By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

The Dennis & Callahan/WEEI 850 AM saga will stretch onward over the Labor Day Holiday weekend with the two sides not scheduled to meet until, at the earliest, next Tuesday.

According to a a D&C confidant, Entercom has made overtures to the duo to return to the negotiating table after the Monday holiday. However, there’s no need to order pastries and sandwiches for the New Balance Building board room just yet. D&C are once again planting seeds in what they seem to think is still a fertile marketplace to shop their services. Rumors are circulating again that mystery players could be involved in the future of Boston’s sports talk radio landscape.

Realistically, D&C need to being doing exactly this: put forth the appearance that despite losing a monumental battle (the Nassau-Entercom deal), they could still win the war. The only way for that to happen is if the duo has other suitors, which their confidant is assuring they do.

Whenever Dennis is involved, there needs to be lines drawn to one Robert Kraft, who has never been shy about expanding media interests and it’s logical to suggest he would be involved with his long-time friend, Dennis. There could also be something to be said for ESPN 890 AM’s need for local programming (which is coinciding with the For Sale sign being placed on the weak-signaled station’s shingle). D&C would be fools to jump with the 890 signal as it is, but if the strength of signal were boosted and a proper marketing budget were provided, the duo could single-handedly make Felger’s Folks relevant. Whether or not Jessamy Tang’s group could ever pull that off is highly doubtful, but a savvy buyer (or Disney themselves) may be able to make it happen.

Whether or not those D&C desirers have deep enough pockets is another question entirely. The venture capital money D&C thought they had for a Nassau Deal may still have some substance, but certainly Nassau was uniquely positioned for a regional network that just needed some big names to launch with. VC funding may not be as plentiful for a lesser set-up, which all the existing players would seem to offer.

. . . Tough to say what the “leaked” specifics of Howie Carr’s potential WTKK deal does for the D&C cause. Carr’s base pay for the 5-year deal averages out to about $550,000 a year, but the incentives (which are heavily weighted against Carr) are what bring the deal’s $7 million, attention-grabbing price tag. With Carr-like incentives for a D&C deal, the pair would break the Entercom piggy bank, so don’t expect the haggling to gain much traction on such incentives for D&C. However, bonus structures similar to Carr’s (signing bonuses, for instance) might be a way to bring the D&C numbers into the territory their side is claiming they are worthy of. Important to note that Carr, of course is ONE person, while D&C are a package deal.

You just know that Entercom is still in full glow over the Nassuau coup which swiftly ended D&C’s best option AND expanded Entercom’s footprint. They’re feeling pretty chesty in Wolfe and Kahn World and they could, just for the heck of it, really draw this thing out and wait until D&C come-a-crawlin’, with their tails between their arses.

It says here that would be a HUGE miscalculation. Advertisers are ever-antsy over spending for diamonds and getting cubic Zirconia, which is the nicest way possible of saying that Bob Halloran, Ron Borges and whatever other C-lister is being woken up at 4 a.m. ain’t exactly Dennis nor Callahan (even a scratchy-voiced, softer, gentler, Callahan). Buybacks, make-goods and lost accounts are all looming if D&C - or a reasonable alternative - aren’t in place soon for morning drive at 850.

Even with all this pre-Holiday posturing, Shots is still predicting a D&C return that coincides with the first Monday of the NFL regular season, or at the worst, during that week (maybe after a bit of staging, pomp and circumstance the type Jason Wolfe would love to unleash on his Pavlovian public).

Asante Samuel saw the light, D&C might as well do the same. Season’s starting (in Foxboro) and setting up for the stretch run (at Fenway) - time to get back in the booth.

• Just a bit more on the Albert Breer move to the Dallas Morning News:

. . . Breer’s sometime back-up on the Pats’ beat at the MetroWest has been Ben Rohrbach, but it’s a dicey time for the Daily News to be promoting any more staffers as the Gatehouse synergy needs to start paying off soon. That could mean that the Gatehouse papers (and wicked local websites) use a single reporter for all its titles. Eric McHugh is a Gatehouse keeper over at the Patriot Ledger and his work is already being cross-pollinated.

. . .Keep an eye on what happens to the Herald’s Patriots blog, the “Point After.” Breer used that platform more than anyone and Pats beat man John Tomase, a father-to-be, isn’t likely to have the time (or energy) for blogging’s rigors and as we’ve witnessed, the team blogging approach is very hit or miss all over town.

. . . Some of Breer’s more candid comments from our Wednesday afternoon phone conversation:

* “The success of the Patriots had a major role in this move being possible,” Breer said. “They talk about the Cowboys being a national beat, well now the Pats are a national beat too. Some of the stuff I was able to do got national attention.”

* “Football is king down there [in Dallas] and let’s face it, it’s never going to be that way here,” Breer said.

* “With all sincerity I believe Bill Belichick is a big part of this for me,” Breer said. “For me, one of the keys keys was listening in the press conferences. I look at him as being the Albert Einstein of football and I feel fortunate that I was there to ask questions and learn the game of football from him. I really do love football and I’m a fotball guy and so I’m forever indebted to Bill Belichick. I feel so luck to have covered him.”

. . . Breer also said the DMN sports staff is made up of 87 bodies. The Daily News sports staff is about one-ninth of that.

. . . Check back with Shots Thursday throughout the day, as we get our blog on from ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut during Day 2 of the company’s media workshop. Should be interesting on many levels.

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, Mass. and can be reached at shotsATbostonsportsmedDOTcom

You can listen to Scott every Saturday morning from 9 to 11 a.m. as he co-hosts the Boston Sports Review Show on ESPN Radio 890 AM with ESPN’s All-Sports Reporter, Mike Salk.