NBC Sports Group Announced College Hockey TV Schedule; UMD Involved

The college hockey television landscape has grown. As previously reported, rumored, and discussed, NBC Sports Group is adding a package of college hockey broadcasts on what is now known as Versus.

That channel will become NBC Sports Network Jan. 2, the day of the NHL Winter Classic. Three days prior, on New Year's Eve, it will broadcast its first-ever college hockey game. That game, between host Notre Dame and Boston University, is the first of 16 scheduled games on the channel this season.

The press release from Versus/NBC Sports Group appears below.

The NBC Sports Group will air 16 live college hockey games this season on NBC Sports Network, including four from the Hockey East Tournament (one Quarterfinal, both Semifinals and the Final). This season’s schedule, which marks the first time that the NBC Sports Group will air college hockey games, was developed through partnerships with numerous collegiate hockey associations and universities.

The coverage begins on VERSUS, which will be rebranded as the NBC Sports Network on Jan. 2, on Saturday, December 31, when No. 4 Notre Dame hosts No. 12 Boston University at 7 p.m. ET. The remainder of this season’s schedule, which includes a game each Friday in primetime starting in January, will be seen on NBC Sports Network. The schedule culminates with live coverage of the Hockey East Tournament with a Quarterfinal game on March 9, as well as both Semifinals and the Final on March 16 and 17, 2012, respectively, from TD Garden in Boston, Mass.

“We are excited to be launching our first-ever college hockey package by building a destination on Friday nights on the NBC Sports Network with many of the preeminent brands in the sport,” said Jon Miller, President of Programming for NBC Sports Group.

Additional regular-season highlights include No. 4 Notre Dame hosting No. 3 Michigan on Jan. 20; No. 9 Yale facing Harvard on Jan. 27; and a Feb. 10 doubleheader featuring No. 1 Boston College traveling to Vermont and No. 8 Denver hosting No. 5 Minnesota.

The college hockey telecasts will be produced by the same Emmy Award-winning team that oversees all of the NHL games for the NBC Sports Group, led by Sam Flood, Executive Producer for NBC Sports and VERSUS.

The NBC Sports Group also recently announced a multi-year deal with Notre Dame to have their home games televised on the NBC Sports Network beginning with the 2013-14 season, when the school joins Hockey East.

NBC Sports Network’s College Hockey Schedule (all times ET, subject to change):

DATE GAME TIME

Saturday, Dec. 31 #12 Boston University at #4 Notre Dame 7:00 p.m. (VERSUS)
Jan. 6 Dartmouth at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 7:30 p.m.
Jan. 13 #14 Minnesota-Duluth at Nebraska-Omaha 7:30 p.m.
Jan. 20 #3 Michigan at #4 Notre Dame 7:30 p.m.
Jan. 27 #9 Yale at Harvard 7:30 p.m.
Feb. 3 Cornell at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 7:30 p.m.
Feb. 10 #1 Boston College at Vermont 7:30 p.m.
Feb. 10 #5 Minnesota at #8 Denver 10:00 p.m.
Feb. 17 Dartmouth at #9 Yale 7:30 p.m.
Feb. 24 #12 Boston University at Vermont 7:30 p.m.
Feb. 24 #15 North Dakota at #8 Denver 10:00 p.m.
March 2 #8 Denver at Nebraska-Omaha 7:30 p.m.

Hockey East Tournament
March 9 Quarterfinals 7:30 p.m.
March 16 Semifinals 5:00 p.m. and 8 p.m.
March 17 Finals 8:00 p.m.

All rankings based off USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine 2011-12 Men’s College Hockey Poll #5 (October 31, 2011).

Of note here ...

Sam Flood, who does a wonderful job on NBC's NHL broadcasts and took over the Versus games last year when Comcast and NBC finalized their merger, is overseeing these broadcasts. This will not be small-time, public-access caliber television. This is one of the best groups you'll find in North America, and they're going to do a good job on these games.

