This weekend’s busy lineup of live TV sports events begins on the gridiron as the National Football League kicks off its opening weekend of regular season games. 

Along with Sunday regional coverage of NFL games on CBS and Fox, NBC will air its first Sunday Night Football game featuring two of the league’s more popular teams, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Dallas Cowboys.

This weekend’s college football schedule begins with top ranked Alabama facing Texas on Fox and second-ranked Georgia taking on Samford on SEC Network. Third-ranked Ohio State will match up with Arkansas State on the Big Ten Network, fourth-ranked Michigan battling Hawai’i on Big Ten Network and fifth-ranked Clemson going up against Furman on the ACC Network.

The rest of the top ten ranked teams include No. 6 Texas A&M-Appalachian State (ESPN2), No. 7 Oklahoma-Kent State (ESPN Plus), No. 8 Notre Dame-Marshall (NBC), No. 9 Baylor-BYU (ESPN) and No. 10 USC at Stanford (ABC).

In the octagon, ESPN Plus will distribute the UFC 279 mixed martial arts pay-per-view event featuring the main event bout between welterweights Khamzat Chimaev and Nate Diaz. 

The U.S. Open tennis tournament will conclude this weekend with the women’s finals match airing on ESPN Saturday and the men’s finals airing live Sunday afternoon.

The Major League Baseball season continues to wind down with ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball coverage of the San Francisco Giants and the Chicago Cubs contest.■ 

Fox News continues to sizzle this summer on the ratings front, blowing out its cable competitors last week in both primetime and on a total day basis, according to Nielsen.

Fox News, which benefited from its news coverage of the developments in Afghanistan last week, averaged 2.9 million viewers in primetime during the week of Aug. 16 to Aug. 22 to more than double second place MSNBC’s 1.2 million viewers on its way to its seventh straight win in the category, said Nielsen. HGTV was third with 1.1 million viewers, followed by TLC’s 1 million viewers and CNN’s 960,000 watchers.

Read Also: Fox News Evacuates Afghan Associates 

Pre-season NFL football game telecasts propelled NFL Network to sixth place with 910,000 viewers, followed by ESPN (905,000 viewers), TBS (904,000), INSP (869,000) and History (754,000). 

On a total day basis, Fox News won its 27th consecutive week with an average of 1.7 million viewers, thrashing MSNBC (718,000), CNN (696,000), HGTV (609,000) and Investigation Discovery (457,000), said Nielsen. 

Read Also: Fox Weather Names Reporters, Multimedia Journalists for Fall Launch 

Dish Network is gearing up for a retransmission consent battle with Mission Broadcasting as the existing deal to carry the broadcaster’s 26 stations is set to expire Friday night (Sept. 11).

Mission has shared services agreements with Nexstar Media Group for many of its properties, and operates in 21 markets across the country, including Davenport, Iowa; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Burlington, Vermont. The company also has been an aggressive buyer of stations. In the past several months it has reached agreements to purchase six stations -- mainly through purchase options granted to Nexstar when it sold stations to comply with federal regulations around its acquisition of Tribune Media. Those stations, which are not affected by this dispute, are: WPIX (CW) in New York; KWBQ (CW) and KASY (MyNet) in Albuquerque, New Mexico; WLAJ (ABC) in Lansing, Michigan; WXXZ (Fox) in Albany, New York; and WNAC (Fox) in Providence, Rhode Island.  

Dish and Mission already had a retrans battle earlier this year when stations in 18 markets went dark on Jan. 5.  Those stations were returned to the satellite TV services' customers in March, as part of several short-term agreements Dish made with broadcasters at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. The Mission mini-deals were only supposed to last until April 13, according to some reports, but were extended as the pandemic worsened. Apparently, those agreements have reached the end of their useful lives.

In a statement, Dish TV president Brian Neylon said that Mission is demanding fee increases of 50%.

“Has their content gotten 50% better? Of course not! Yet somehow they expect customers to pay up through threats of taking their stations down, “ Neylon said in the statement, adding that Mission is requiring that Dish customers that do not subscribe to local broadcast channels to pay for the stations.

