Erin Andrews ousts Ochocinco, moves on to DWTS finals

A laurel and hearty handshake to Erin Andrews and her close personal friend Maks for bouncing Chad Ochocinco and advancing to next week's finals of "Dancing With the Stars."

(After they lost, Ochocinco's partner Cheryl Burke lauded him for his humbleness. That was amusing.)

Ms. Andrews contract soon will be up at ESPN, and she and the network are trying to figure out the proper level of compensation for a higher-profile-than-most sideline reporter - and perhaps other roles for her at ESPN and/or its sister network ABC.

I asked John Skipper, the executive who oversees all content for the Bristol Stompers, about all of this Tuesday. He said:

"We think Erin is terrific on the sidelines. She clearly has some interest in some things beyond just sports. We’ve had some interest in Erin for things beyond the sidelines.

 "Obviously it works out great when we have ABC and she can do some of the things she’s interested in on a sister network. We have some discussions there. We need to see what we do in the future.

"It works out great in this case when it’s a sister network. It certainly would be our hope we could do something like that."

Richard Deitsch of SI.com asked Mr. Skipper how ESPN views its personalities who cross over into other areas of show biz. He said:

"We’re generally OK with it. It has to be something appropriate and something we can work into the schedule. But we’ve had Kenny Mayne do some things. We had John Anderson do 'Wipeout.' We’re particularly excited about it when it’s a sister network.

" As a company we keep ‘em pretty busy, but if we can accommodate ABC we’re happy to do so . . . We don’t have an edict or a mandate. Generally people ask us, 'Can I do this?' We like to be accommodating where we can.

"But our first goal is to make sure we’re doing what need to do serving sports fans. It has to work in the schedule, work image-wise."