Ebersol Announes NBC Rebrand Of Comcast Sportsnet
May 6, 2011 8 Comments
From David Goetzl of Mediapost:
NBC Sports is going local. Comcast plans to place the “NBC Sports” brand on its collection of regional sports networks that stretch from Boston to Portland.
“Something like ‘NBC Sports Philadelphia,’ ‘NBC Sports Chicago,’ etc.,” said Dick Ebersol, the head of NBC Sports.
The move drops the Comcast and now “CSN” brand from the regional networks, where the main programming is local pro sports teams.
An “NBC Sports” channel will launch in Houston next year, giving the brand a presence in six of the country’s top-10 markets. Chicago and Philadelphia are the country’s third and fourth largest.
Puck The Media 
What we are seeing is two diverse brands: Comcast will probably be strictly a cable, TV and internet provider and NBC will be the content provider.
This leaves three big sports providers: Fox, NBC, and ESPN.
Also, it will be cool to see what graphic and score bug changes will be in store for the CSNs and Versus once they change over.
The score bug is probably going to be the one on the NHL on NBC and Sunday Night Football as well. Glad its re branding to show ESPN who they are.
In fact, Comcast has rebranded their cable and internet media as Xfinity. I’d be curious to know, from a business perspective, why exactly they’ve chosen to go this route in which basically all outlets of the Comcast brand have been rebranded.
I doubt ESPN is worried because so far NBC/Vs has little major sports content aside from the NHL. I would suspect NBC to make bids for upcoming deals involving the Big East, MLB and NFL.
Their already are going to be worried. Besides, the NFL and NBA lockouts are coming and ESPN is going to lose some ratings while the NHL on NBC/VERSUS is going to dominate. Yes, ESPN were lucky to get the Pac-12 that I wish NBC/VERSUS should get. Besides, their going to win back the Olympic Rights.
You are right. If there is going to be a lockout that takes some of the NFL season and if there is going to be a extended lockout that is being predicted in the NBA then ESPN will take a hit, but then there will be more NCAA Football and Basketball on. The NHL will get a bigger chunk of the pro sports audience and will only get better for the NHL.
Absolutely agree. The NHL has the most to gain in the sports world if the NFL and NBA both have labour stoppages.
I am not sure that even if the NFL and NBA have a lockout that there will not be any games played.
At the last NFL strike, replacement players were brought in and the games were televised. It seems likely that the NFL/NBA owners would go this route to ensure that they make some revenue during the potential strikes.