The NHL will not allow the Red Wings to broadcast tonight's road match on the video screens at Joe Louis Arena as they have done in past years, nor will they allow Penguins fans to watch on the jumbo screens outside Mellon Arena, as they have been doing for most of the sold-out home games. All fans must watch hockey programing from inside their house, sitting in front of a pre-approved television screen on standard, store-bought furniture. Also, beer consumption will be cut off after the first six-pack and you are limited to one bag of Cool Ranch Doritos per period. That is final.

Of all the dumb ideas the NHL has shot itself in the foot with, this one is pretty high on the list. (Right below the glow puck, but above Eric Lindros.) Yes, the 19,000 people that could potentially fill Joe Louis Arena equal one entire rating point in the Detroit market, but how many of them do you think will actually be from Nielsen households? (Newsflash: TV ratings are a statistical joke that have no bearing on reality.) Anyone watching at an arena or a bar will still get to see your ridiculous beer and truck ads ... and most importantly they will still be watching. Wouldn't it mean more to your sport to show a sold out arena of fans watching a game that isn't even taking place in their city then whatever sort of brownie points you earn with the networks and their advertisers? Dumb.

Oh, and I guess there's a hockey game tonight too. The home team has won the first five, so despite the 5-0 trouncing of the Penguins last weekend, it should be a good one.

NBC and NHL: Partners in idiocy [Pittsburgh Post Gazette]
No deal: Wings can't get TV rights for Joe Vision tonight [Detroit Free Press]

ABC will air a brief football-themed Wipeout special opposite NBC’s Super Bowl halftime show featuring Bruce Springsteen, and then come in with a full episode of Wipeout during NBC's showing of The Office right after the Super Bowl. That Wipeout will feature cheerleaders competing against male “couch potato” fans.

The two-part ABC special — dubbed “Wipeout Superball Sunday” — pulls out all the stops to cater to NFL fans: Hall of Famer Michael Irving will lend sideline commentary, the Navy’s Blue Angels will perform a flyover, the USC marching band will storm the course, contestants will run a gantlet with quarterbacks pelting them with footballs, NFL luminaries will stop by the commentary booth, and the show’s signature Big Balls obstacle has been converted into jumbo-sized footballs.

Hopefully these are Live Feed's misspellings; it's hard to believe that the NFL would think that "Michael Irving" would be running the "gantlet."

It's the first time in five years that a network has attempted to seriously compete against Super Bowl programming.

In 2002, NBC enjoyed some of Fox’s big game thunder by airing a special episode of the Endemol-produced “Fear Factor” featuring Playboy Playmates as contestants during halftime. “Fear Factor” siphoned off 11.4 million viewers. The family-friendly “Wipeout” could attract even more.

Of course all of this will pale in comparison to the ratings garnered by next week's Plaxico Burress Christmas Special.

ABC To 'Wipeout' The Super Bowl [The Live Feed]

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As you might expect, hockey fans are aghast — an excellent roundup of outrage can be found here — though those in Buffalo weren't switched, allowing their long-suffering fans to witness the end of their season. It was such an odd decision — previewing a horse race? — that some smell legitimate malfeasance. Regardless ... if you needed any more proof why we don't feel so horrible about not covering the NHL as fiercely as we cover other sports ... this is probably it.

NBC Dumps Out Of Hockey For The Preakness [Off Wing Opinion]
Bettman's Latest Debacle By Design [Out Of Left Field]
NBC Gives Sens' Win The Shaft [James Mirtle]

Williams, of course, is responsible for the music in Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., and a ton of others. And honestly, his latest work for Sunday Night Football isn't much of a departure from that. Here it is:

powered by ODEO

I don't know if it gets me all that psyched for football, but that's definitely the song I want to hear right before I fight Peter King.

ScoreKeeper On John Williams' New NBC Sunday Night Football Theme!! [Ain't It Cool]
NFL Sunday Night Football [NBC]
NBC Orders Weekly Pink Taco [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

Here's the line-up. In the booth, it's Al Michaels and John Madden, whom Bill Brasky used to breastfeed. In the studio, Bob Costas hosts, along with Cris Collinsworth, Jerome Bettis, Peter King, and I think that guy on the left is either Paul Mooney or Sterling Sharpe. Andrea Kremer will roam the sidelines, too. I don't know if we'll be seeing all of these people tonight, but we should be getting some idea of what NBC football will be all about.

I know that a lot of you have reasons to dislike different individuals on NBC's team, but as long as they're a little bit ahead of the work ESPN did on Sunday nights, I'll be happy. And let's be honest, ESPN didn't set that bar all that high. If you can't beat Paul Maguire in the booth and Chris Berman at halftime, you're in serious trouble.

Coverage starts at 8 p.m.

NBC's football season begins tonight [Ohio.com]
NFL Sunday Night Football [SNF on NBC]

The roster is impressive. The studio show, "Football Night In America," is packed, with Bob Costas, Cris Collinsworth, Sterling Sharpe and Jerome Bettis, who is from Detroit. The game crew is the same as last year: Madden and the wascally Al Michaels. Andrea Kramer is the sideline reporter, and if we know anything about this sports media world, we know that position will require her to endure upwards of four million "which athlete/coach/fellow broadcaster is she sleeping with?" rumors in the first two months. (Most of which started by bored print beat guys.)

All in all: A pretty good team, we think. Thoughts?