“Not only would this outrageous demand effectively increase the cost for all customers, it violates the entire notion of consumer choice," Neylon continued. “Dish doesn’t want our customers to be impacted in any way- not through outrageous price increases or unfair takedowns. We’ve offered an extension to keep stations up so that viewers won’t be impacted, but Mission has refused. They’d clearly rather use viewers as pawns, and they know the beginning of the NFL season is a great time to do so.”

The NFL season officially kicked off Thursday (Sept. 10) with the matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans. But this weekend (Sept. 13) is the first to have a full slate of games.  

On its station websites, Mission claims that it has made a proposal that represents fair compensation for the programming it offers. 

“Despite our tireless efforts, Dish has refused our fair offer and is making negotiations very difficult," Mission said on its websites. "You’ve likely seen them do this before. It might interest you to know that Dish regularly holds their subscribers hostage in these situations, by far more than any other cable, satellite or telcom provider. They will tell you it’s for your benefit, but don’t believe it. Our offer is fair." 

The affected stations are:

KLJB Davenport-Rock Island-Moline, Iowa; KPEJ (Fox) Odessa-Midland, Texas; KMSS (Fox) Shreveport, Louisiana; KRBC (NBC) Abilene-Sweetwater, Texas; KCIT (Fox) and KCPN (MNT) Amarillo, Texas; WVNY (ABC) Bennington County, Vermont; KHMT (Fox) Billings, Montana; WVNY (ABC) Burlington, Vermont-Plattsburgh, New York; WFXP (Fox) Erie, Pennsylvania; WTVW (CW) Evansville, Indiana; KFQX (Fox) Grand Junction-Montrose Colorado; KODE (ABC) Joplin, Missouri-Pittsburg, Kansas; KASN (CW) and KLRT (Fox) Little Rock-Pine Bluff, Arkansas; KAMC (ABC) Lubbock Texas; KTVE (NBC) Monroe, Louisiana-El Dorado, Arkansas; WTVO (ABC) Rockford, Illinois; KSAN (NBC) San Angelo, Texas; KOLR (CBS) Springfield, Missouri; WAWV (ABC) Terre Haute, Indiana; WUTR (ABC) Utica, New York; KJBO (MNT) and KJTL (Fox) Wichita Falls-Lawton, Texas; WYOU (CBS) Wilkes Barre-Scranton, Pennsylvania; and WVNY (ABC) Windham County, Vermont.

Dish Network unveiled a pair of new TV ad spots from its latest ad agency of record – The Richards Group – that steer its “Spokeslistener” campaign in a new creative direction.

The two spots highlight Dish college and NFL football offerings – “Road Trip,” which emphasizes Dish customers have access to every major Division I college football game; and “Extra” focuses on Dish’s current NFL Red Zone promotion so customers get extra action at no extra cost.

Related: Dish Campaign to Focus on Listening to Customers 

Dish launched the Spokeslistener campaign in February 2017, part of its “Tuned Into You” promise. In a statement, Dish said with The Richards Group – which became its agency of record in March -- the spots take a new creative approach – “The Unheard.”

Related: Dish Taps Richards Group as New Creative Ad Agency 

According to Dish, “The Unheard creative features a Spokeslistener who’s uniquely in tune with identifying those who have felt unheardby their past TV providers. He speaks less, and he listens more.” 

BET’s 2017 Soul Train Awards danced up more than one million social media interactions last night, according to Nielsen.

The special, hosted by Erykah Badu and featuring performances from Toni Braxton, 112, SWV and Jessie J, drew 1,173 Facebook and Twitter interactions to lead all Sunday television shows according to Nielsen’s Social Content Daily Ratings report. AMC’s The Walking Dead was second with 336,000 interactions, followed by Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Atlanta, E!’s Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Starz’s Outlander.

Sunday’s NFL contests tackled big social media numbers, led by NBC’s coverage of the Green Bay Packers-Pittsburgh Steelers which drew 2.8 million interactions, said Nielsen.