Unlike in 2013-14, when they start doing Notre Dame home games, they are all over the map here. It's a Denver-heavy schedule when it comes to the WCHA, but UMD makes an appearance Jan. 13 at Nebraska-Omaha, and it's nice to see them doing games out of places like Houston Fieldhouse (RPI), Ingalls Rink (Yale), and Gutterson Fieldhouse (Vermont).

With the addition of this NBC Sports Network game, UMD has three road games televised this season for satellite users, with two of them on national TV. Friday's game at Denver will be on Root Sports Rocky Mountain (fed to My9 for those in Duluth who don't have satellite). The Friday night game at Wisconsin (Dec. 9) will be on Big Ten Network, too. In addition, the Feb. 10 home game with North Dakota will be on CBS Sports Network.

Let's Just Use the Homeless to Get Ratings, Instead of Actually Helping Them

You probably all know me well enough by now. If there is going to be a non-sports rant on this blog, there's a pretty good chance it will spawn off a Daily Show or Colbert Report bit.

Jon Stewart, take it away.

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Words cannot describe this.

I mean, what kind of news director decides to do a story like this? Why?

Frankly, it's something I'd expect to see in a small market, where a news director and reporter at least have the excuse of "I'm trying to make a name for myself in a tough business."

This is freaking Indianapolis. Not a small market in any way.

It's every bit as exploitative and stupid as you think it is. Not only that, but it manages to confirm most stereotypes you hear about today's news media.

Yeah, we have freedom of the press in this country. That doesn't mean the press has a right to do stories like this, instead of chasing real news that actually matters to people.

NFL Network Nabs CFL Games

For the last few years, games from the Canadian Football League have aired on a mish-mash of American channels. Regional sports networks like MSG and Altitude have aired games, both live and on tape delay.

No more.

Wednesday, it was announced that the NFL Network has agreed to a deal that will put 14 games on nationally during the CFL season.

Here is the release from the NFL:

The Canadian Football League and NFL have agreed to a new telecast deal for 2010, it was announced Wednesday. NFL Network will broadcast 14 regular-season CFL games, starting with the season opener Thursday, July 1 at 7 p.m. ET, featuring the Montreal Alouettes and Saskatchewan Roughriders in a rematch of last year's Grey Cup championship game.

"This is great news for CFL fans living in the United States, a group that includes some of our most passionate and dedicated fans," said Rob Assimakopoulos, the CFL's senior vice president for marketing and commercial assets. "And it promises to expose our brand of football to a broad, new audience."

NFL Network adds the fast-paced, wide-open CFL football action that features familiar names from U.S. college football.

"We continue to acquire more games for our fans and look forward to CFL action kicking off on Thursday with a rematch of the Grey Cup," said Charles Coplin, vice president of programming, NFL Network. "With the addition of the CFL, we now have live games from every level to deliver to our viewers who want football 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year."

The 14-game CFL schedule on NFL Network in high definition features three games on Saturday nights in July following the Thursday night debut on Canada Day. Due to NFL Network's commitment to air every NFL preseason game in August, CFL action resumes on Friday nights in September, October and November.

The games will be produced by TSN, the leading sports broadcaster in Canada. NFL Network subscribers in Canada will get alternative programming due to TSN's exclusivity. NFL Network's programming includes live NFL regular-season Thursday Night Football games, Arena Football Friday AFL games, college and high school all-star games, and now the CFL.

Canadian football has a history spanning more than a century, and its championship game, the Grey Cup, is annually one of the most-watched television events north of the border. Home to eight teams, all in Canadian cities, the league features three downs instead of four, 12 men per side instead of 11, unlimited motion before the snap of the ball, and a playing field that is 65 yards wide and 110 yards long, with end zones 20 yards deep.

