Page 6- The Behrend College Beacon - Thursday. September 10. /Q9S
Disney controls tv coverage of football
By Paul Farhi
The Washington Post
The biggest name in football this
season, college or pro, isn't Green
Bay or Notre Dame. It isn't Barry
Sanders or Brett Favre.
It's Disney.
The conglomerate that gave the
world "The Lion King" and the
Mouseketeers has emerged as the
most important and influential player
in America's most popular sport. The
company will be the unseen corporate
hand behind two nights of primetime
NFL TV coverage every week that
began with the season premiere of
"Sunday Night Football." Combined
with its already übiquitous college
football coverage, ABC, ESPN and
ESPN2 - the broadcast and cable net
works Disney owns - will offer view
ers a seven-days-a-week string of col
lege and pro football programming.
At year's end, 18 of the 22 college
bowl games will appear on one of the
Disney-owned networks.
Disney's foray into football is re
markable for several reasons, not least
of which is that the company wasn't
even in the TV sports business until
mid-1995, when it bought the parent
of ABC and ESPN, Capital Cities/
ABC Inc.
Since then, Disney has used a
Dumbo-sized pot of money to keep
its powerful broadcast and cable prop
erties in the game. The total price for
Disney's football contracts: some
$10.2 billion, most of which went to
ward buying Monday and Sunday
night NFL games in a hyperinflated
auction last January.
But that huge investment - the larg
est ever made for any kind of pro
gramming - has engendered questions
and criticism.
Disney's commitment to football
has in some ways blurred the lines
between where its interests and the
NFL's begin and end. ESPN's Web
site (ESPN.com), for example, is di
rect( linked to the NFL's official We.
another baby switch at
niversity of Virginia hospital
By Michael D. Shear
The Washington Post
ROANOKE, Va. _ Mistie Fritz,
17, gave birth a month prematurely
at a Roanoke hospital on Feb. 6.
Her baby, whom she named
Jasmaine, had severe birth defects
and was moved to the University of
Virginia Medical Center.
Six weeks later, Jasmaine died,
and Mistie asked to take the baby's
body with her back to Roanoke, so
the remains could be buried near
the family. The hospital put the
baby's body in a small white plas
tic casket for transport. As Mistie
and her boyfriend were about to
drive away, she
realized she had forgotten a baby
blanket. Hospital employees
searched the morgue and found the
blanket. They also found
Jasmaine's body.
Mistie then opened the little cof
fin. Inside was the body of some
one else's baby. U-Va. hospital had
switched another pair of babies,
just three months before the world
would learn that newborns Cable
Marie Johnson and Rebecca Grace
Chittum had been sent home from
there with the wrong mothers three
years earlier.
"By the time they realized what
was going on, they had found
Jasmaine," said Rhonda Fritz,
Mistie's mother. "It wasn't a very
pleasant thing. But Mistie was more
upset to realize that another infant
had died.
"Thank goodness they had not
left the parking lot. Thank God it
didn't go that far."
Rhonda said Friday that Mistie
did not want to talk about the inci
dent, but she and her boyfriend are
hiring a lawyer. She said the family
was too upset about losing the child
to think about suing the hospital at
the time, saying they assumed it was
an honest mistake. But Rhonda got
angry last month when she saw hos
pital officials claiming that their
safety procedures were foolproof in
the case of Callie Marie and
site_ which is produced by nenc other
than ESPN. For this season. ;oi n e
observers suggest the network has
compromised its journahstli indepen
dence in favor of its I inancial inter
est.
Critics on Capitol Hill and
clsc
where also have cited EWN . ,
billion NFL deal as a kki, lactot in 01,2
continuing upward spiral in the Cost
of cable TV service for tuillions of .
households. In May, k.:ible mogul Ted
Turner - a losing bidder for NI L right,
that went to FSPN - called ESPN's
deal "unfair - to consumers.
fhe reason: FSPN . N pure} contra, t
"From our perspective, it's
worth it because football is the
platinum standard of sports pro-
gramming
Steve Bortlsle''', bp n t neciovt
is ultimately paid for by cable sub
scribers, whether they watch football
or not. This is because ESPN is ef
fectively funding its Isifq. deal by in
creasing the fees it charges cable op
erators for its signal. which has be
come as standard a part of cable
television as any over-the-air network.
ESPN's fees - already the highest of
any cable network - will double over
the life of its NFL deal. Cable opera
tors, in turn, say they must pass on
these increased costs to their suhscrib-
"We don't like it at all," said one
local cable executive, who asked not
to he identified, citing confidential
ity agreements with ESI'N. "What
they bid to get the rights is almost itb -
surd. In the long haul, we have no
choice but to hand the hill to our cus
tomers."
