Two NBCs In One!

Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

Hyping a story on global warming for Tuesday’s NBC Nightly News, fill-in anchor Lester Holt proclaimed: “Sounding the alarm. A leaked report about the danger happening all around us tonight.” Introducing the segment, Holt declared that the study “from one of the world’s most prestigious groups of scientists…has a lot of people taking notice because of the alarming conclusions about climate change.” [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

[Ann] Curry lead off the one-sided fearmongering by warning viewers: “The key finding in this leaked draft report is that it’s, quote, ‘extremely likely,’ as in greater than 95%, that human activity is the main cause of the planet’s temperature rise in the last 60 years.” She cited a recent trip to the Arctic to bolster the case: “At the top of the world in Arctic, Greenland, scientists like Dr. Jason Box study the icy landscape. He says all this might be lost to climate change, mostly caused by humans burning fossil fuels.”

— “NBC ‘Sounding the Alarm’ on Climate Change: ‘Industrialized World’ Using More Than ‘Fair Share’ of Fossil Fuels,” Newsbusters’ Kyle Drennen, today.

NASCAR has finalized the other half of its next long-term TV contract with NBC and severed future broadcast ties with ESPN and Turner Sports.

NBC and Fox will share rights to the Sprint Cup Series beginning with the 2015 season.

NBC and NASCAR agreed to a contract that runs from 2015-2024, but didn’t release financial terms of the deal.

NBC picks up the last 20 of a scheduled 36 points Sprint Cup races, and they could air Sunday afternoons as a lead-in to Sunday Night Football. Fox and NBC will share TV rights to the Nationwide Series, which has aired on ESPN since 2007 ABC and ESPN began a NASCAR deal in place of NBC.

— “NBC returns to NASCAR in deal that runs through 2024,” USA Today, July 23rd, 2013.

If NBC’s newsreaders, such as Holt, Curry, and Chris Hayes are so passionate on this topic, why aren’t they blasting their network’s sports division on the air? Conversely, why does NBC’s sports division pay such little heed to the eco-apocalyptic obsessions of their “news” division?

Update: “NBC Nightly News Suffers Ratings Slide,” Larry O’Connor of Big Journalism reports today. Since presumably those numbers also include people who’ve turned off their TVs entirely, less people watching NBC means less energy being used, which NBC has stated is a good thing. So it’s a win-win for the network, right?