Some of its most recognizable alumni include former NFL quarterbacks Warren Moon, Doug Flutie, Joe Theismann, and Joe Kapp, and legendary coach Bud Grant. Moon and Grant are members of both the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

2010 CFL schedule on NFL Network

Thursday, July 1: Montreal at Saskatchewan, 7 p.m. ET
Saturday, July 10: Calgary at Hamilton, 1 p.m. ET
Saturday, July 17: Edmonton at Saskatchewan, 4 p.m. ET
Saturday, July 24: Edmonton at Winnipeg, 6 p.m. ET
Saturday, July 31: Hamilton at Saskatchewan, 6 p.m. ET
Friday, Sept. 10: Calgary at Edmonton, 9 p.m. ET
Friday, Sept. 17: Calgary at Saskatchewan, 9 p.m. ET
Friday, Sept. 24: Montreal at Winnipeg, 8 p.m. ET
Friday, Oct. 1: Montreal at Calgary, 9:00 p.m. ET
Friday, Oct. 8: Edmonton at Hamilton, 7:30 p.m. ET
Friday, Oct. 15: Hamilton at Toronto, 7:30 p.m. ET
Friday, Oct. 22: Montreal at Hamilton, 7:00 p.m. ET
Friday, Oct. 29: Montreal at Toronto, 7:00 p.m. ET
Friday, Nov. 5: Calgary at Winnipeg, 8:00 p.m. ET

As a football fan, I view this as good news. The CFL features some good athletes, players who weren't quite good enough to make it in the NFL, and players who could argue they were overlooked for a real shot at the NFL. The different rules and field dimensions add a little bit to the game, and TSN does a good job with the broadcasts.

It's a great opportunity for the CFL to get some exposure with the truly hardcore football fans. Their games were hard to find in the United States for many years, so having a consistent and reliable home like NFL Network could serve as a shot in the arm for stateside interest in the league.

If you're a fan of the BC Lions, sorry. For some reason, they're the only team in the league who won't appear on NFL Network. People hoping to follow former TCU quarterback Casey Printers are going to be mad.

Doesn't Get Much Better Than This

Couch potatoes, unite!

The next three days are as good as it gets if you're one of those lucky enough to do most of their work from home.

The Minnesota State Boy's Hockey Tournament starts Wednesday at 11 A.M., as Mahtomedi battles Alexandria, followed by Hermantown against Virginia.

If hockey's not your thing, the big boy college basketball conference tournaments are rolling, as the Big East Tournament started Tuesday and really kicks in gear Wednesday (the top seeds don't play until Thursday, but there will at least be ranked teams on the floor on Day 2), and tournament play begins in leagues like the Big 12, Pac 10, and Conference USA (Big Ten and ACC Tournaments start Thursday).

It's wall-to-wall winter sports on television through the end of the week. Awesome stuff. Sit back and enjoy.

If that's not enough, I'm co-hosting the Fleisch and Meyers Show on The Fan 1490 Wednesday and Thursday. I have to admit that it's been a bit strange doing show prep for the first time in nearly a year and a half. It's not the same as preparing for hockey games.

Bryant Gumbel Names Names

I don't get HBO. The only exposure I get to it is during free preview week on DirecTV, and whenever I stay in a hotel that offers it to guests.

Usually, when these things happen, I'm quickly reminded of why I am not even tempted to pay for it on a regular basis.

One of the crown jewels of the network is Bryant Gumbel's series Real Sports. They tackle some generally important topics on that program, and they do it with highly-respected journalists who rarely get caught running out of bounds in their stories. Gumbel does a commentary at the end of each show, and even that is usually well-reasoned and articulate.

However, no one is perfect.

Tuesday night's show ended, predictably, with some thoughts from Gumbel on Mark McGwire's steroids admission from last week. I don't think it's surprising that people are still laying into McGwire. They should be, because it shouldn't take a decade for someone to admit something they did wrong and then act all sorry about it.

You might remember that McGwire issued a brief statement, then took to MLB Network for an hour-long chat with Bob Costas, who used to host an HBO show himself. McGwire did some other interviews, with the well-stated but unrealistic goal of putting the issue to bed before spring training.

