Voila_Capture625A bit of interesting – if unsurprising – news from last night: The Comcast monster, which owns NBC, has decided to eat its young and gobble up the NBC 10 sports team. Starting in January, CSN will produce NBC 10 sports segments.

What does that mean for John Clark, who is one of the leading local sports personalities? Bob Fernandez of Philly.com has the details:

NBC10’s sports reporter is John Clark, a Wallingford native who joined the station in 2001 as weekend sports anchor. He will move over to the 24-hour Comcast SportsNet and remain the face of NBC10 sports, station president Eric Lerner said Monday.

NBC10 anchor and sports director Vai Sikahema will cover news and major sports stories for NBC10, officials said.

Two NBC10 sports producers will transfer into news jobs and a third employee in the sports area will be let go, Lerner said.

The NBC10 sports report will remain in the same place in the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts. That report will now be reported and produced by Comcast SportsNet. NBC10 officials believe that SportsNet programming will be more distinctive than what the station produces presently.

Again, not a surprise. In this day and age, local news sports segments are mostly nothing more than highlights and 12-hour-old headlines. Little value is added to the sports biosphere in a three-minute segment between weather and What The Tech?! That’s not a knock on the producers and personalities responsible for them, but rather, it’s just a causality of the format. CSN producing those segments isn’t going to change much (although the backdrop may now be bluer).

To me, this is a sign that mainstream media is finally understanding that most mainstream sports news is a commodity. There’s no need for two dozen reporters to all obtain the same quotes, same soundbites and same images, especially when some of those people are all part of the same media mega conglomerate hell-bent on world domination. If CSN is already employing people to do the sports thing, why should its sister, NBC 10, do the same?

There was already some partnership between CSN and the NBC 10 news team by way of weather updates, though I’m convinced those were solely to treat SportsNite viewers to 30 seconds of Sheena Parveen (nothing is worse than the soul-crushing blow when, say, Neil Hartman throws it over to NBC 10 for weather and you’re met with Hurricane Schwartz instead of Sheena– it’s deflating).

On John Clark: It’s no surprise that he’s going to CSN. As a solid host and good point man, he’s the perfect heir to Michael Barkann (my opinion). His hosting of the Great Sports Debate (full disclosure: I sit next to him for three minutes every week on that show) has pushed him further beyond the limits of just local news, and, to his credit, he actually goes to games and practices and often beats beat writers to news and updates. He should be part of CSN.