NBC, Versus Sign Long-Term Deal With NHL

Two months ago, ESPN’s top content executive John Skipper told investors the company will be aggressive in acquiring sports rights, but also judicious. “Let me be overt … we will continue to make thoughtful decisions on what rights we can afford,” he said.

Running the numbers appears to have led to circumspection on ESPN’s part, in terms of grabbing rights to the NHL. ESPN apparently dropped out of the bidding — as did TBS and others — as Comcast struck a deal to keep national broadcasts exclusively on NBC and Versus.

It is NBCU’s first sports rights deal since Comcast took over the company.

Comcast sports head Dick Ebersol said on a conference call that Versus would be re-named this summer with NBC in the moniker.

The 10-year deal, reportedly worth $2 billion, promises to expand the number of NHL games on the two networks while bringing the addition of an annual game the Friday after Thanksgiving. That seems straight out of the playbook for the “Winter Classic,” where NBC has carried a popular outdoor game on New Year’s Day, which has served as counter-programming to college football.

Under the deal, the NBC Sports Group gets digital rights across all platforms for games it offers, perhaps leading to the NBC games being simulcast on the Web a la “Sunday Night Football.”

Versus will continue to carry the NHL All-Star game and split Stanley Cup finals games with NBC. NBC will also build a new studio for the NHL Network.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said on the call that the NHL should benefit from the sprawling assets of Comcast. The deal includes promotion on a slew of NBCUniversal properties and could bring some games to the USA network, cable’s top-rated network.

April 22, 2011
Categories: News you can Use . . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

Maytag Is Out To Warm Up Its Image

Maytag is introducing a new brand campaign that it hopes will warm up its old-reliable image, while at the same time building on its never-breaks-down brand equity.

The famed Maytag repairman gets a cameo in the TV spots, but the focus is now on the contents of the machine, themed “What’s Inside Matters.”  

Ads show a family quilt being dragged from picnic to campout to station wagon to laundry room, or a rag doll getting roughed up at a tea party. “We wanted to shift the focus to the mundane urgencies that people connect with dependability,” Jim Paul, VP/creative director for Arc Worldwide, the Leo Burnett agency that created the campaign for Maytag, tells Marketing Daily. “The ads emphasize not only the dependable parts Maytag puts in its machines, but the importance of the things people put inside as well.”

The brand, which is more than 100 years old, built its reputation on that dependability, he says, long characterized by its lonely repairman. “We felt it was time to expand on the parts and pieces story, which is essentially very male, and warm it up — to put a more relevant human spin on that dependability. It’s been a masculine brand in a feminine category. And while we’re not running away from the testosterone that comes from focusing on the reliability of the machine and its parts, we wanted to broaden it.”

April 22, 2011
Categories: News you can Use, Vendor News . Tags: , , . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment