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The Rose Bowl has been “The Granddaddy of Them All” in college football for more than 120 years, while the game is also the College Football Playoff quarterfinal with two NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision powerhouses.

The No. 6-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes (11-2) take on the No. 1-ranked Oregon Ducks (13-0) at Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California on Wednesday, Jan. 1.

When Does Ohio State vs. Oregon Start?

The Ohio State vs. Oregon game broadcasts live, with kickoff at 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT. The game airs on ESPN.

Where to Watch Ohio State vs. Oregon for Free

For cord-cutters, there are a few ways to watch Ohio State Buckeyes vs. Oregon Ducks, if you don’t have cable — especially if you want to watch for free. DirecTV Stream has a five-day free trial, while other streaming services — such as Hulu + Live TV — also offers a free trial, so you can watch ESPN for free.

Keep reading for more details on how to watch the Ohio State-Oregon game with DirecTV Stream and Hulu + Live TV.

How to Watch Ohio State vs. Oregon with DirecTV Stream

A subscription to DirecTV Stream — which comes with ESPN for Ohio State vs. Oregon — gets you access to live TV, local and cable channels, starting at $74.99 per month. The service even offers a five-day free trial to watch for free, if you sign up now.

You can watch local networks such as NBC, ABC, Fox, and PBS, while you can also watch many cable networks, including FS1, Lifetime, FX, AMC, A&E, Bravo, BET, MTV, Paramount Network, Cartoon Network, VH1, Fuse, CNN, Food Network, CNBC and many others.

How to Watch Ohio State vs. Oregon with Hulu + Live TV

The Ohio State Buckeyes vs. Oregon Ducks game on ESPN is available to watch with Hulu + Live TV too. Prices for the cable alternative start at $82.99 per month, while each plan comes with Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ at no additional cost.

Hulu + Live TV might be best for those who want all of these streaming services together in one bundle. It also features many other networks, including ABC, Hallmark Channel, BET, CMT, Disney Channel, NBC, Fox Sports and more.

Who Is Performing During Ohio State vs. Oregon Halftime Show

Since it’s a college football game, the Ohio State University Marching Band and Oregon Marching Band are both likely set to perform at halftime of the Rose Bowl game.

How to Buy Ohio State vs. Oregon Tickets Online

Want to attend the Ohio State-Oregon game in person? There are still last-minute tickets to the Rose Bowl game available via Vivid Seats (get $20 off purchases of $200 and over with code BB2024), SeatGeek (your first purchases can get $10 off ticket order $250 and with code BILLBOARD10), StubHub and GameTime (score $20 off ticket orders of $150 and over with code SAVE20). Prices vary depending on the city and seats available.

Moreover, you can save $150 off when you spend $500 with promo code BILLBOARD150, or $300 off when you spend $1,000 with promo code BILLBOARD300 at TicketNetwork.com.

Starting at 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT, Rose Bowl 2025: Ohio State Buckeyes vs. Oregon Ducks broadcasts on ESPN, while it’s also available to livestream on DirecTV Stream for free on Wednesday, Jan. 1.

Want more? For more product recommendations, check out our roundups of the best Xbox deals, studio headphones and Nintendo Switch accessories.

In the end, 2024 was the year that the U.S. performance rights societies found out what type of valuations they can command when they are put up on the block. As the year comes to a close, a select group of private equity suitors is kicking the tires on yet another performance rights organization, SESAC, according to sources.

Those sources say that deals like New Mountain Capital’s acquisition of BMI in February and Hellman & Friedman signing a letter of intent in September to replace Taxes Pacific Group as the majority owner of Global Music Rights that gave GMR a $3.3 billion valuation served as a catalyst for some private equity firms to reach out to SESAC’s corporate owner Blackstone to see if it was interested in selling.

Consequently, Blackstone is fielding inbound interest from a group of private equity firms that unsuccessfully bid on GMR, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Many private equity firms look at GMR and are “all shocked by the final valuation,” says a music asset investor. “Those firms have a real appetite for music because music assets are doing well.” In fact, some sources suggest that SESAC has been a fantastic performer for Blackstone. Nevertheless, as an investment firm representing institutional clients, Blackstone has a fiduciary obligation to maximize returns on their investments. So with the aid of the Moelis & Co. and Morgan Stanley investment banks, Blackstone is selectively and informally shopping the PRO and its subsidiaries to a targeted group of private equity firms, while so far eschewing to reach out to potential strategic buyers, sources say. “You can’t blame Blackstone for testing to see what the market will pay for SESAC,” says one music asset buyer.

SESAC, Blackstone, Moelis and Morgan Stanley executives either declined to comment or didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Blackstone, which bought SESAC in 2017 for $1.125 billion, has since invested in the company as the PRO, led by chairman John Josephson, has been making subsequent add-on acquisitions to complement its core business. During Josephson’s tenure, SESAC has acquired the Harry Fox Agency and Audiam to go along with earlier acquisitions like RumbleFish and Christian Copyright Licensing International. What’s more, in 2021, when Blackstone bought Hasbro’s music assets, including the MNRK record label and the Audio Network production music house, the latter company was added to SESAC’s portfolio. (Sources say Audio Network is included in the SESAC assets being looked at, but Billboard could not determine if MNRK is also included in any potential deal.)

Along the way, Blackstone loaded up SESAC with about $1 billion in debt through a series of asset-backed bond offerings, with the latest securitization for $180 million happening earlier this year. On Feb. 8, Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) noted that the proceeds from that bond sale would be used for “distribution to equity investors” as well as to pay certain transaction expenses and make deposits into certain transaction accounts.

According to that credit rating report, SESAC had revenue of $388.6 million in 2024, presumably the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2024. It also said that the company is expected to hit over $400 million in its current fiscal year, likely the one that will end Jan. 31, 2025. What’s more, that $388.6 million revenue total tracks only the SESAC businesses that are part of the collateral for the February 2024 securitization offering, which included SESAC, Christian Copyrights and Audio Network. Revenue from the Harry Fox Agency (HFA), the Stephen Arnold Group (SAG) and a few other smaller entities are not included as collateral. With HFA and SGA consistently reaching a combined total of $20 million to $25 million, according to revenue numbers given in earlier SESAC bond rating documents — published by the likes of Morningstar and the Kroll Bond Rating Agency — for 2022 and 2019 SESAC bond offerings, it’s conceivable that SESAC’s revenue was already above $400 million by the end of its most recent fiscal year. Those assets are included in what’s being shopped, sources say.

A 2019 Morningstar analysis found that SESAC has had a 12.9% annual growth rate since 1994. While that report didn’t cite revenue from those earlier years, other SESAC-related documents obtained by Billboard through the years show that SESAC had grown from $9 million in revenue in 1994 to about $57 million by 2004, then to about $206 million by 2014 and about $275 million by 2018.

While it’s unclear what price will tempt Blackstone to sell, sources say that as recently as last year, Blackstone and SESAC executives were saying that the PRO and its subsidiary companies were carrying about a $2 billion to $2.5 billion valuation. However, that’s when its securitized net cash flow was $118 million on collections (revenue) of about $318 million, versus the latest financials, which put securitized net cash flow at $147 million on $388.6 million in revenue, according to the Kroll report. That represents increases of 24.6% in securitized net cash flow and nearly 22.2% in collections/revenue over the prior year. Besides that growth, the implied valuation of SESAC is further enhanced by the BMI and GMR deals, which shows that PROs are attractive to private equity, sources say.

Unlike BMI and ASCAP, SESAC and GMR are not stymied by consent decrees, which is also a positive as far as private equity is concerned. A further deal point is that SESAC has a diversified revenue base. According to the Kroll report, at the end of fiscal year 2024, SESAC derived 37.2% of its annual revenue from general licensing, 21.7% from digital, 18.9% from TV, 9.7% from Audio Network, 6.4% from radio, 0.7% from foreign affiliates and 5.5% from other efforts.

On the other hand, that percentage breakout shows that even with the company’s diversification efforts into related music industry functions, its core business remains SESAC’s performance rights licensing, which it does through a boutique strategy of inviting songwriters to join as members. Through this strategy, it has landed such clients as Bob Dylan, Adele and Neil Diamond.

Still yet another plus that suitors will find attractive, says a music industry source, is the savvy stewardship of SESAC under Josephson. “He is been very effective there,” that source adds.

Moreover, in order to improve profitability, SESAC has been quietly pruning songwriters who are not generating enough royalties from their catalog. According to Kroll, the number of songwriter and publisher affiliates (with the former presumably the preponderance of the total), has shrunk from 35,000 in 2019 to 15,000 last year.

Pricing is paramount in whether Blackstone will do a deal. But it will be weighted against the possible return on investment if it chooses to retain ownership of SESAC. As it is, Blackstone and its equity investors likely have already clawed back a good portion of their initial investment in SESAC. In addition to the aforementioned possible equity distribution from the February bond offering, during the eight years it has owned SESAC, it’s likely that Blackstone made earlier dividend payouts to investors from the PRO’s profits down through the years; and possibly from earlier bond offerings, too. Besides that, Blackstone has provided itself with an annual $30 million management fee as measured against 16% of SESAC’s core retained collections, whichever is greater. (While the rating agencies do not define core retained collections, that could be the equivalent of net publisher share — what’s left after making royalty payments to songwriters and publishers.)

As for possible suitors, so far the only private equity firm that has come up in more than one conversation with music industry sources is TA Associates, a Boston-based private equity firm that says it has raised $65 billion in capital. A perusal of the investment firm’s website reveals that it has invested in another music company: In 2022, it acquired TouchTunes, the digital jukebox network that supplies music to bars, clubs, restaurants and other social spaces in North America and Europe. Moreover, a source says that TA may have even looked at SESAC in the past; SESAC has come up for sale a few times over the years and consequently had a few other institutional investor owners in the past, including Rizvi Traverse; before that, Oct-Ziff Capital Management Group was a minority shareholder in the company.

TA Associates representatives couldn’t be reached for comment over the year-end holidays.

Moelis, which is one of the banks said to be shopping SESAC, has made its mark elsewhere in the music business in 2024. Earlier this year, it was the buy-side advisor to New Mountain Capital in its BMI acquisition and the sell-side advisor for GMR in its search for an investor to replace the Texas Pacific Group. Morgan Stanley has music industry experience, including investing with Kobalt in making music acquisitions, among other deals.

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Dilts Marshall.

The Doobie Brothers are readying their 16th studio album, with the group revealing that Michael McDonald will return to perform vocals on the newly announced Walk This Road.

News of the band’s forthcoming record was shared during a year-end wrap-up post shared to Facebook on Monday (Dec. 30). “It’s hard to believe another year just shot by like a rocket!” the band wrote. “We’re currently celebrating almost 56 years together as a band. 55 years since we released our very first self titled album The Doobie Brothers.

“It’s been a long winding road since those early days but we’re still working together, doing our best to remain creative, and looking forward to bringing our music to you folks out there again next year.”

Reflecting on their activities across 2024 (which included close to 60 live shows and featured U.K. opening for the Eagles), the Doobie Brothers closed by looking ahead to the coming year and their plans for new music.

“Here’s the goal we’ve set for 2025,” the post continued. “This train keeps rollin’ down the track and we’re almost ready to release our new album Walk This Road sometime after the first of the year. We have 10 new songs sung by Tom [Johnston], Michael [McDonald], and Pat [Simmons]. The three of us wrote songs and collaborated together. We had a lot of fun recording it and we feel very proud of the results.

“John McFee added his incredible musical talents as well. Once more we turned to the amazing John Shanks who produced, wrote, and played on the tracks with us. Fortunately we’re back working with our friends at Warner Brothers/Rhino Records on this release. We’ll probably debut a song soon after the first of the year and the full album will follow sometime in the Spring/Summer.”

The most notable takeaway from the band’s update is the return of McDonald on an album of original music. Joining the band in 1975 ahead of their Takin’ It to the Streets album the following year, McDonald remained lead vocalist of the band until their 1982, overseeing some of their most popular releases, including 1978’s Minute by Minute – their only album to top the Billboard 200.

Though the Doobie Brothers would reunite in 1987, McDonald’s time with the band was somewhat sporadic, with stints within the group in 1992, 1995, and again in 2014 as a studio member. His last studio album of original material recorded with the Doobie Brothers was 1980’s One Step Closer, though he would feature on one song from 2010’s World Gone Crazy, and feature on the band’s 2014 covers/collaboration album Southbound.

While McDonald rejoined the band as a full-time member in 2019, he was ultimately absent from their 2021 album, Liberté.

Salem Media Group has sold its seven remaining Contemporary Christian-formatted radio stations to the Educational Media Foundation (EMF) for $80 million, the company announced Monday (Dec. 30).

The agreement, which is pending approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), will add or expand EMF programming to seven U.S. markets, with stations including KLTY-FM in Arlington, Texas; WFSH-FM in Athens, Ga.; WFHM-FM in Cleveland; KFSH-FM in La Mirada, Calif.; KKFS-FM in Lincoln, Calif.; KBIQ-FM in Manitou Springs, Colo.; and KFIS-FM in Scappoose, Oreg.

EMF — the parent organization of Christian radio networks Air1 and K-LOVE — noted in a statement that it intends to launch K-LOVE or Air1 Worship Now programming on those signals according to market needs, pending FCC approval. It indicated that it aims to begin programming the stations via a local marketing agreement on Feb. 1.

Also on Monday, Salem announced that it has entered into an advertising and marketing agreement with EMF for $10 million. 

Through its Air1 and K-LOVE networks, EMF reaches approximately 18 million listeners each week. Its Air1 and K-LOVE radio networks have over 1,100 broadcast signals across all 50 states, with global reach through streaming audio.

Salem Media Group’s CCM-formatted radio stations were most commonly operated under the nickname “The Fish.” Founded as Salem Communications in 1974, the company rebranded as Salem Media Group in 2015. It has since grown to become a multimedia company with properties including talk radio, digital media and book/newsletter publishing. According to a March 2024 corporate guide, the company’s other radio signals include 38 Christian teaching and talk radio stations and 30 news talk stations.

Salem’s sale of the seven stations came as part of a group of strategic transactions aimed at shoring up the company’s financial security. As part of this effort, the company repurchased all $159.4 million in outstanding 7.125% senior secured notes due 2028 for $104 million cash and $24 million in subordinated unsecured promissory notes. By midyear 2025, those notes are slated to be exchanged for series A preferred stock. Salem also issued $40 million in series B convertible preferred stock to the foundation WaterStone, with proceeds being used to fund Salem’s debt repurchase. On Dec. 23, Salem extended its revolver line of credit with Siena Lending Group for one year.

“As Salem has leaned into its talk and information programming, we are honored to carry the torch and keep Christian music flowing over these frequencies,” said Tom Stultz, EMF’s interim CEO, in a statement. “These strong stations expand our coverage area and help us deliver on our mission to reach more people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We feel it is an incredible opportunity to continue serving listeners with Christian music in these important markets.”

Edward G. Atsinger, Salem Media Group’s executive chairman/co-founder, said in a statement, “We have made a strategic decision to exit the Contemporary Christian Music format in order to pay off all of Salem’s long-term debt. We could not be more delighted that the buyer is EMF. EMF has demonstrated over many years a unique ability and dedication to creating and distributing the highest quality Christian music content to its listeners in a positive and encouraging way. I am confident that their impact on listeners and their communities will be incredibly effective.”

This isn’t Salem’s first sale to EMF. In March, the company sold its stations in Nashville and Honolulu to EMF for $7 million.

Neil Young has dug deep into his archives for the latest addition to his Fireside Sessions, pulling out “Pardon My Heart” for its first performance in over 50 years.

The live rendition was shared to his Neil Young Archives website as part of his Fireside Sessions series, which just days ago resulted in a rare performance of the track “Silver and Gold” on Wednesday (Dec. 25). Now, the second entry in the series has gone even deeper, resulting in an exceedingly-rare version of “Pardon My Heart”.

Originally released on Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s Zuma album in November 1975, the track had only ever been played twice previously, and not at all since its official release.

Its debut performance took place at the Bottom Line in New York on May 16, 1974, when Young performed a surprirse set following a Ry Cooder show. Appearing as the penultimate song of the set, Young prefaced its debut by describing it as “a love song I learned recently”.

“I wrote it too,” he added. “This is a love song. It’s one of the saddest love songs I’ve ever heard.”

Just three months later, the track received its final live appearance when it was performed during Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s reunion tour in New York on Aug. 15.

“Pardon My Heart” was penned by Young about the disolution of his relationship with Carrie Snodgress, who also inspired much of his Homegrown album. Despite being recorded throughout 1974 and 1975, Homegrown did not see a release until 2020.

Though it currently remains to be seen whether more Fireside Sessions performances will arrive, Young also used his first entry in the series to announce that he would be releasing a new album titled Talking to the Trees, which will be accompanied by a North American and European tour with his new band, the Chrome Hearts.