Bucholtz Sports Media

Welcome back to Bucholtz Sports Media! This post is an exclusive for our premium subscribers; you can join them here for just $5 a month. Now, on to the news... Sports viewing hits remarkable November highs Measurement company Nielsen has been putting out public month-by-month analyses of U.S. TV and streaming viewership data under their The Gauge label since 2021, and there are often some fascinating elements in those. Their latest, published Tuesday, has some especially notable sports...

Welcome back to Bucholtz Sports Media! This post is free for everyone thanks to our premium subscribers, who you can join here for $5 a month or $50 a year. We have a bunch of different sports business stories to cover today, so we're going back to The Five format for that. 1. Prime Video Thursday Night Football numbers continue to impress A Thursday Night Football broadcast from December 29, 2022. (Kit Karzen/Prime Video.) Thursday Night Football has gone through a lot of evolutions over the...

Welcome back to Bucholtz Sports Media! This post is free for everyone thanks to our premium subscribers, who you can join here for $5 a month or $50 a year. This is an unusual one, spotlighting five podcast episodes from Steve Bennett of The Sports-Casters over the years, many of which may be of interest to anyone curious about the sports media realm. Five Sports-Casters episodes well worth checking out One of the podcasts I've long enjoyed in the sports media space is Steve Bennett's The...

Welcome back to Bucholtz Sports Media. This post is exclusively for our premium subscribers; you can join them here for just $5 a month. Now, on to the news... Paramount's hostile bid for all of WBD sets up two different visions of the future for TNT Sports Paramount, Netflix, and WBD logos. As discussed here last week, while Netflix's accepted $82.7 billion USD bid for Warner Bros. Discovery's studio and streaming assets doesn't include WBD's linear assets (including most of TNT Sports),...

Welcome back to Bucholtz Sports Media! This free post is brought to you by our premium subscribers. If you like what you're reading here, you can join them for $5 a month to get access to everything we publish. Now, on to the news... Assessing the business side of the College Football Playoff chaos The 2025-26 College Football Playoff bracket (CollegeFootballPlayoff.com). This year's College Football Playoff final selection already looked to be a wild one before conference championship...

Welcome back to Bucholtz Sports Media! This post is an exclusive for our premium subscribers. For just $5 a month or $50 for a year, you can join them here. MLS Cup might wind up as a soccer-promoting party like 1979 A MLS.com graphic for the 2025 MLS Cup. I've frequently discussed matchups as a component of TV ratings. They can sometimes be overrated compared to the quality of the game (which is crucial to retaining average audience), leading to even some matchups that don't set up as well...

Welcome back to Bucholtz Sports Media. This post is free for everyone thanks to our premium subscribers; you can join them here for just $5 a month or $50 a year. Now, on to the news... What could a Netflix takeover of the non-Discovery Global side of WBD mean for TNT Sports? A TNT Sports logo. (WBD.) Netflix striking a deal to take over Warner Bros. Discovery's streaming (Max) and studios business is one of the biggest media and entertainment stories in years. But the part of that...

Welcome back to Bucholtz Sports Media! This post is an exclusive for our premium subscribers. You can join them here for $5 a month or $50 a year. Now, on to the news... Tim Leiweke's pardon is at least Donald Trump's eighth sports-connected one Tim Leiweke talks to Seattle station KING 5 in 2019. (KING 5 on YouTube.) I try to only bring up politics here when there's a definite sports connection, but there sure is one with this week's pardon news. That saw U.S. president Donald Trump pardon...

Welcome back to Bucholtz Sports Media! This post is free for everyone thanks to our premium subscribers. Let's get to the news. CBS shatters NFL regular-season viewership record, part of league's overall success and sports' Thanksgiving success The Cowboys' win over the Chiefs set records. The NFL's viewership numbers over the past few years have been incredible even by its standards. Some of that is about changes to the way Nielsen measures ratings, including this year's full incorporation...

Welcome back to Bucholtz Sports Media! This post is free for everyone thanks to our premium subscribers. You can join them here. Lane Kiffin's midseason move to LSU has more to do with wider CFB system chaos than him Lane Kiffin (L) speaks to ESPN's Marty Smith before leaving Oxford for Baton Rouge on Nov. 30, 2025. (ESPN on YouTube.) Earlier this year, I wrote a piece for premium subscribers on why "Big 4" (NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL) sports discussion is flawed from a business and ratings...