Over the last year, several major moves have taken place on the sports media free agency front as big-name personalities have switched addresses.  ESPN brought Michelle Beadle, Jason Whitlock, and Keith Olbermann back home from exile.  After staffing their new cable sports network, Fox Sports 1 has gone out and beefed up their journalistic ranks with Rob Neyer, Bruce Feldman, Stewart Mandel, and Adrian Wojnarowski.  Not to be outdone, NBC just snatched Men in Blazers away from ESPN’s soccer coverage to add to their capture of Josh Elliott from Good Morning America.

To buck that trend, one of the most well-known broadcasters in sports is staying put.

Jim Miller reports that Rich Eisen will remain the face of the NFL Network for the time being and will add on a new DirecTV show to follow Dan Patrick.

Eisen would have been a very attractive candidate for a network looking to make a big splash, but there really aren’t any opportunities worth making the leap for at the moment.  The former SportsCenter anchor has been the only face of the network the NFL has ever had as its original lead anchor and Eisen has done nothing but grow into that role over the last decade.

The new DirecTV show (presumably on Audience Network if it’s following Dan Patrick) is very interesting as it gives Eisen a chance to spread his wings a bit even more so than his podcast.  Personality-driven shows are all the rage in sports these days and it’s no surprise to see the NFL and DirecTV give Eisen an additional platform on which to appear.

Furthermore, if DirecTV is going to offer six hours of original sports programming a day, perhaps they are beginning to think about building a competitor for all the other sports talk shows on the landscape at the moment.  With Patrick and Eisen now on board, DirecTV might emerge as a legitimate alternative for those fans looking for morning and afternoon sports talk.

UPDATE: More details on The Rich Eisen Show via a network press release…

DIRECTV and NFL Now are teaming up to launch “The Rich Eisen Show,” a new, daily talk show featuring NFL Network’s Rich Eisen, which will premiere on Oct. 6 and air exclusively on DIRECTV’s Audience Network from noon to 3 p.m. (EDT).

In addition to Audience Network, “The Rich Eisen Show” will be available digitally on NFL Now, the NFL’s next-generation video service, providing fans access to a customized stream of content from the largest digital library of NFL video anywhere across an array of Internet-connected devices.

Originating out of DIRECTV’s headquarters in Los Angeles, “The Rich Eisen Show” is a natural progression for the host whose weekly podcast on NFL.com garnered 16 million downloads over its four-year run. In moving to a daily television and digital format, the new show allows Eisen to use his engaging blend of insightful football analysis, with an offbeat mix of humor and pop culture while continuing to attract the most recognizable names in sports and entertainment.

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