- Fox’s Friday night college football debut outdrew what WWE had been drawing in the same time slot recently, reports SBJ's Austin Karp. Kansas State-Arizona drew 2.58 million viewers on Friday on the broadcast network, well above the 1.77 million the prior week and the best for any Friday night telecast on Fox since early April.
- With NBC Sports Chicago shutting down Sept. 30, the White Sox have combined with the Bulls and Blackhawks to launch CHSN in October. All of the teams will forgo a rights fee, but my colleague Mike Mazzeo writes the teams believe in the upside of an owned RSN. That line of thought was beginning to bear fruit late last week when a source confirmed to SBJ the new RSN’s first distribution agreement with DirecTV.
- Riyadh Season Noche UFC, or UFC 306, was aired by ESPN, and the in-person production and ESPN broadcast both appeared to largely go off without a hitch, with no noticeable technical issues during the six 90-second mini-films that, taken together, were meant to tell the history of combat in Mexico from the beginning of time to now, writes SBJ's Adam Stern.
- Prime Video drew 14.96 million viewers for the Bills’ rout of the Dolphins to begin the 2024 “Thursday Night Football” slate, down just 1% from 15.06 million for the Vikings-Eagles “TNF” opener in 2023, reports Karp. Bills-Dolphins is still good enough for the third-best “TNF” audience for Prime Video since it acquired the package prior to the 2022 season.