Two lawmaker~ with oversight of
the telecommunications industry
Rebecca.
"I was mad because of their ini
tial statements," she said. "The hos
pital administrator said it rarely
happens. I thought, it happens, even
in the morgue."
Hospital officials confirmed the
family's account of the incident,
and said the mix-up happened be
cause the hospital employee who
put the baby's body into the "burial
cradle" before giving it to Mistie
didn't check the cardboard tag that
is attached to each body bag.
"Sickening as it is to say, yes it
did happen," said hospital spokes
woman Marguerite Beck. "The per
son that released the remains just
didn't check the tag on the body
bag. Of course, it was corrected
immediately. The hospital admin
istrator talked with the family and
apologized."
Mistie was given the coffin at 2
p.m. on March 22, Beck said. Hos
pital records indicate that the hos
pital administrator was contacted
19 minutes later sind told there was
a problem. She said the administra
tor, who she would not name, im
mediately met with the Fritz fam
ily.
There is no indication in medical
records that the family of the other
dead child ever learned of the inci
dent, Beck said.
Beck said the hospital did not fire
the employee, who she declined to
name. She said that employee and
others were given a stern lecture
about the importance of following
procedures carefully. A laminated
checklist of procedures was at
tached to the key that is used to get
into the hospital morgue.
"It was stressed how important
it is to check and recheck every
thing," Beck said.
Thomas Massaro, the chief of
staff for the medical center, Friday
said that the hospital is "extraordi
narily sorry" about the switch in
volving the Fritz baby and said that
everyone involved at the hospital
feels devastated by the incident.
"Here was a family that was • o-
World and Nation
Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., and Sen.
John McCain, R-Ariz., have publicly
highlighted the rising costs of sports
programs in hearings this year, and the
Federal Communications Commis
sion has vowed to study it. So far,
however, no formal legislative pro
posals have been introduced.
Some consumer advocates, such as
Mark Cooper of the Consumer Fed
eration of America, say cable opera
tors have raised their rates far in ex
cess of the increase in programming
costs. Cooper and ESPN agree on one
point: that the costs are being offset,
in part, by additional local advertis
ing revenue that the operators are get
ting during ESPN's NFL program
ming. "What we have is one mo
nopoly (the NFL) ganging up with
another monopoly (the cable opera
tor) to . . frustrate the consumer,"
Cooper says.
Cooper notes ESPN was in a pow
erful position as it bid for the NFL
rights. Unlike non-cable networks
such as NBC and CBS, which must
rely solely on projected advertising
revenue as they formulate their bids,
ESPN knew it had two ways to re
coup its rights payment _ through ad
vertising and through rate increases
to cable operators who hardly are in a
position to drop ESPN.
Some cable operators have pro
posed placing ESPN and ESPN2 on
a special sports-only tier of service,
enabling consumers to buy it at their
option. At the moment, however, that
step is prohibited by ESPN's current
contract, which requires that the net
work he sold as part of a broad pack
age of channels.
ESPN and ABC executives are
quick to point out that Disney didn't
cause the spiral in sports costs, and
that all networks, including Turner's,
are active bidders for high-profile
contracts. They note that Turner raised
prices to cable operators carrying his
networks shortly after winning a bid
ding war for NBA rights last fall.
Disney's top TV sports executive,
ing through a very difficult time,"
Massaro said. "By an error and in
dividual not following a procedure,
we added to that grief. We com
pounded it."
Massaro said he can understand
why Rhonda Fritz draws parallels
between her daughter's case and
that of the babies switched three
years ago. But he said he believes
the two incidents are humbanentally
different.
"This one, we see a clear cause
and effect, an error we made,"
Massaro said. "We are able to say
there are logical thing; we can do
to prevent it. The other incident,
we still don't have that logical step
wise understanding of what could
have occurred."
Asked whether the Fritz case, in
combination with the switched ba
bies case, indicates a deeper prob
lem at U-Va.'s hospital, Massaro
defended the institution. He said the
other case has come to light because
the hospital is under a microscope.
"1, to the bottom of my heart, be
lieve we give wonderful care,"
Massaro said.
Questions about the identifica
tion of babies at the U-Va. hospital
first surfaced in late June with the
discovery that the two baby girls
had been switched at the hospital
in 1995. A series of genetic tests have
since confirmed it.