If he really wanted to do that, he would have admitted to using steroids in front of Congress, or at any point before he was hired as the Cardinals' new hitting coach.

Anyway, Gumbel used the scorched-earth philosophy of commenting. He named names, left no stone unturned, and may have ruffled a few feathers.

"Finally tonight, an open letter to baseball's usual suspects. Dear Barry, Roger, Sammy and Rafael, I'm writing in hopes you saw Mark McGwire's phony non-apology last week and learned from it. I'm assuming that you, like most people not named Tony LaRussa, got a good laugh out of Mark's crocodile tears and his self-serving claims about truth, guilt and the pharmaceutical way.

"So on behalf of all fans, do us a favor. If and when you're ready to come clean, don't insult us with talk of how much of what you did was God-given and how much was chemically induced. Let us figure that out, OK? And don't play us for idiots. Spare us the lies about talking 'roids for health reasons. We're all grown-ups. You took stuff for the same reason most of us break or bend rules. You thought you could get away with it. And you did.

"You did because commissioner Bud Selig, being Bud, was, of course, asleep at the switch when you suddenly grew Shrek-like necks and bloated biceps. But even Bud's selling absolution these days. He's cheering any and all mea culpas, even half-assed ones. If you don't believe me, just ask A-Rod, Manny, Papi, Jason and the others who've come forward because they had to. There may be no crying in baseball, but there is forgiveness, maybe even enough to get you to Cooperstown.

"In closing, guys, please feel free to share this letter with Bagwell, Nomar, Pudge and all those others who went from hitting homers to power outages overnight. Tell 'em fans are ready to accept what happened. Tell 'em we're ready to move on. Tell 'em that most of us get it...even if they, like you, still don't."

Emphasis mine. I still haven't seen video of the commentary, so I have no clue how it was actually delivered on the show.

I'm all for naming names. If we had taken to this practice from the start, we wouldn't be in this mess right now. And I don't think there's anything remotely wrong with reminding people of names that have been named in the past.

(Especially guys like Ortiz, who continue to deny using PEDs as if drug tests routinely fail miserably and lead to false positives and wrongly ruined reputations.)

However, we should stick to naming names who can be fairly connected to the Steroid Era. While Jeff Bagwell admitted to using andro during his playing career, there is no known connection between Bagwell and drugs that were actually against the rules in baseball.

I can find no actual connection between Pudge Rodriguez, Nomar Garciaparra, and drugs. Yes, Nomar's career was derailed by injuries, and many have assumed that he used, but we have nothing but circumstantial evidence. Same for Pudge, who is still playing.

The reality is that Gumbel's commentary likely does more harm than good. He turns people who may have done nothing wrong on the defensive. Not only that, but he gets away with something we wanted to hang a blogger for doing: speculating.

That Gumbel has been a journalist and worked in media for decades doesn't make it okay. In fact, it makes it more wrong.

FSN Blows Away 'High School Hockey Night' Schedule

A few years back, Fox Sports North started up a pretty cool program called High School Hockey Night. It was a chance for the network to show local teams and highlight the tradition of the sport in Minnesota.

The broadcasts were generally well-done, and fans seemed to enjoy them.

Unfortunately, it appears advertisers didn't feel the same way. The network announced recently that it is dropping all but a few games from the original broadcast schedule.

“It’s totally financially related from a business standpoint," Mike Dimond, FSN's senior vice president and general manger, said today. "[Ad revenue] wasn’t coming in to the degree that we needed it to. The simplest way to put it is that we’re not a non-profit business, and ultimately I have a responsibility to the bottom line of the company. This time, it just wasn’t making it. The revenues didn’t offset the costs.”

This is bad news for hockey fans around the state, as the work FSN did helped expose people not only to great players, but also great rivalries (the team made the trip to Warroad for a Warroad-Roseau game, and they've also done great rivalries like White Bear Lake/Hill-Murray, Cloquet/Duluth East, and Hermantown/Duluth Marshall).

