Brian Stelter of the the NEW YORK TIMES reports Harvey Levin confirming that TMZ Sports is a go:

AOL’s exit is expected to make it easier for Mr. Levin to introduce another idea, TMZ Sports, and brings a new phase for TMZ’s advertising sales, which have not kept up with the site’s popularity. … Warner Brothers says the site will begin early next year.

(Joba’s mom could stand an Ambien before the ribbon-cutting)

In my introduction of TMZSports.com to you last week, I illuminated the incestuous business relationships that created an opening for such an entity. Levin noted the same to Stelter in the Times:

Levin sees a lot of what he calls agenda reporting in sports, he also sees an opening for coverage by an outsider, free of potential conflicts of interest, like league licensing deals.

Levin also observed the century-old coddling of sports celebs by the sports media: Read more…

We’re finally lifting the embargo on the Erin Andrews tape. We’re not posting it, we’re not posting links to it, we’re not posting screencaps of it, we’re not posting one shred of it. We haven’t even watched it, and if you’ve got any respect for women, neither will you. It’s creepy as hell and illegal, and we wanted to avoid all instances of cheap pageview farming by posting some boilerplate outrage.

But if what Harvey Levin, the executive producer of TMZ, told Dan Patrick a couple days ago is true, then this is a deeper issue than just one isolated incident of gross perversion. Apparently there are multiple tapes. And from multiple hotels.

Read more…