Caine has lived with Paula
Johnson, a 39-year-old construction
worker in Ruckersville, and
Rebecca lived with Kevin Chittum
and Whitney Rogers until the
couple was killed on July 4 in an
auto accident. Since then, Rebecca
has been cared for by her grand
parents.
Paula Johnson has questioned the
hospital's procedures regarding
identification bracelets for babies
and mothers, which is the primary
way they are identified in the ma
ternity ward and the nursery.
Steve Bornstein, says the company's
big bets on football were simply nec
essary to keep the networks competi
"From our perspective, it's worth
it because football is the platinum
standard of sports programming,"
says Bornstein, who serves as chief
executive of ESPN and president of
ABC Sports. "When the TV audience
has more and more (channels avail
able), live sports, and particularly the
best live sport, football, becomes in
creasingly valuable." He adds, "We
would certainly be opposed to cable
rate regulation or any regulation
which would mandate sports-only
tiers of service."
"If you're Disney, the idea is
to be in every room of the
house, one way or another."
Rick Burton, University of Oregon
Disney may not have caused the
runaway escalation in sports rights,
but it has certainly been the largest
player.
Last month, for example, ESPN and
ABC swooped down on pro hockey,
grabbing NHL rights away from the
Fox network for $6OO million - or
nearly triple what Fox paid in 1995.
Disney also owns an NHL team, the
Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, and a con
trolling interest in Major League
Baseball's Anaheim Angels. ESPN
also has rights to show Major League
Baseball games on TV and broadcast
them on its ESPN radio network.
All told, the company has spent
$ll.l billion on national football,
hockey and baseball TV rights over
the past three years to supply its cable
and broadcast networks. That figure
is twice the amount spent on national
sports contracts by any of its rivals,
including Fox, CBS, NBC or Time
Warner's Turner Sports. (Time
satv : er and,Fox are, sports conglotn
rates in their own right. In addition
o owning various cable and broad-
A passion for pickles
y Lyndsey Layton
e Washinlton Post
RELAY, Md. - For four days, Betsy
edeman hovered over tiny green cu
umbers bobbing in a pot on her stove
nd stirred in vinegar and sugar and
pices.
She knew just when to cook them
nd when to let them steep, guiding
hem over the threshold from veg
• table to pickle.
"You have to cook it for days, pour
ng it off, adding more vinegar, get
ng the syrup thicker," said Heckman,
4. "I love it, but it's a four-day pickle
d it's a pain in the tush."
But one with its own rewards.
After she finished the last half-pint
"When I saw those little
squash pickled over there in
France, I thought they were
just darlin"'
ar of sweet cucumber pickles,
1 edeman did what few people ever
onsider these days. She took the jar
rom her kitchen in a rapidly devel
•ping community between Washing
on and Baltimore and drove it to the
. tate fair in Timonium.
And when the 117th Maryland
tate Fair ends Monday, Hedeman
ill take with her a blue ribbon, a
3.50 cash prize and a rare satisfac
on in today's takeout world.
"I don't enter them to win the
oney," said Hedeman, a retired sec
etary who also won a blue ribbon for
er pickled pattypan squash and 4
ird-place ribbon for her cherry pie
n this year's fair. "I enter for the char
enge,
ust to see if I can do it."
For 42 years, she has been cooking
or the state fair. That makes Hedeman
ine of the few longtime regulars, said
• nna Troyer, who supervises the
ome arts section at the fair. Troyer
cast networks, Time Warner owns the
National Basketball Association's
Atlanta Hawks and baseball's Atlanta
Braves, and Fox owns baseball's Los
Angeles Dodgers.)
"Sports to Disney used to mean a
cartoon with Goofy swinging a golf
club," says Rick Burton, who directs
the University of Oregon's graduate
program in sports marketing. "Now
the Mouse is one bad dude."
Although TV has always influenced
the pace and nature of the games it
covers, Disney's dollars have already
had a noticeable effect. In a conces
sion to ABC, the NFL agreed in Janu
ary to start "Monday Night Football"
at 8 p.m. Eastern Time this season,
instead of the traditional 9 p.m.
The one-hour difference will mean
that the game will air almost entirely
during primetime hours on the East
Coast, which ABC hopes will increase
the game's viewership and ad dollars.
The NFL has also agreed to let all of
its national television "partners" cram
an extra three minutes of commercials
into game telecasts this year (even so,
Bornstein acknowledges that ABC
will still probably lose money on its
NFL deal).
Even more striking is ABC's im
pact on college football's postseason.
The network last year cornered the
market on the rights to the nation's
leading bowl games _ the Rose, Fi
esta, Sugar and Orange. By making
these deals, ABC helped coordinate
the Bowl Championship Series, a cre
ation of the network, bowl officials
and the nation's major college foot
ball conferences designed to annually
produce a game between the nation's
top two teams.
