Listen to the folks at NBC talk, and Arena football is the most exciting sport in the universe played by the nicest guys on the planet. Clearly it's a sellers' market in the first year of the NBC-AFL television partnership, but is anyone buying?
The league concludes its first season on network television with the ArenaBowl between the Storm and Arizona at 5 p.m. Sunday. It's hoping for a fantastic finish to an otherwise uneven year.
NBC's production has been solid, but the AFL is struggling to find footing with non-AFL market fans. The ratings have hovered around 1.0 after a good start, and more often than not lately have sunk below that.
Last year's ArenaBowl posted a 0.8 rating on ABC, and anything higher will be cheered by NBC execs as another step in the right direction.
NBC didn't expect huge ratings. It knew what it was getting and knew the 17-year-old league would play an earlier season on unfamiliar days. But spokesman Kevin Sullivan said NBC is willing to give the partnership - a profitable one, by the way - the time it needs to become the perfect product.
"We knew that it would be a long haul," Sullivan said. "But we have 18 weeks of data now. We'll meet after the season and find a way to grow the audience and give viewers (from a market without a team) a rooting interest."
And if the ArenaBowl can't do it ...
RAY-TINGS UP: Fox Sports Net Florida said Wednesday's telecast of the Devil Rays-Yankees game produced a 2.7 overnight rating in the Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg market, making it the highest rated Rays game since 2.9 for July 17, 2000, against Atlanta.
One rating point represents approximately 16,200 homes.
FREE-FOR-VIEW: Boxing fans lucked out when Kirk Johnson got hurt and pulled out of Saturday's fight with Lennox Lewis.
The fight goes on, but with Vitali Klitschko stepping in. This matchup, a potential pay-per-view down the road, now goes out to HBO subscribers, a nice bonus.
The Lewis-Klitschko bout airs live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles at 10 p.m.
COME ON DOWN: The NFL Network has a face: Rich Eisen, formerly of ESPN, who was hired this week as the lead anchor for the new NFL programming service launching this fall.
Eisen, one of ESPN's funnier and more understated anchors (before his contract was allowed to lapse), anchors NFL Network's flagship program, an as-yet-unnamed live weekday studio show from Los Angeles at 8 p.m.
NFL Network will be carried initially on DirecTV's basic service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on a year-round basis. It is the first network devoted to the NFL.
Hopefully local cable companies will find a way to pick up the network sooner than later, because in this football-crazy market, DirecTV, which boasts the always popular Sunday NFL Ticket, is looking more and more like the preferable choice for football fans.
READERS RANTS: Ed McConnell of Seminole writes: "Please clear the mystery of where "Skip and Pete are", the phantom Braves announcers - we miss them."
Well Ed, TBS and the Braves decided to dump Skip Caray and Pete Van Wieren for some harebrained "national" feel.
So while Caray and Van Wieren get to call a few games for Turner South, Joe Simpson and Don Sutton take on the task, I guess, of trying to trick you into thinking you're watching a nationally significant game.
Make sense? Of course not. Sutton and Simpson aren't exactly generic announcers, but why lose that "Braves" feel that Caray helped develop? One thing is certain: Braves games don't sound like Braves games anymore.
As for that national feel, thanks, but I'll stick with ESPN.
AROUND THE DIAL: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Roger Clemens and LeBron James do On the Record With Bob Costas at 11:30 tonight on HBO.
OUCH: From ESPN.com's Sports Guy - "When I'm running ESPN6, the only mortal lock for the schedule is Pardon the Interruption II, starring Tim Hardaway and Eric Dickerson, with Dikembe Mutombo as Stat Boy.
