ESPN Cutting New Live Morning "SportsCenter" Block To Six Hours

Berthiaume To Continue In Current "Baseball Tonight" Role

When ESPN debuts its live morning "SportsCenters" on August 11, it will go live for six hours, rather than the nine that were originally planned. The net will show a re-aired loop of "SportsCenter" from 6:00-9:00am ET before going to live programming from 9:00am-3:00pm. "The 6-9am block was always going to be looking back to the previous night," said ESPN VP/PR Josh Krulewitz. "As we proceeded with our plans, we realized the biggest impact on fans across our platform would come from the 9am-3pm block." ESPN had announced that Linda Cohn and Steve Berthiaume would host that early morning block. Berthiaume will continue at his current gig on "Baseball Tonight," while Cohn's future duties are still to be determined. No changes are expected for the other planned hosts (Hannah Storm and Josh Elliott from 9:00am-noon and Chris McKendry and Robert Flores from noon-3:00pm) (John Ourand, THE DAILY).

WATCH WHAT YOU SAY: MARKETWATCH.com's Jon Friedman wrote several ESPN employees "have insulted the audience on several occasions with lowbrow or boorish behavior," noting specifically Jemele Hill, Dana Jacobson and Bonnie Bernstein. ESPN's staff "shouldn't try so hard to be controversial. The network would have fewer embarrassments." But ESPN Exec Editor John Walsh said, "Consider the volume (of content that) our company produces. I don't think it's a cause for a pattern or trend" (MARKETWATCH.com, 7/9).

NOTES: ESPN has hired ABCNews.com Exec Producer Chris Sheridan as a Producer for ESPN's new morning "SportsCenter" block and to work on SportsCenter.com, set to debut later this summer (TVNEWSER.com, 7/9)....ESPN.com's Bill Simmons announced that the net has given him a 10-week hiatus from writing regular columns in order to complete his second book. Simmons' column will return before the start of the NFL season in September; he will continue to do his "B.S. Report" podcast during his break (ESPN.com, 7/8).