ABC Swaps A Famous Sportscaster For a Coveted Cartoon

[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Joe Flint joe.flint@wsj.com and Merissa Marr]
In perhaps the first deal of its kind, ABC/Disney has traded a sportscaster, Al Michaels, to NBC for veteran cartoon Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, two minor leaguers and a buck of balls. Disney executives have released Michaels from his contract, but they also extracted a series of business concessions from their rival, General Electric Co. One was the return of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a cartoon character created by Walt Disney in 1927 that was a precursor to Mickey Mouse. The rights to Oswald belonged to Universal Studios and Disney had always coveted this piece of its history. NBC acquired Universal two years ago. Disney got more than just a rabbit in the deal. NBC agreed to promote ESPN's "Monday Night Football" during its own Sunday night game, putting the network in the uncomfortable position of hyping a rival network. NBC agreed to sell ESPN the Friday rights, and rebroadcast rights, to golf's biennial Ryder Cup through 2014. NBC keeps the live weekend coverage. ESPN is paying NBC about $12 million for those rights. NBC also loosened its tight hold on highlight footage from the Olympics, which begin tonight. In the past, NBC would allow ESPN and ESPN2 to use only six minutes of footage a day combined and had a window of only 24 hours to show it. Now they will get six minutes on each of their news shows, and a 48-hour window.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113954127077170398.html?mod=todays_us_ma...
(requires subscription)