Cbs Has Eye On Nfl

The games have begun.

Sports Illustrated’s Peter King is telling media folks that CBS is angling to purchase the rights to “Monday Night Football.”

King is a former employee of ABC, the network that has held the rights to “Monday Night Football” for all of its 28 years.

King reportedly said that CBS czar Mel Karmazin has held talks with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and Patriots owner Bob Kraft, two members of the NFL’s television committee.

Industry analysts argue that King’s reports are not entirely accurate.

For one thing, CBS probably is interested in bidding on each of the five television packages, not just “Monday Night Football.” For another, the question is not whether CBS is interested in getting back into football but rather, how much is it prepared to lose?

Even if the network were to buy its way back into professional football, advertising revenue alone would not pay the bill.

There’s no telling how much the television packages could be worth this time around (all the current contracts run out this year). But with five NFL television sources (ABC, NBC, Fox, TNT, ESPN) to sell advertising, corporate America is not likely to pony up at CBS’s table to make the numbers attractive.

For another thing, team owners and television honchos schmooze all the time. When the Cowboys played the Patriots during the exhibition season, Jones met with Kraft at his Boston office. It’s hard to say what the two talked about.

Industry analysts almost guarantee none of these negotiations will occur in public.

McKay recalls Munich terror

On a day when suicide bombers killed seven people in West Jerusalem, Jim McKay of ABC Sports Thursday recalled the hostage siege by Palestinian commandos at the Summer Olympics in Munich 25 years ago Friday that left 11 Israeli athletes dead.

“It was the loss of whatever innocence there was in the world,” McKay said from his Maryland home, where he is finishing his autobiography. “The Olympics were mankind’s last playground, where almost all nations gathered to play.”

As ABC’s anchorman for the marathon coverage, McKay was a graceful, stalwart guide to agonizing reports of the gruesome acts that began with the killings of two Israelis in their Olympic Village quarters and ended in a botched rescue attempt at the airport.

“People said I looked very emotional in the final announcement, when it was over,” said McKay. “And seeing myself, I guess I was.”

ABC must improve

Let’s hope ABC has a better day today than it did a week earlier on UCLA-Washington State. The Keith Jackson-Bob Griese team has a new producer and director, and it showed.

There were missed plays, ill-timed shots, and generally more glitches than you’d expect from ABC’s “A” team.