While it's easy to understand FSN's sentiments, it's odd that they would go through with announcing an ambitious broadcast schedule when they didn't have the revenues coming in to cover the costs of the schedule.

Doing things that way would allow FSN to keep the egg off their face.

That said, I don't think anyone in their right mind would seriously ask FSN to keep doing games if they're losing gobs of money off the deal.

The network will still broadcast Hockey Day Minnesota, which is Jan. 23 and will mainly take place in Hermantown, where there are three high school games scheduled to be played outside.

Gary Thorne Back in Hockey

The last time veteran broadcaster Gary Thorne had the chance to call a hockey game, he had a pretty good one unfold in front of him.



That was the 2009 Frozen Four title game, a great comeback win in overtime for Boston University, and Thorne absolutely nailed it.

The problem with Thorne is that he works for ESPN. No, this isn't some kind of anti-ESPN diatribe. However, the Frozen Four is really the only hockey ESPN has coverage of. Makes it hard for Thorne to work in the sport he's best at.

Until this year.

Thorne has signed on to broadcast Team USA's games at the 2010 IIHF World Junior Championships for NHL Network.

From the press release:

A holiday-season tradition will return to the NHL Network-U.S. for the third-straight season, as once again the network will broadcast all of Team USA's games at the 2010 World Junior Championship.

Gary Thorne, Dave Starman and Fred Pletsch will be the broadcast team for the tournament, which runs Dec. 26-Jan. 5 in Saskatoon and Regina, Sask.

Good deal for hockey fans. Matt McConnell did a good job on this last year, but he's now the full-time TV voice of the Atlanta Thrashers. Thorne here is a no-brainer choice. Few can call a hockey game with his acumen or enthusiasm. He's the only one on the planet close to Mike Emrick's league at this point.

Shepard Smith Tells the Truth on Steve McNair's Shooting Death

I've been around more than a few television news reporters in my day. Some of them are really good in the field, able to ad-lib under the most intense circumstances.

Others, however, are less blessed. They need the good ol' teleprompter in order to make everything work. Without it, they have issues functioning, much less delivering a competent news report.

A good example of teleprompter overreliance was found on Fox News Channel Tuesday afternoon. Popular anchor Shepard Smith was giving his audience the latest information on the Steve McNair murder, and the prompter -- a machine that scrolls the anchor's script so s/he can read it without looking down at the paper copy -- started acting up.

As Smith tried to ad-lib, we learned a very important fact about McNair's case.



You could take this as a rip on whoever decided to put the story on the air. After all, there's no relevance to it when McNair wasn't doing anything illegal. Who the hell cares how drunk he was when he was shot?

Then again, if McNair had been awake and aware, maybe none of this would have happened.

Michael Jackson Will Only Die Once

A shocking assertion from an MSNBC reporter as news broke of Michael Jackson's death last week.

SHOCKING!

Saw this bit on The Daily Show Tuesday night, as Jon Stewart awesomely made fun of the media for being the media.

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In case you think that was somehow doctored, here you go.



Obviously, there are tabloids that fundamentally disagree with this notion, and they'll prove that in the future. It shouldn't be too long before some random publication accuses Jackson of faking his own death.

We must be horribly short on people who are willing to take jobs working as television reporters. It's the only way to explain the sometimes self-serving and more often completely incompetent nature of today's reporters.

VERSUS SETS RATINGS RECORD

This one is all about numbers.

Good news for the NHL and its cable television partner, Versus.

Even though the network continues to find ways to piss off hockey fans who are generally just happy to have the game on in HD, ratings records are falling. We're far from saying the NHL can be satisfied with its television audience, but we're moving the needle in the right direction.

Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals, aired by Versus, allowed the network to blow away a days-old record for the most-watched hockey game on their air.

VERSUS, the exclusive cable television home of the National Hockey League (NHL), garnered a 2.6 national HH rating and averaged 2,955,348 viewers for its Game 3 telecast of the 2009 Stanley Cup Final on Tuesday, June 2, with the Pittsburgh Penguins’ 4-2 defeat over the Detroit Red Wings at Mellon Arena. The game, which peaked at a 3.5 HH rating between 10:15 and 10:30 p.m., was the highest-rated and most-watched Stanley Cup Final game on cable since 2002. VERSUS, for the 8:00-10:45 p.m. time period, was the most-viewed cable network in the country and the top-rated network overall (broadcast and cable) among all key male demos.

The 2.6 national HH rating is the best rating ever in the history of the network, beating both Lance Armstrong's final ride (7/24/05) and Game 5 between the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks in the Conference Finals (5/27/09) which both earned a 2.1 HH rating. Among average viewers, the Game 3 telecast topped the network's previous high set during Game 2 of the 2008 Stanley Cup Final (2,608,371). VERSUS' Game 3 telecast showed a 37-percent increase in HH rating (2.6 vs 1.9) and 19-percent growth (2,955,348 vs 2,479,977) in average viewership over the average of Games 1 and 2 of the 2008 Stanley Cup Final between the Red Wings and Penguins.

Locally, VERSUS garnered a 15.1 HH rating in Detroit and a 26.1 HH rating in Pittsburgh, making VERSUS the top-rated network (broadcast and cable) for the time period in both markets. VERSUS was also a top 5 cable network for the time period in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Washington, DC and Philadelphia, among others.

VERSUS entered the 2009 Stanley Cup Final with tremendous momentum based on ratings and viewership gains in the regular season and through each round of the playoffs. The network's coverage of the 2009 Conference Final round was the highest-rated third round on cable since 1998 with HH ratings up 25 percent and average viewership up 30 percent from 2008. The third-round growth came on the heels of VERSUS airing the highest-rated Conference Semifinals on cable since 1997 and seeing 32-percent viewership growth in that round, 22-percent viewership growth in the Conference Quarterfinals and a 21-percent increase in viewership during the regular season.

This only represents mild progress. NBC's numbers for the first two games were pretty good, and now the league is guaranteed at least one more game on NBC.

The bottom line is that David Stern and Bud Selig still cackle at the NHL's television audience. It's still not a serious threat to them in any way. However, the NHL has gone from being fairly compared to MLS to a spot where they don't have to hide from their ratings any longer. There's still a ton of room for improvement, but the news has been pretty much all good so far in the 2009 playoffs, with the trend continuing in the Finals.

(By the way, about the link near the top of the post. Versus tried to take advantage of their much-larger-than-normal audience by airing a special episode of "Sports Soup" after the end of the game and before the postgame show. During that 30-minute gap, incensed hockey fans either shut off their TVs, turned on ESPNEWS, or found the NHL Network if they have it. I understand the desire to showcase an original show, no matter how crappy it is -- and "Sports Soup" is crap. But all Versus did was invite people to find postgame coverage elsewhere. Had the game ended at 9pm Eastern, I would have been fine with the move. By 10:30pm, however, people were not going to willingly wait a half hour for postgame coverage. After all, most people have jobs, including the idiots who run Versus.)

THE BRILLIANCE OF COLBERT AND STEWART

Not nearly enough time is spent in this house watching Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart blow apart the "news".

The Comedy Central veterans each host a half-hour show on weeknights, and the idea (in part) is to pretty much make all the other news outlets look stupid.

With the swine flu OMG WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE epidemic in the news, both of them had a field day. We'll start with Colbert.

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Now, on to Stewart.

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I'm not here to trivialize sickness or death, but as the Stewart clip points out, we're going a little bit too far here.

Yes, educating the public is important, but non-stop coverage of this thing is not. We were also supposed to get ourselves or a bunch of animals wiped out by SARS, chronic wasting disease, mad cow disease, and bird flu.

