Over the long sweep of its near half-century history, ESPN has had a reputation for insularity. Some of that is a byproduct of being nestled away in Bristol, Connecticut, some is the leftover impact of the years when cable was viewed as a step down from broadcast.
When ESPN swung for the fences in wooing Bob Costas and Jim Nantz in the early 2000s, it fell short. In the years when ABC Sports existed as an independent entity, its stars rarely made their way down to ESPN; Keith Jackson and Al Michaels combined to call a single game on the network, when the former called the 2005 Holiday Bowl in the penultimate broadcast of his career. When Michaels struck an eight-year deal to move with Monday Night Football from ABC to ESPN, he quickly found a way out of his contract and onto NBC in a trade that netted Disney rights to Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit.
For being the “Worldwide Leader in Sports,” ESPN spent years generating its own talent, but rarely if ever poached any from its competitors. It was in fact the other way around; ESPN lifers would graduate to other networks, from Craig Kilborn to Dan Patrick to Mike Tirico. At a network operating under the belief that talent mattered less than the brand, that was a feature, not a bug.
As the position of cable has become more precarious, taking talent for granted has become less and less tenable. In the old days, ESPN could push out even the most popular anchors and trust that SportsCenter would keep chugging along regardless. Now, the brand is diluted; as SportsCenter anchor Gary Striewski told the Sports Media Watch podcast this year, young audiences know “SportsCenter” as a Snapchat channel more than a cable sports program.
Thus, ESPN has changed its approach. In the old days, the “Monday Night Football” brand was big enough to elevate anyone who occupied its storied booth. For Mike Tirico, who got the play-by-play role after Michaels spurned ESPN, it was a steppingstone to becoming the face of NBC Sports. By contrast, none of his replacements — Sean McDonough, Joe Tessitore and Steve Levy — lasted more than two years before returning to their prior roles on college football.
In a stretch of unprecedented turnover for MNF, it became clear that the series was no longer the talent springboard it used to be. To the contrary, it was MNF that needed talent to restore its status as a marquee property. To that end, ESPN broke with its long-established precedent and poached the acclaimed, fully-formed Fox duo of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. Together with an improved schedule that includes regular ABC windows, the additions of Buck and Aikman have coincided with a ratings and reputational renaissance for MNF.
To be clear, ESPN was already beginning to shift toward a talent-focused strategy as far back as 2015, when the network launched “SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt,” a version singularly associated with one host — a far cry from the days when ESPN executives blanched at Patrick and Keith Olbermann referring to their edition of the program as “The Big Show.” The Van Pelt SportsCenter has become the modern-day edition of the old 11 PM ET version, serving as the SportsCenter of record. Stephen A. Smith has also become arguably the face of the network during his tenure on “First Take.”
What has changed more recently is that the network is no longer bound to going in-house for those big, above-the-fold personalities. Buck and Aikman are at least ESPN employees, working for an ESPN production. The Peyton and Eli Manning Monday Night Football simulcasts, by contrast, are the product of the elder Manning’s Omaha Productions — with which ESPN regularly partners for programs ranging from “Peyton’s Places” to “The Breakdown,” a new studio show with Manning and Bill Belichick.
Similarly, ESPN spent years trying to develop its daily lineup, devolving at times into borderline civil war between the Norby Williamson traditionalists and more creative John Skipper school. Today, neither faction remains. Instead, ESPN has given over two hours of its lineup each day to Pat McAfee, who licenses his eponymous show to ESPN and faces little if any oversight by executives. (When Williamson and McAfee clashed this year, it was the former who lost his job, not the latter.)
Now comes the biggest step in ESPN’s outsourcing strategy, the addition of TNT’s “Inside the NBA” as its main NBA studio show beginning next season. From the very beginning with Kevin Frazier and Tim Hardaway 22 years ago, ESPN has spent nearly a quarter-century failing to put on an NBA studio show that could compete with TNT, or even simply make a lasting impression. Now it no longer has to.
The outsourcing strategy has given ESPN access to arguably the best NFL broadcast team working today and arguably the best studio show in the history of sports television. There is simply no way ESPN was going to organically create a top-tier NFL broadcast team or a top-tier NBA studio show; it had tried on multiple occasions and failed. While there may be competitive pride in developing one’s own talent, it is far easier to simply acquire Emmy-winning finished products that come with their own considerable followings.
Between McAfee, “Inside” and Omaha Productions, ESPN has given up much of the control it once had over its most important programming. The result is of course the dilution of the ESPN brand, but that was bound to happen anyway as the network transitions into its new existence as a streaming app.
ESPN, Fox Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery earlier this year partnered in the ill-fated streaming app Venu, which would have put their programming together in a single app. Whether or not Venu gets a second life, ESPN alone is now going to be the home of the long-tenured NFL on FOX broadcast booth and of TNT’s “Inside the NBA.” The only question is what might be next as the “Worldwide Leader” expands its domain.
