Some of Mr. Kraft's Closest Broadcast Partners are in Court to Get the Sex Video

Source – A pretrial hearing was held Tuesday in Florida in New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s ongoing prostitution case.

A judge granted a motion to allow Kraft’s New York attorneys to appear in Florida on his behalf, as long as they take care of several outstanding paperwork issues.

An attorney for several media outlets opposing Kraft’s legal team’s efforts to have video evidence suppressed also appeared in court, arguing that they should be allowed to intervene in the case.

So if you’re Mr. Kraft – and take it from me, you definitely are not him – you had a good day in that you didn’t have to appear in court today. You could sit back on your veranda in Brookline, swishing a brandy glass of Chivas Regal while looking out over the breadth of your domain and let the people you’re paying all those billable hours to handle the district court proceedings.

But you had a bad day, thanks to this little nugget from that top Tweet:

CNN and CBS – on behalf of its local affiliate WBZ-TV – were joined by five other television networks including Sinclair Broadcast Group and Scripps Media Inc.

Ouch. Et tu, CBS and WBZ-TV? Et tu?

I mean, it’s one thing if CNN, Sinclair and Scripps are dying to get their grubby fingers on a video of man in his late 70s (allegedly) stripping down and (reportedly) letting a 58-year-old professional (purportedly) finishing him off. TV news is a dog-eat-dog world and a video alleging billionaire sex is a one-ton Gainesburger everyone wants to feed off of.

But from the others? This is cold-blooded. Not only is CBS the “broadcast partner” that does all of the Patriots AFC home games, inter-conference road games and playoff games, WBZ-TV (a/k/a Channel 4) does all their preseason, postgame and shows like “Patriots All Access.” This is like your own wife suing you for dick pics while you’re still married to her.

How many times have we heard the reverence in Jim Nantz’ voice while they did the obligatory cut away to the Kraft family box at Gillette? No Asian massage customer has ever been as aroused as he gets when he’s discussing all their good works with Tony Romo and what a pleasure it was to speak to them this week. But I’m blown away that the station that gets all that Patriots content – Scott Zolak sitting down with Bill Belichick, the mandatory one-on-ones during the preseason games between Steve Burton and Belichick, just to name a couple of things – would want the ratings bump from this video so much that they’d allow their name to be put on this court motion.

If I’m Mr. Kraft – and take it from me, I definitely am not him – this would be the end of the business relationship. Local TV news is dying anyway and the stations need his team a lot more than he needs them. If they were to push this, I’d go rogue. Start my own regional network, stock it with all Patriots content 24-7 and bury them. Even fake football games on Ch. 4 destroy late season Red Sox pennant race games in the ratings, so turning a profit wouldn’t even be an issue. And what’s the fun of being one of the richest, most powerful moguls in the known universe if you can’t use that power to suppress your sex tape and destroy the business partners that betrayed you when you needed them?

The rest is up to the lawyers. For now. But if they fail and this motion succeeds, I don’t see how he’ll ever forgive and forget the betrayal.