Joel Bulkley
“Clinton & Friends” was an ESPN radio weekday morning (10-noon) show, locally on 99 The Fan. It was canceled after about a year by ESPN March 27 without explanation. The show began after host Mike Greenberg retreated from radio to do TV only for the network. Clinton Yates, the host and baseball writer, was based in LA. and filled the Greenberg timeslot. He started with the company in 2016 and was terminated last month.
I enjoyed the show because it had interesting guests—many were baseball connected—and was more candid than most as he chatted with producers and staffers in Bristol, at ESPN HQ. They’re still working to line up a replacement show.
Basketball notes. Vitale and Barkley broadcast a NCAA First Four game together on TNT. They were both well prepared and made it fun. Don’t remember who was playing.
The Tournament had a goodly number of exciting games and finishes. The TV folks, for once, were secondary to the players. But Duke’s collapse to UConn illustrated how invested Grant Hill remains in Duke hoops. His chagrin with the outcome was clear.
The Daily Tar Heel stepped in it with their April Fool’s issue. They did a mea culpa but put this headline “An apology from editors regarding the April 1satire edition” below the fold on the front page in the next issue so it wasn’t easily visible to readers.
The 9th St Journal received the Frank Barrows Award for Excellence in Student Journalism for a series on Durham’s most reliable voters.
The Local Reporter, an online weekly in Chapel Hill, will move to monthly in May. They’ve struggled with quality so don’t know what to expect with a monthly publication, especially if it involves long form stories.
Luke DeCock, former N&O sports columnist (March 2026) now living in Chicago, resurfaced in the Triangle with a kick-the-dog-story on State and UNC basketball coaching changes (“Hubert Davis and Will Wade are just cogs in a money machine”) in The Assembly newsletter.
DOJ opens probe into NFL on TV rights deals, like why it costs a small fortune to watch pro football. I don’t have much faith they’ll do much since they’ve done little recently to protect consumers. But I especially don’t want to subscribe to more streaming services to see games that previously were available for free.
North Carolina’s Attorney General joined in a lawsuit opposing merger of Nexstar and Tegna TV groups on anti-trust grounds.
College hoops had a strong year on TV.
Regular season games had higher ratings. Men’s tournament games averaged 10.9M, up 7 percent and second most watched since 1994. Duke’s Elite 8 game against UConn drew 13.43M viewers.
Here are more viewership numbers:
Final Four games: UConn/Ill., 14.16M; Mich/Ariz 14.29, CBS.
The NCAA Men’s Championship: 18.3M on TBS/TNT/Tru, highest since 2019 championship.
Women’s Championship: 9.9M viewers on ESPN, third most since the 1996 championship.