We're. Still. Here.

By all means, cancel your trip to Mexico. Go somewhere else for vacation. If you come back, go ahead and lock yourself in the house for a month so you don't give swine flu to anyone but the mailman.

Just leave me out of it, okay.

JON STEWART PANTSES JIM CRAMER

Oh, not really.

This particular video is not of the sports realm. Instead, it shows why the news media is so frowned-upon in this country.

After all, it takes a satirical program to do what a real news program should have been doing all along. Too bad that Jessica Simpson's "sudden weight gain" was more important.

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WHY GOVERNMENT IS USELESS, NO MATTER WHO IS PRESIDENT

WARNING - Non-sports post ahead

Sorry. This one is the fault of our current President. I voted for him, and I think he'll do an admirable job.

However, this is entirely stupid.

Michael J. Copps, the acting chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said in a statement that the additional four months of (digital TV) transition time would afford “urgently needed time for a more phased transition.”

Broadcasters were scheduled to end analog broadcasts on Feb. 17.

To me, this is an admission that the government wasted $1 billion on an information blitz for the DTV switch. If one person who uses their television more than once a day is not ready for the changeover now, four months isn't going to help any. Not one bit. Those stupid people will be equally not ready then.

So what's the point?

“Yes, it would be great if everyone had received their coupons, and if everybody understood the transition to digital, but they don’t,” Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, said Wednesday during the House’s debate. She said that some people, senior citizens in particular, were going to be “terribly inconvenienced.”

Some House Republicans had opposed a delay, saying that it would only increase confusion about the impending transition. “No matter what date you establish, there’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t get the message,” Representative Cliff Stearns, a Republican from Florida, said during the House debate.

THANK YOU, MR. STEARNS.

Listen. I've got plenty of respect for the fact that there are a lot of people who don't understand what this is all about. I also understand that I watch enough TV that I've had the message beaten over my head, and I have no choice but to understand it by now.

But with all the annoucements running during all hours of the day, how could someone not understand what's going on? At the very least, how could people not make the call to a toll-free number and get some answers to their questions?

We've had a long time to prepare for this changeover. The Obama administration may think they mean well, but all they are going to do is add confusion ... especially when you look at the fact some stations have already made the change. Others plan to make it as scheduled on February 17/18. Once they get FCC approval, a station can make the change before June 12.

How is that not going to be confusing?

Thanks, government. Way to drop the ball. Again.

FAREWELL, TIM RUSSERT

"Big Russ and Me" and "Wisdom Of Our Fathers" were brilliant. His work on "Meet the Press" was influential, even for those not involved in politics.

While his background was in politics, the Buffalo Bills would be remiss not to pay a tribute to Tim Russert this fall. They didn't have a bigger fan anywhere. Russert was famous for chatting guests up about his beloved Bills and Sabres, and he was also insistent on getting home after "Meet the Press" tapings, so he wouldn't miss kickoff of the Bills games.

I was struck by the statement from Senator John McCain, who will officially become the Republican nominee for President in a couple months.

"I am very saddened by Tim Russert's sudden death. Cindy and I extend our thoughts and prayers to the Russert family as they cope with this shocking loss and remember the life and legacy of a loving father, husband and the preeminent political journalist of his generation. He was truly a great American who loved his family, his friends, his Buffalo Bills, and everything about politics and America. He was just a terrific guy. I was proud to call him a friend, and in the coming days, we will pay tribute to a life whose contributions to us all will long endure."

I'm not a political expert, and I'm not a media expert. I'm simply in the media. However, I find it hard to believe that you are going to find anyone in this or any other business who is more prepared for work than Tim Russert was. From that standpoint, he will always be revered in the media business. You don't manufacture the kind of passion or work ethic he possessed. It's either there, or it isn't.

Farewell, Mr. Russert, and condolences to Big Russ, who loses his son on Father's Day weekend.