Nbc Sports

Whether it's a Sunday night football game or the third Saturday in May at Pimlico, when NBC Sports floods the zone with members of its A-Team, the telecast is almost always a winner. That was again the case for the 138th Preakness Stakes -- thanks to airtight production, sure-handed direction and enough talent to cover three or four races. Sure, the NBC analysts were wrong in picking Kentucky Derby victor Orb (or, in the case of Michelle Beadle, Mylute) to win the Preakness. But did anyone on the planet have Oxbow?

Whether it's a Sunday night football game or the third Saturday in May at Pimlico, when NBC Sports floods the zone with members of its A-Team, the telecast is almost always a winner. That was again the case for the 138th Preakness Stakes -- thanks to airtight production, sure-handed direction and enough talent to cover three or four races. Sure, the NBC analysts were wrong in picking Kentucky Derby victor Orb (or, in the case of Michelle Beadle, Mylute) to win the Preakness. But did anyone on the planet have Oxbow?

NBC Sports selected the Washington Capitals' home game against the Boston Bruins on April 11 as the network's game of the week, and it will be played at noon. The game is a potential first-round playoff preview, as the top-seeded Capitals would face the eighth-seeded Bruins if the season were to end today.

The new year brings some new jobs on radio and Internet for one-time Baltimore media figures Anita Marks, Marc Clarke and Troy Johnson. Marks, a former show host at 105.7 The Fan, will start Jan. 5 as a weekend host on NBC Sports Radio. Her shift will run from noon to 3 p.m. Saturdays. At this point, no Baltimore stations carry the NBC Sports Network. Several stations in Washington do, but none carries the full lineup of NBC programming. You can, however, listen to NBC Sports Radio online here . The new job for Marks was announced and reported on Dec. 18. You can read one of those reports at sportsmediajournal.com . I wonder if the Baltimore guys who seemed to so love hating on Marks when she was at 105.7 The Fan will be checking out her new network gig. Meanwhile, Clarke and Johnson, of The Big Phat Morning Crew that left the airwaves at Baltimore's WERQ (92.3 FM)

Maybe the best way to cut through all the spin and counterspin on the Olympics is this: Last week, NBC was saying it would lose money on the Olympics. Yesterday, it said it might break even. Today, the network is saying it could turn a profit on the $1.18 billion investment. "Yeah, we think there's a small chance, a chance we could make a little bit of money over the next couple of weeks," Mark Lazarus, chairman of the NBC Sports Group, said in a conference call from London Thursday when asked if the network might turn a profit on the games.

As head of NBC Sports, Dick Ebersol has - as that motel commercial says - been everywhere, man. But he's spending this weekend in Baltimore, and it's a place as close to his heart as anywhere, thanks to two Maryland families that have touched him deeply in his professional and personal life. Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports and Olympics, who is in town to serve as executive producer for tomorrow night's Ravens-Washington Redskins telecast, said: "Baltimore has been the source of the high and low end of my emotions this year."

DENVER - A charter jet crashed on takeoff yesterday morning from a small southwest Colorado airport, killing at least two people and injuring NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol, his son Charles and an unidentified passenger. The pilot and co-pilot were killed. Another Ebersol son, Teddy, 14, was missing. Police used helicopters to search for him late last night. The seat he had occupied also had not been found. The CL-601 Challenger aircraft crashed at Montrose Regional Airport, just outside the ski resort of Telluride in southwest Colorado.

Last year, 8.8 million viewers saw NBC's coverage of the Preakness. That's the kind of big-tent mass audience that makes the race one of Baltimore's showcase events. And that doesn't count the hundreds of thousands who will watch pre- and post-race coverage on the NBC Sports Network cable channel. But how Baltimore is seen by all those eyeballs largely depends on how NBC Sports chooses to cover the race and related events starting Saturday at 2:30 p.m on NBC Sports Network. NBC's network coverage of the race starts at 4:30 p.m. and runs until 6:30 p.m., with a closing half hour from 6:30 to 7 on NBC Sports Network.

NBC Sports says it had 170 employees in Baltimore this week to cover the Preakness, and from the looks of the TV package it presented, all of them earned their keep. NBC's network coverage started at 4:30 p.m., and it hardly ever sagged for more than a minute or two right up until the start of the race some two hours later. And that's no mean feat given that the horse racing world is essentially on hold until the start of the race on the day of a Triple Crown event. What I am saying is that once you show the infield crowd dancing to Maroon 5, overhead shots of the Inner Harbor and Pimlico, ground level shots of the grandstand, women in hats, tables full of crab cakes, Black-eyed Susans all in a row, and the horses in their stalls, what do you do for the other hour and 50 minutes?

A report in the New York Daily News says Bill Walsh will not return to NBC's NFL broadcast booth next season.Whether Walsh, whose two-year deal with NBC Sports expires at the end of this season, is offered a new coaching gig or a new deal, it won't matter."

Former Pittsburgh Steelers receiver and longtime Ravens nemesis Hines Ward has a new job as analyst for NBC's "Football Night in America. " But he's still feeling the old "hate" when he comes to Baltimore. Ward, who will be working in Baltimore tonight during the prime-time matchup between the Ravens and New England Patriots, posted this little chronicle on the "hate" he received on his journey to Baltimore for the game. Judging for all the parenthetical "haha's," I'm guessing there's some tongue in cheek from Ward here, but he was a much better receiver than he is a writer, so I am not so sure.

NBC Sports wasted no time re-establishing "Sunday Night Football" as the top-rated show in prime time with a season opener that set a viewing record. Sunday's game between the Denver Broncos and Pittsburgh Steelers, which saw the return of Peyton Manning after neck surgery, was the highest rated Sunday game ever on the most-watched football show in the nation. An audience of 27.57 million watched Sunday as Manning's Broncos beat the Steelers. Baltimore was the 10th highest-rated city for the game, and every one of the viewers enjoyed every second of seeing the Steelers lose (OK, I made up the last part of that sentence following the comma.

UPDATES WITH REPLAY DATES -- Talk about a TV series being on the news, Thursday's night's edition of "Caught Looking" takes viewers inside last weekend's series between the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees just as the two teams reconvene for an epic showdown in Baltimore. This week's installment will premiere at 9 p.m. Thursday with replays throughout the week. The 10-minute clip I saw made me want more, more, more. Here's the release form the NBC Sports Network cable channel: With the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees currently tied for first place in the American League East, this week's Caught Looking (Thursday night at 9 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network)

Maybe the best way to cut through all the spin and counterspin on the Olympics is this: Last week, NBC was saying it would lose money on the Olympics. Yesterday, it said it might break even. Today, the network is saying it could turn a profit on the $1.18 billion investment. "Yeah, we think there's a small chance, a chance we could make a little bit of money over the next couple of weeks," Mark Lazarus, chairman of the NBC Sports Group, said in a conference call from London Thursday when asked if the network might turn a profit on the games.

Driven by gold for Michael Phelps and the women gymnastics team, NBC's prime-time coverage of the Summer Olympics Tuesday hit a new high in overnight ratings topping those earned by the record-setting opening ceremonies. And maybe it's me, but the complaints in social media didn't seem quite as loud yesterday. Or, maybe they were just drowned out by Phelps becoming the most decorated athlete in Olympics history. I know I saw both Phelps events and some of the women gymnastics on live stream in real time Tuesday afternoon, but still wound up watching the tape-delay version through prime time.

UPDATES WITH RESPONSE FROM NETWORK SPOKESMAN: NBC said Monday that the problems experienced over the weekend with its Olympics live stream had been worked out. Not exactly. But after a morning of signing in and getting bounced offline repeatedly, and then spending long stretches looking at freeze frames instead of action while the little wheel on the screen went round and round in the afternoon, I have to admit I saw both of Phelps' races in real time Tuesday -- sort of. I didn't actually see him touch the wall at the end of 4X200 freestyle relay where the American men took the gold and made Phelps the most decorated Olympian in history.

No one at NBC Sports can ever say it puts viewer interests ahead of its own business interests. On "NFL Live," both Saturday and Sunday, the network failed to report the biggest NFL story in years -- Fox's outbidding CBS for the league's NFC TV package.For the record, NBC Sports spokesman Ed Markey said the decision not to report the Commentarydeal had everything to do with the fact the network was still in negotiations with the league for the AFC package.This reasoning is mind-boggling. CBS went with the story on its evening newscast Friday when Dan Rather reported the Fox bid. On Saturday, Greg Gumbel also reported the story.

Even without I'll Have Another going for the last leg of the Triple Crown, the Belmont Stakes did OK in the ratings for NBC, drawing an overnight audience 13 percent larger than last year's and 74 percent above 2010. Saturday's telecast drew a 5.4 rating and 13 share (rating is percentage of TV households in U.S., while share is the percentage in use). The actual number of viewers nationally will not be available until Tuesday, according to NBC Sports. Here are the overnights for the last six years, and the TOP 10 markets for Saturday's race, as provided by NBC Sports.

The complaints about NBC not showing marquee events like swimming have not abated, but the network is claiming another night of record viewing Sunday night, based on preliminary overnights. Meanwhile WBAL, the network's Baltimore affiliate, is boasting of its Friday night audience for the opening ceremonies. The Hearst-owned station has been treating tape-delayed events as "spoilers," reporting on them only as a graphic flashed on the screen during the sports portion of its early evening newscasts -- and warning viewers to look away if they don't want to know.

With three nights of record ratings, NBC's coverage of the London Summer Olympics is winning on the prime-time TV front. But it looks to be losing in major ways in the world of social media, as a rising tide of complaints about the network's policy of tape-delaying major events - such as those involving Michael Phelps - appear on Twitter, accompanied by such hashtags as #nbcfail and #nbcdelayed. The disconnect between NBC's success on TV and failure in social media highlights not only the landmark transformation taking place in media these days, but also the radical change in audience expectations and behavior, analysts say. Like many media companies, NBC has tried to lure viewers to its digital platforms with promises of providing information 24/7, whenever the consumer wants it. But now, the network is feeling the heat in social media for not feeding the very on-demand appetite it helped create “This kind of reaction to tape delay in Olympics coverage has always been there.