The four big bowls will host the top
game each year on a rotating basis.
In exchange, ABC agreed to pay $525
million over seven years to the bowls
and the conferences. The agreement
contains some tradition-busting fea
tures. Specifically, the deal requires
the Rose Bowl to end its five-decade
old format of pitting the champions
of the Pacific-I0 and Big Ten confer
ences against each other.
Teams from those conferences will
said she does not know whether
Hedeman is
the longest-running contestant.
This year's fair attracted about
5,000 entries in home arts, Troyer
said. The canned-goods division,
with more than 130 categories, had
about 100 more entries this year than
last, she said. "These things are sort
of cyclical," Troyer said. "Right now,
people seem interested in doing things
that have that country flavor-canning
and rug hooking."
Dorothy Ludwig, a pickle judge,
said a prize-winning pickle is made
from a firm, young vegetable in a
clear liquid that has no single over
powering spice or odor. "I do not like
a mushy pickle," Ludwig said.
The Maryland State Fair has 40
pickling and relish categories, with no
single pickling champion.
In a storage room in Hedeman's
basement, three bookshelves are filled
with jars. Pint jars of pickled purple
beets. Quart jars of bright red toma
toes. Half-pint jars of tiny green cu
cumbers floating in brine. Atop the
bookshelves is a stack of ribbons - for
canning, baking, quilting and
needlework.
Betsy Hedeman
"Well, there was that chocolate
thing - a chocolate mousse - and then
there was the Great Seafood Search
and, jeez, I can't remember them all,"
she said, green eyes squinting behind
her glasses. "Won a trip to New York
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play elsewhere on New Year's Day if
they're ranked No. 1 or No. 2 during
years in which the Rose Bowl isn't
hosting the championship game. Con
versely, when the Rose Bowl hosts the
championship game in 2002, the Pac
-10 and Big-10 champs will have to
be ranked first or second in the na
tion to play in Pasadena.
"Conceivably, we could be hosting
a Clemson-Syracuse game," says Jack
French, chief executive of the Pasa
dena Tournament of Roses Associa
tion. What influenced the Rose Bowl
to dispense with tradition? Replies
French without a moment's hesita
tion: "Money."
ABC will guarantee each of the
major bowls $l9 million per year, a
raise of some $7.5 million per year in
the Rose Bowl's case. For its invest
ment in the Rose Bowl, however,
ABC retained the right to sell all the
commercial airtime and the game's
"presentation rights" - a high-profile
sponsorship that makes the game it
self nearly synonymous with a cor
poration. ABC sold those rights to
AT&T, meaning that whenever ABC
viewers hear about the game, they will
be hearing about "the Rose Bowl, pre
sented by AT&T." That is another
enormous change for the Rose Bowl,
which, unlike nearly every other bowl
game, had resisted such overt com
mercialism.
Unlike its deal with the NFL,-
ABC's Bowl Championship Series
deal is projected to turn a profit. By
working so many angles at once, the
University of Oregon's Burton be
lieves Disney's football strategy is ul
timately a financially sound one.
"They will lose money on the ABC .
deal but they'll make it up on the
ESPN side," he says. And that's the
beauty of being a multitentacled con
glomerate, Burton says: "It all goes
into the same pocket sooner or later.
If you're Disney, the idea is to be in
every room of the house, one way or
another."
once, gave that away."
"Cooking is an art," said Hedeman,
who cobbles her own recipes after
reading food magazines and cook
books. "You can have 10 people fol
lowing a recipe and you will get eight
different versions."
Hedeman's state fair career began
in 1956, when she entered clothes she
had made for her two daughters. Once
Hedeman and her husband, Bill,
moved to a house with some land,
they grew a garden and started enter
ing fresh vegetables, then canned veg
etables and fruits at the state fair. She
shuns county fairs. "There's more
prestige to the state fair," she said.
Hedeman came up with the
pattypan squash after spotting a jar of
the miniature, scallop-shaped squash
in a grocery in Provence. "When I saw
those little squash pickled over there
in France, I thought they were just
darlin' and ! called Bill over and I said,
'Look at these things, can we
grow them at home?' "
Hedeman already has a goal for
next year's state fair: a ribbon for her
bread-and-butter pickles.
"I've been entering my bread-and
butter pickles for 20 years, and I can
not win," she said. "This year I tried
to make it different. I added fresh gin
ger, thinking it would give it a twang,
but that didn't do it. I'll have to come
up with something for next year."