By Dave Hughes, DCRTV.com

Versus has been pulled from DirecTV due to a contract dispute between the satellite company and local area cable giant Comcast. The Comcast-owned sports channel, which has carried the Tour de France and the National Hockey League, is fighting with DirecTV over the fees the satellite TV service pays to carry the channel and how Versus is distributed to subscribers. DirecTV says Versus wants a more than 20 percent increase in the fees paid to carry the network.

Meanwhile, DirecTV rival Dish Network is looking to capitalize on the dispute by offering Versus free to all customers for three months. Versus is normally only offered in Dish Network's Classic Gold 250 packages.

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Steve Clendenin announced the launch of SFMSports.Net and the debut of Calvert Hall College Cardinals football on Fox 1370 Sports Radio in Baltimore. SFMSports.Net is a new local sports broadcasting and marketing initiative that produces and syndicates local sports for broadcast and via web streaming, plus podcasting with iTunes.

Cardinals games will be broadcast Saturdays at 1 p.m., called by Sean Welsh. Also, SFMSports.Net will produce the weekly "SFMSports.Net Round Up," hosted by Welsh on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. SFMSports.Net will also provide sports programming to Salisbury-Ocean City's WQMR and Annapolis's WNAV.

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John (J. Brooks) Easterbrook is moving from the sidelines to the booth for Salisbury's WICO (1320 AM) and its coverage of Salisbury University football this fall. He replaces Jim Whittemore, who passed away in July. Easterbrook, who worked with Whittemore for five years, will be handling color commentary for the Gulls games.

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The DC remains the ninth largest in the 2009-10 TV season, but Baltimore moved down a notch, from 26th to 27th, according to statistics from TV ratings firm Nielsen. If DC and Baltimore were combined, "Baltiwash" would be the fourth-largest TV market, behind New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago.

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Jim Williams of the Washington Examiner confirms that Bonneville, which owns DC all-newser WTOP, is seriously interested in snatching up both WRQX (107.3 FM) and WJZW (105.9 FM) from Citadel -- and broadcasting the Washington Nationals on either of the stations, probably WJZW. Bonneville carries the team on WFED (1500 AM), which has a signal that covers Baltimore pretty well, but doesn't cover the entire DC area.

Posted Sept. 3, 2009