NBC Sports Group on Wednesday announced the launch of NBC Sports Films, an initiative to produce sports documentaries that will air across the net's various platforms, including NBC, NBCSN, NBC Sports RSNs and NBC Sports Digital. The first project as part of the initiative, titled "Center Of Attention: The Unreal Life Of Derek Sanderson," will be a one-hour documentary chronicling the life of the former NHLer, narrated by actor John Slattery. It will premiere June 8 on NBCSN following Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final (NBC Sports). The WALL STREET JOURNAL's Matthew Futterman noted the NBC Sports Films initiative is an "effort to compete with ESPN and HBO." It will "have a strong Olympics bent," but will also "produce documentaries about other sports, capitalizing on partnerships NBCUniversal has with organizations" such as the NHL, NASCAR and Notre Dame football. NBC Sports "plans to use in-house talent to produce the documentaries." That approach is "different from both" ESPN and HBO. NBC Sports Group Senior VP/Original Productions Mark Levy said that he "plans to produce four films a year" that will be shown on NBCSN and "may also appear on Comcast’s 11 regional sports networks" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 5/28).
LORDS OF THE RINGS: VARIETY's Brian Steinberg noted producers at NBC's dedicated Olympics unit for years "have produced hours of documentary-style features to accompany its parent company’s mammoth coverage of that event." Levy said that staffers during the course of an Olympics broadcast "craft more than 50 athlete profiles, 10-12 longer features, 10 to 12 vignettes lasting four to five minutes, and a number of eight-minute pieces." Now NBC Sports "wants to take that type of programming and play it across everything." Levy: "Our goal is to produce one a quarter." He added that the documentaries are "likely to focus on sports with which NBC has an established relationship -- hockey, NASCAR, and the like -- rather than portraits of players" from MLB or the NBA. Levy: "People are not coming to us for that content" (VARIETY.com, 5/27).
