SBJ Media: Networks Adjust After Kobe Bryant News

Every conversation today has begun and ended with Kobe -- a topic that is, of course, a main focus of tonight’s newsletter.

ESPN, NBA TV MOVED QUICKLY WITH KOBE NEWS

• When TMZ posted news of Kobe Bryant’s death yesterday at 2:24pm ET, ESPN’s top execs scrambled to not only confirm the story, but also to plan for nearly four consecutive hours of commercial-free news. “There’s no playbook for something like this,” said ESPN Exec VP/Content Connor Schell. “It’s a bunch of people who are making their best judgments in the moment on how to handle it.” ESPN first got the news on the air at 3:01pm ET, on ESPN2’s bottom line. A minute later, ESPN and "SportsCenter" tweeted the news from their respective accounts. Joe Tessitore announced the news on ESPN’s Pro Bowl telecast at 3:02pm.
  
  
• Because of contractual commitments, ESPN had to carry the Pro Bowl on its main channel. At 3:08pm, it had “SportsCenter” up-and-running on ESPN2. ABC News and ESPN regularly broke into the Pro Bowl with updates. ESPN Senior VP/Production & Content Strategy Jill Frederickson -- who was at her daughter’s swim meet when she first heard the rumors -- and “SportsCenter” Senior Coordinating Producer Jack Obringer quickly made the decision that ESPN2’s coverage would run commercial free. ESPN has not gone commercial free in such a manner since Muhammad Ali died nearly four years ago. Frederickson: “When things happen with people who are known by one name, it’s a different level of coverage. When you talk about Ali or Kobe -- those are people that just transcend regular news coverage. ... We needed to go as long as we could.”
  
  
• Several other networks also covered the tragedy in depth, including the news networks and NBA TV, which decided to stay with coverage of Bryant’s helicopter crash rather than carrying the previously scheduled Rockets-Nuggets game. NBA TV stayed with live studio coverage, anchored by Matt Winer with Stan Van Gundy and Brian Shaw in studio. ABC News produced a primetime special on Bryant, hosted by Robin Roberts, Michael Strahan and ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi -- which ESPN decided to simulcast. Several ESPN analysts, including Jalen Rose and Michael Wilbon, took part. “Our ESPN crews had been going full bore to that point,” Frederickson said. “To have a little bit of a break before we came back for the 11pm 'SportsCenter' was really helpful.”
  
  
• TV ratings from yesterday buoyed the networks’ decision to go all-Kobe-all-the-time. Early figures show that ESPN2’s ratings grew 758% in the hour after Bryant’s death became public. NBA TV ratings grew by 560% in that same time period. In the L.A. market, ESPN2 saw an 886% growth in that time period and NBA TV ratings were up a whopping 560%.

NBA TV decided to stay with coverage of Bryant’s crash rather than carry a Rockets-Nuggets game

FOX STUDIO SHOWS FROM MIAMI SHIFT TO KOBE NEWS

• The Kobe Bryant story dominated FS1’s studio shows today, even though they were all produced from Miami and were planning to cover the NFL hard. Execs from Fox Sports have spent months setting up the network's Super Bowl week plans, but those plans were scrapped as soon as news of Bryant’s helicopter accident was reported. FS1 Exec VP/Content Charlie Dixon: “I spent seven hours on the phone speaking to every single one of my talent. They all reached out in their own way to explore what this meant to them. We had a very specific conversation about how they wanted to cover it."
  
  
• FS1’s studio programming today had some poignant moments today when discussing Bryant and his legacy, such as when Colin Cowherd and Jason Whitlock choked up on air during their respective shows. Even with the shows coming from Miami, the Bryant story dominated. FS1’s morning show “First Things First” covered Bryant wall-to-wall; “Undisputed” with Skip Bayless and Shannon Sharpe devoted about 60% of the show to Bryant; Cowherd’s show was about 50-50. The afternoon show “Speak for Yourself” was wall-to-wall Bryant. “It’s Super Bowl week, but this is what mattered to them,” Dixon said.
  
  
• Dixon predicted that Super Bowl topics will dominate these shows as the week winds down, but he added that he won’t force any shows to talk about specific topics. He has a meeting scheduled early tonight to see how much they want to stick on the subject of Bryant’s death. “If other talent wants to do it tomorrow, I will support the talent. If they don’t want to do it, I’ll support that as well.”

