Exploring media changes coming in 2023 on football, more. And Dolphins make radio change

What you need to know on 10 changes in sports media in 2023:

▪ Flexible scheduling is a good thing, and there’s more of it on the way with the NFL.

None of ESPN’s December Monday night games this season involved two playoff contenders competing against each other. That will change next season.

For the first time, December ESPN Monday night games (weeks 14, 15, 16 and 17) can be replaced by Sunday games, usually 13 days in advance.

That’s a win for everyone, except fans whose travel plans have been disrupted.

▪ Dolphins move up the dial. And other local changes.

Dolphins games will move from WQAM 560 to iHeart radio stations WINZ 940 and Big 104.3. That was finally announced Monday, months after an agreeement was struck.

As expected, Jimmy Cefalo and Joe Rose will remain the announcers, with Rose permitted to continue hosting his morning show for WQAM....

Meanwhile, Kyle Sielaff remains the front-runner to replace Glenn Geffner as the Marlins’ radio voice…

With the Marlins dumping J.P. Arencibia, look for Tommy Hutton, Gaby Sanchez, Rod Allen and Jeff Nelson to get more games. Hutton did 50 last year, all at home. So basically the Marlins are moving from a five-man analyst rotation to a four-person rotation. Paul Severino returns on play-by-play.

▪ There will be more Monday night double-headers next season.

On three Mondays, ESPN will have one game at 7 p.m., and ABC will have one in the 8:30 range. The two networks did that once this season.

▪ Sunday Ticket is moving from DirecTV to YoutubeTV.

Beginning next season, those out-of-market games can be purchased as an add-on package on YouTube TV (if you’re a subscriber) or a standalone a la carte option, through Primetime Youtube Channels.

Prices haven’t been set but they likely will be comparable to DirecTV’s, whose prices were in the $300 to $400 range annually, with many new DirecTV customers receiving the first year of Sunday Ticket for free. DirecTV reportedly had two million subscribers for Sunday Ticket.

YouTube TV has just more than five million subscribers; there are 122 million TV households. But more than two billion access YouTube content each month, according to the company.

Homes that subscribe to a different cable or satellite provider can purchase Sunday Ticket through the Youtube App and Primetime Youtube Channels. So you won’t be obligated to subscribe to YouTube TV to access the games.

The NFL and YouTube are working on how to license games to sports bars and restaurants.

YouTube will pay $2 billion per year over the next seven seasons, a sizable increase over DirecTV’s $1.5 billion rights fee.

▪ We will continue to see more AFC games on Fox and more NFC games on CBS, even though CBS in the AFC rights-holder and Fox the NFC rights-holder.

Beginning next season, “the designation of which network gets a game by who the road team is, that part is going away,” NFL vice president of broadcast planning Mike North said earlier this year on the Ari Meirov Show.

“Fox is still going to predominantly be the NFC package, and CBS is still going to be predominantly the AFC package, but it’s not just going to be, CBS is going to need eight Ravens games.’ It doesn’t have to be the AFC team on the road for those eight games. It could be any of the Ravens’ 17 games.

“We don’t have the restrictions that we’ve had in terms of crossflex and number of times each team can be taken away from CBS and Fox. Those rules are gone, so every game’s a jump ball. Every game’s a free agent.”

▪ Prime time Big 10 games are moving to NBC beginning next season.

Some of those games had aired on ABC in recent years. A source confirmed that Noah Eagle and Todd Blackledge will call the games; Blackledge is leaving his job on ABC/ESPN’s No. 2 team. Eagle, son of CBS announcer Ian Eagle, did college football for Fox this season.

Fox keeps the Big 10 games at noon.

CBS will take over 3:30 p.m. Big 10 games beginning in 2024 and will air several Big 10 games next year, while fulfilling the final year of its contract to carry SEC games at 3:30. SEC games move exclusively to ABC/ESPN beginning in 2024.

