Joel Bulkley
The Local Reporter of Chapel Hill did it again. Last month the online paper had a report on a Chapel Hill Town Council meeting that never was. The story was based on pre-meeting city budget revenue and tax information provided by the town staff as discussion points for the board’s retreat, but winter weather arrived and the meeting was canceled. The story was later pulled from the website with no explanation. Triangleblogblog.com has the story.
The paper is seldom a good source of information on anything that’s even slightly complicated like the future of the Smith Center or the elimination of town advisory boards.
Sports radio news. Clinton Yates & Friends is the replacement for Greeny (Mike Greenberg) weekdays 10 a.m. to 12 noon on ESPN Radio (99.9 FM The Fan). He’s based in LA and has a different set of guests from traditional ESPN shows. Tim Donnelly, the afternoon host on 99.9, is on maternity leave after his second child. The fill-ins are his producers and co-hosts.
The first edition of the North Carolina-Duke rivalry was unusually one sided and less of a TV draw, according to SportsMediaWatch. The Feb. 1 game averaged 2.29M viewers on ESPN, the fewest in three years, but still the second-largest audience of the college basketball season. Illinois-Arkansas averaged 5.1M on CBS Thanksgiving Day. The numbers declined 28 percent from the first meeting last year (3.2M). ESPN exercised its options to continue broadcasting ACC sports through 2036.
According to ESPN PR on X, the Duke/Clemson game Feb. 8 drew 2.1 million viewers on average and it topped out at 2.8 million. I assume Auburn/Alabama Feb. 15 had big numbers as well.
Speaking of ESPN, I wish they’d allocate more than 2 hours for college hoops games so I can see the start of 2, 4, 6 or 8 p.m. games without having to change stations when the earlier games are late and run over.
The NFL did what it usually does, posted dominating TV numbers for the playoffs and Super Bowl.
Credit to Chris Sptola of ESPN for his candor about the decline of ACC hoops. To illustrate he mentioned on the radio talent deficient teams at the bottom of the league, negative recruiting by rival conferences, lack of comparable money as likely causes for the problem.
Duke (third) was the only men’s ACC team in the first NCAA top 16 poll.
April 7 could be a big news day if the NCAA/NIL settlement is confirmed in court. It likely will lead to dramatic reductions to D-1 sports rosters. Preliminary numbers show baseball rosters could have a max of 34 players, down from 41, men and women soccer could have 28, football 105, down 12, men basketball from 16 to 15, men lax 48 from 52, men golf 9 from 10, swimming would be capped at 22.