"Speak For Yourself" was one of FS1's shows from South Beach focused on Kobe today

ESPN LANDS BRUCE LEE, LANCE ARMSTRONG DOCS AT SUNDANCE

• ESPN is back at the Sundance Film Festival for the first time in four years, when “OJ: Made In America” made its debut. ESPN premiered a Bruce Lee documentary called “Be Water” on Saturday and tonight will premiere its Lance Armstrong documentary called “Lance.” Back in October, VP & Executive Producer Libby Geist’s group submitted the two then-unfinished documentaries to be screened at Sundance. The festival accepted “Be Water” for competition and “Lance” as part of its special screening section.
  
  
• ESPN has not scheduled an air date for either of these two documentaries, only saying that they will be scheduled at some point this year. The network will debut a two-part documentary on Michael Vick on Thursday night, followed by a Dwyane Wade documentary next month. A 10-hour documentary centered around Michael Jordan and the 1998 Bulls is planned for June. "We’re in a creative place that I am really proud of from an original content perspective,” said ESPN Exec VP/Content Connor Schell.
  
  
• Schell described “Be Water,” a 104-minute documentary directed by Bao Nguyen, as an emotional film that relies heavily on archival footage. At 201 minutes, “Lance” -- directed by Marina Zenovich -- is the longest documentary ESPN has produced since “OJ” and portrays a complicated central character. “They are two different documentaries,” Schell said. “When Bill Simmons and I started this whole venture 10-12 years ago, so much of it was about the idea that these can’t all look the same. The whole point was that each one has to try its best to reinvent the genre on its own every time out. We’re still attempting to do that.”

SPEED READS 

• TNT just announced that its regular “Inside the NBA” crew will produce a one-hour pregame show tomorrow at 7pm ET, providing the most extensive comments Charles Barkley and Shaq will have made on Kobe Bryant’s death. Pre-, halftime and post-game shows will primarily focus on Bryant tomorrow. The network was set to carry Clippers-Lakers in the late primetime window, but that game has been postponed.
  
  
• It’s still way too early to draw any real conclusions. But SBJ's Bill King compared the betting and TV figures for Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to see if expanded sports betting helped move the needle on NFL TV viewership in Pennsylvania's two largest markets. The verdict: there was "no discernible impact" during the 2019 regular season.
  
  
• Fox Sports only just picked up rights to show the USWNT qualifiers for the Tokyo Olympics, starting with tomorrow's match against Haiti. SI's Grant Wahl blamed Concacaf for the delay. Speaking on the "Planet Fútbol" podcast, Wahl said Concacaf was trying to bundle rights to the women's qualifying tournament with other Concacaf properties, like the Gold Cup, Concacaf Champions League and men's Olympic qualifying. Wahl: “You get the feeling that women's soccer is being disrespected again. These are the world champions, and it looked like we might have a situation where Concacaf was having to put the broadcast on their own website just so that it could be watched. ... Fox Sports could have spent the last two months promoting this, and now they'll have a day."
  
  
• Eight media execs make up this year’s “Forty Under 40” class for SBJ: Twitter’s TJ Adeshola, Fox Sports’ Whit Albohm, Verizon/Yahoo Sports’ Ishwara Glassman Chrein, Deltatre’s Andrea Marini, DAZN’s Joe Markowski, Horizon Media’s Adam Schwartz, ESPN’s Ryan Spoon (who was also honored in 2018) and Amazon’s Jared Stacy.
  
  
• Since NHL opening night on Oct. 2, the Golden Knights have had the largest percentage increase in Twitter followers -- at least for an active team (6.3%), noted SBJ's Mark J. Burns. The NHL Seattle account spiked 11% during the same period. The most-mentioned game on Twitter was Penguins-Maple Leafs on Nov. 16, four days before the Leafs' Mike Babcock was fired. Players with the biggest follower spikes on Instagram over the past 12 months: Auston Matthews (Leafs), Artemi Panarin (Rangers), PK Subban (Devils), Alex Ovechkin (Capitals) and David Pastrnak (Bruins). All five each added more than 120,000 followers.

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