How CBS will accommodate the first year of its Big 10 contract in 2023 remains something of a mystery, because the network is obligated to carry SEC games at 3:30 most weeks for one more season. CBS can carry Big 10 games at 3:30 during the first two weeks of the season.

▪ Announcer changes beyond Blackledge:

Tom Brady has a deal to become Fox’s lead NFL analyst when he retires. When that happens, he will join Kevin Burkhardt on the network’s No. 1 team next season, with Greg Olsen likely moving to the No. 2 team with Joe Davis.

So Olsen — who has done a good job as Troy Aikman’s successor — could have the distinction of calling this season’s Super Bowl and then moving off the lead team.

“I know what I signed up for this year,” Olsen said recently on Chicago’s ESPN radio station. “My goal — and I said this before the season even started — my goal was to try to do the best job that I could. Give people a fun listen. Give people maybe a little bit of a different perspective and insight into the game. Do the best job that I can.

“Listen, if Brady ends up retiring and coming, and decides, and that’s how everything unfolds, it sucks. But at the end of the day, I’m a big boy. I know what I signed up for. I took a chance on myself. I rolled the dice. Let’s see how it plays out.”...

Elsewhere, CBS’ Jim Nantz will call a Final Four for the final time (in his hometown of Houston) in April before passing the network’s lead college basketball play-by-play job to Ian Eagle. Nantz worked only four weeks of college basketball a year, anyway.

Trevor Immelman is replacing Nick Faldo, who retired, as CBS’ lead golf analyst.

▪ Big MLS shift:

All MLS matches not televised on Fox or FS-1 will now be carried exclusively by Apple’s TV-based streaming service. In recent years, Inter Miami games aired on CBS-4 or WBFS-33. That will no longer be the case.

Apple will carry every game not aired by Fox, in a package called MLS Season Pass on the Apple TV app.

The cost is $14.99 per month during the season or $99 per season, and Apple TV+ subscribers can sign up for $12.99 per month and $79 per season.

Beginning in 2023, Fox and FS1 will combine to air 34 regular-season matches a year, along with eight playoff matches and MLS Cup. All of those matches will be simulcast in Spanish on Fox Deportes.

▪ Things to get resolved:

For the first time this century, NBA media rights could go to the open market. ESPN and Turner own rights through 2024-2025 and have an exclusive negotiating period with the league through the end of 2023. But the NBA might be better served by taking games to the open market to see if NBC and streaming services will bid…

With the College Football Playoff expanding to 12 teams in 2024, ESPN could carry all the games in a deal that runs through 2026 or could sell a couple of games to an over-the-air carrier.

▪ Two things to keep an eye on:

The CW Network acquired U.S. TV rights to the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament. The CW averaged 574,000 daily overall viewers and it would be surprising if the controversial tournament draws big viewership domestically. PGA Tour events average several million viewers, topped by 10 million for the Masters....

Bally Sports Regional Networks appear to be in major financial trouble; Bloomberg reported that parent company Diamond Sports could file bankruptcy within two months and “will likely skip $140 million in interest payments due mid-February, kickstarting a 30-day grace period...”

It’s unclear how that would immediately affect the dozens of NBA, MLB and NHL teams whose games are aired by Bally networks, including Fox Sports Sun and Fox Sports Florida. But there likely would be a longterm impact.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has said the RSN model as it exists today is “probably not sustainable over the long haul” because so many viewers are cord-cutting or bypassing cable bundle packages.

As an example, ESPN’s distribution fell from 79.7 million homes to 74.2 million in the past 12 months. NBA TV and MLB Network lost 12 percent of their subscribers in 2022.

This also is happening to Bally sports regionals, making it difficult for the networks to generate as much ad revenue and afford soaring rights fees.

Earlier this month, Diamond Sports said in its quarterly earnings call that subscriber levels for Bally Sports had “fallen 10 percent so far this year,” and a cash flow measure “would come in at half the estimate made at the start of the year.”