NBC Sunday Nights Is All Right For Football [Boston Globe]

(UPDATE: Oh, and Peter King's going to be on the show too.)

I don't know where they'll go from here. ABC is mentioned, but there's also the little detail about Arena Football games drawing a less than 1.0 rating in the regular season, and a meager little 0.7 rating for the Arena Bowl. I'm not sure how they managed to get a lower rating for the Arena Bowl than for regular season games, but I never liked how NBC handled Arena Football to begin with. When they were looking for a show to fill the timeslot left open by the end of Friends, the one and only choice should have been Arena Football. Hey, it couldn't have done worse than "Joey."

I'm a little concerned that if they don't find a network home for next season, that you'll all stop caring about Arena Football. I might have to turn to the WNBA to fill my need for sports leagues that are inexplicably on network television.

NBC, Arena Football League End Pact [MediaWeek]

The Washington Post explains today that the ratings NBC is releasing are mostly bullocks. Writer Lisa de Moraes calls it "ratings doping," and it involves — we think, though this Nielsen business is awfully confusing — picking and choosing which half hour segments are reported to the Neilsens. And NBC making their ratings look better than they actually are. Which is rather scary.

We look forward to the day, by the way, that we finally get rid of Neilsens and just chart DVR and Tivo rankings. It'll be much more accurate, though we have a sneaking suspicion you'll start seeing porn in the top 10 programs of the week.

Razzle-Dazzle Inflates The Ratings For Olympics On NBC [Washington Post]

But was it worth $600 million for NBC? Some of the early ratings are suggesting otherwise, with opening ceremonies ratings down 50 percent from Salt Lake City four years ago. It makes sense. We're enjoying the events, but, because of the time difference and because we — like most of America — spend our days in front of a computer, we, at the end of the day, know who actually won each of these events. We're just watching for the pomp. It seems a strange strategy, pinning all this money and prime-time hours on events that have already been decided and the results of which have already been posted for the world to see. And with all the American favorites dropping out early ... well, we'll just see what happens.

It's possible that in a week, NBC will really wish it had Oswald back.

The "Real" Story At Torino [Off Wing Opinion]

As you know, Michaels was released from his ESPN/ABC contract and allowed to move to NBC in part because the latter network agreed to fork over the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a Walt Disney creation from the 1920s (when Disney was forced to sell off Oswald, he just shortened the character's ears and created Mickey Mouse). So why would Disney want Oswald back? Was it simply, as Disney CEO Bob Iger claimed, so that a "beloved character could return home?" If you believe that, we have some swamp property in Adventure Land we'd like to sell you. Here's what really happened, according to Jim Hill Media (found via the Tony Isabella message board):

The story that I've heard from a number of Disney insiders is that it was actually an article that ran on Jerry Beck & Amid Amidi's excellent Cartoon Brew website back in January 2005 that reportedly put Oswald the Lucky Rabbit on Iger's radar. You see, Jerry & Amid had just done a story about how Oswald merchandise was (for some inexplicable reason) suddenly selling like hotcakes in Japan. And Bob — while doing his standard every morning routine of trolling-around-the-Internet-while-strolling-on-his-treadmill — [saw it and] allegedly just filed this factoid away.

Iger, say the insiders, started making inquiries about Oswald and found that whoever owned the licensing rights would be sitting on a potential gold mine. After discovering that Universal still owned the rights, Iger just kicked back and waited for the right moment to strike — which happened as soon as ESPN/ABC/Disney had something that NBC/Universal wanted: Michaels. More from Jim Hill Media:

As for Oswald's first gig as a newly reacquired Disney character ... Well, this lucky rabbit is about to go hi-tech. Given that Oswald-related merchandise is still very popular in Japan, Disney's reportedly looking into creating some brand-new animation of this classic cartoon character as he appeared back in the 1920s. So that this lucky rabbit can then make appearances on cellular phones and/or on other handheld devices.

You see, this is why some people make the big bucks. From now on whenever we see Al Michaels, we'll remember the day that NBC got outsmarted by a cartoon bunny.

A Special "Lucky Rabbit" Edition Of Why For [Jim Hill Media]

No, seriously. As pointed out by Dave's Sports Views, the rights to have Michaels broadcast for NBC next year were given to NBC in exchange for:

• Rights to broadcast Friday coverage of the next four Ryder Cups.
• "Increased usage of Olympic highlights."
• The rights to cartoon character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who appeared in silent Disney cartoons back in the late 1920s.

No, we're not kidding; this was an actual requirement of the deal. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, according to Wikipedia, Oswald was an original prototype for Mickey Mouse. He hasn't appeared in a cartoon for more than 50 years. And he just was traded for Al Michaels.

Just to rub his face in it, ESPN content head John Skipper essentially calls Michaels a liar on the way out the door. Tell us again how beloved Michaels supposedly was?

Michaels Jumps To NBC [SI.com] (via Dave's Sports Views)
Michaels Trades Monday Night For NBC Sunday Game [ESPN]

(A complete history of Oswald can be found here. No word on whether he carries Michaels' similar affection for tans.)

(UPDATE: True to form, ESPN has taken John Skipper's comments about Michaels off their site. Here's what he said:

"Al was not comfortable and let us know he was not comfortable with our vision of where we are going. Back in November he said it was the greatest job ever invented. So sometime between the last couple of weeks and November apparently he had a change of heart.")