal war a little over a year ago with a permanent injunction, have renewed hostilities.
Tucked into the league’s new contract with NBC is a clause awarding the network cable rights to games not covered by a national cable agreement, in effect blindsiding superstations such as WGN and Atlanta’s TBS.
While Turner Sports reportedly is negotiating a new national cable deal that would shift some of TNT’s telecasts to TBS and put Hawks games on an Atlanta non-superstation, WGN officials will be back in federal court Tuesday to oppose the latest restrictions.
WGN-which telecast 30 Bulls games last season-and the Bulls had gone to court two years ago to prevent the NBA from enforcing a 20-game limit on superstation telecasts. While U.S. District Judge Hubert L. Will had granted a permanent injunction against the league and the decision was upheld on appeal, other issues weren’t resolved.
“This just adds to what’s been going on in court,” says WGN attorney Chuck Sennet. “WGN and the Bulls felt some of the anti-superstation restrictions were harming us in other ways, and we were opposing them. Now, the new (TV contract) puts a lot more restrictions on superstations.”
The NBA, in papers filed last week with Will, is seeking to use the NBC deal to modify the permanent injunction. If he tosses out the latest changes, says Sennet, the league has a fallback position.
“The (NBA) Board of Governors has a plan to impose a fee-on teams whose games are telecast on superstations-that would be so high (reportedly $250,000 a game) it would essentially prevent the games from being broadcast,” Sennet said. “So if they can’t kill (the superstation telecasts), they’ll tax them out of existence.”
The NBA says it was just following the path of the National Football League, which controls all its teams’ telecasts through a federal antitrust exemption. The NBA, therefore, was just doing with NBC what the NFL does in its relationships with the networks.
“They’re trying to fit this square peg into the round hole of the sports broadcasting act,” said Sennet. “The NBA isn’t taking these games for the purpose of broadcasting them (on NBC). There are 1,107 games per season. NBC’s going to televise 26 of those. They’re just sort of filtering the broadcast rights up through the NBA and up through the network. And then they go back down to the league, which then gives them back to the teams-minus the superstations. It’s a Rube Goldberg device to screen out the superstations.”
Just before the league announced its four-year contract with NBC, Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf sent the NBA a memo stating that the cost of litigation over the superstation issue had reached $12.6 million. And his offer to settle the issue out of court was spurned by the league.
NBA Deputy Commissioner Russ Granik declined Sunday to comment on the WGN contretemps.
– With a new network television contract in place, Major League Baseball can attack what Mark McGuire, Cubs executive vice president for business operations, sees as the real issue-revenue sharing of local TV rights fees.
“It’s nice to have the TV deal (a partnership arrangement with NBC and ABC),” McGuire said Sunday, “but we have to do something about revenue sharing.”
Many small-market teams will especially feel the pinch from the expected lower revenues under the new network-baseball joint venture. One estimate places the difference at up to $150 million less. The 28 major-league clubs are receiving $256 million in network rights fees this season from CBS; they may earn as little as $75 million total under the new partnership in 1994.
As it stands, the New York Yankees, for example, will still make more than $50 million from their local TV rights deal, while a team like Seattle will receive about 1/10th that amount.
Another issue, said McGuire, is baseball’s labor situation. The contract between players and owners expires after this season.
“We don’t know what the players association is going to do,” said McGuire. “At least we have a TV contract. That’s a starting point.
– Wayne Hagin has found out you can go home again. Hagin, who spent 1989 through 1991 with John Rooney as a White Sox broadcaster, is enjoying his first season as the voice of the Colorado Rockies. Enjoying it for two reasons.
First of all, it’s a homecoming.
“I was born in Denver,” Hagin was saying last week on the Rockies’ first trip to Wrigley Field. “My entire family’s from Colorado. My folks met at the University of Colorado.
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“I compare Denver to a smaller Chicago-sports-wise, (the fans are) just as rabid. My experience in Chicago helped me appreciate what I’m seeing in Denver.”
It also helped him appreciate being the first.
“When you’re first,” said Hagin, “there’s something special about it. They accept you. There’s no `Harry’s replacing Jack Brickhouse’ stuff. You get to carve your own niche. They really adjust to you rather than having you adjust to (the expectations of) the fans and the critics. They’ve welcomed us (Hagin and broadcast partner Jeff Kingery) with open arms.”
Hagin didn’t get by his first night at Wrigley Field unscathed. While chatting with a Denver writer, Hagin pointed to the sun-dappled Chicago skyline and proclaimed: “Isn’t that a great sight?”
Standing nearby was Harry Caray, who chided Hagin: “Hey, that’s my line.”
– Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz may dismiss thoughts of using pay-per-view HawkVision during the regular season, but SportsChannel officials don’t. With all the work that goes into producing HawkVision, the regional cable station would like to use it more than once a year. “We’ve had no discussions about next season,” said Kelly Sullivan, director of creative services, “but we plan to talk (with the Hawks) in the near future.”
HawkVision had an estimated 9,000 subscription buys for the lone playoff telecast last month, double last year’s first-round average of 4,500. “People were more familiar with it,” says Sullivan of the increase.