SBJ Media: Will ESPN Be Peyton's Place?

Over the weekend, SBJ’s Terry Lefton related a story to me that I hadn’t heard before. When he was an early teen, Lefton would hitchhike on Nantucket. Fred Rogers, of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” fame, would give him a lift “on multiple occasions.” According to Lefton, Rogers was just as nice as he appeared on TV. 

ESPN STILL PURSUING PEYTON MANNING FOR BOOTH

• Now that CBS has signed Tony Romo, ESPN already has reached out to Peyton Manning's reps to see if the future hall of famer is interested in working as an analyst for “Monday Night Football,” sources tell me. The move mirrors ESPN’s pitch last March when President Jimmy Pitaro and Exec VP/Content Connor Schell flew to Denver to try and talk the former QB into replacing Jason Witten. Manning ultimately said no to “MNF” last year. But he has worked on two shows for the ESPN+ platform -- "Peyton’s Places" and "Detail" -- and has a good relationship with ESPN’s top execs, so the chances of Manning saying yes, while still not good, are better than zero.
  
  
• ESPN’s courtship of Manning looks to be a longshot this season. Last month, CBS offered Manning its top NFL analyst job as part of a five- or six-year deal worth $10-12 million annually, the N.Y. Post’s Andrew Marchand reported today. Over the last three years, Manning has met with every network that carries NFL games, sources told me. But he has yet to take the leap to live TV. ESPN is hoping that Romo’s $17 million contract will provide the impetus for Manning to finally say yes.
  
  
• If Manning turns ESPN down, its options become more limited, especially with Drew Brees, Philip Rivers and Greg Olsen committed to play next season. Kurt Warner presents a safe option for the telecast, which also has to hire a lead producer. Another option is to put its top college booth -- Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit -- into the "MNF" booth, but that carries some risk, as they are so identified with college. ESPN could decide to sign an analyst to a short-term deal and wait for a more high-profile player to retire.

"GET UP!" HITS ITS STRIDE NEAR 2-YEAR ANNIVERSARY

• Shortly after ESPN launched its morning show “Get Up!” in April 2018, a Twitter feed called @DidGetUpGet300K emerged that tracked the show’s audience every day. Early on, the show fell short of 300,000 viewers most days. Now, exactly 23 months after launching, the show has posted numbers that suggest it will be in the weekday 8-10am ET timeslot for a long time. It has posted 12 straight months of viewership growth and averaged 342,000 viewers in February. From 8-10am, ESPN is the top rated cable network among the men 18-34 and men 18-49. “I don’t want this to be interpreted as, ‘Hey, now we’ve figured it out,’” ESPN's Connor Schell said. “These shows are a process. Every single day, you need to figure out how to be better than the day before.”
  
  
• "Get Up!" host Mike Greenberg credits some programming tweaks that helped build the audience. The main tweak: Focus first on sports news and highlights before getting into opinions, analysis and debate. Greenberg also said it took time to build a chemistry with other hosts, like Dan Orlovsky and Marcus Spears. “There’s an expression that goes back to my radio days, which is that you have to give a show time to bake,” Greenberg said. “The most significant thing that has happened is that we’ve had time to bake.”
  
  
• The show was heavily criticized early on. Greenberg said that producers listened to the criticism and responded. “Criticism is not fun, but it is part of the business,” Greenberg said. “I never took it personally. I sensed it to be that people were suggesting that we didn’t have it right yet. I thought that was helpful. We had to figure out what parts of it people liked and what parts of it people didn’t.” The @DidGetUpGet300K Twitter feed last tweeted the show’s ratings on June 11.

Greenberg credits some programming tweaks that helped build the "Get Up!" audience

NETWORKS ADJUST TO CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK

• The coronavirus outbreak caused Twitter to suspend all non-critical business travel events, including CEO Jack Dorsey’s talk at SXSW later this month. Amazon did the same. WarnerMediaplaced travel restrictions on its employees, according to a memo that Chair Jeff Zucker sent out today. In his memo, Zucker referenced Turner’s upcoming NBA and NCAA coverage. “We will work to be sure that our staffing needs are met but limit any participants that are not absolutely critical to getting our content out or meeting basic revenue-generating needs. ... NBA and NCAA regular program production WILL continue as normal, managed by the programming and production groups and individual show units.”
  
  
• CBS and Turner rescheduled a planned March 10 NCAA media session, turning it from a Manhattan-based press conference into a conference call “out of an abundance of caution,” according to an email Turner Sports sent out late this afternoon. Across sports media, TV network execs convened several meetings today on coronavirus. Unlike WarnerMedia, CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC have not prepared written policies for their companies. Sources with each of the networks say they are monitoring the situation and encouraging employees to make smart travel decisions. “This has been Topic A today,” one executive told me.

REMEMBERING MAURA MANDT

• Sports media is mourning the loss of Maura Mandt, who died unexpectedly on Friday at the way-too-young age of 53. She started with ESPN as a production assistant in the 1990s and grew into one of the most influential producers in sports. “Everything she touched, she wanted to make it as good as it could possibly be,” said ESPN’s Connor Schell. “Part of why her death is so impactful is that she made all of these incredible relationships over time and really meant something to lots of people.”
  
  
• I was struck by all of the beautiful tributes I saw over the weekend. Make sure you read writer and producer Aaron Cohen’s beautiful tribute in The Ringer, where he described Mandt with a “big smile, a Virginia Slims cigarette dangling from her hand, always trying to solve five problems at once.” ESPN Exec VP/Event & Studio Production Stephanie Druley shared a poignant text Mandt sent her a few years ago. “I just wanted to say congrats and I will forever be in your corner.” NFL Network’s Rich Eisen shared this two-minute video tribute that you really should see. “Maura Mandt was a force of nature.”

Maura Mandt with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at the 2019 ESPYs

SPEED READS

• Free-agent dominoes are creating a headache for NFL schedule makers, per NBC Sports' Peter King. With the Tom Brady sweepstakes creating uncertainty for both teams and other free agents like Philip Rivers, NFL Senior VP/Broadcasting & Media Operations Howard Katz and his four-person team have to identify which teams they should max out on national dates. An anonymous team exec told King, "How do you create a prime-time schedule not knowing who half the quarterbacks will be?”

• Former Fox Sports exec Clark Pierce, who left the company last May, has started an advisory firm called Emerging Media Technologies. Clients include the Big East, tech startup videoflow.io and media technology services firm iX.

• Showtime named Puja Vohra Exec VP/Marketing & Strategy. Vohra most recently served as CMO for BSE Global, where she "directed all marketing, creative and digital efforts" for BSE Global properties, including the Nets and Barclays Center.

• Did a writer let the cat out of the bag on subscriber figures for The Athletic? In a now-deleted tweet from yesterday, the site's Colts beat writer, Stephen Holder, tweeted “1 million happy subscribers and counting” for the platform. The Athletic tells me that it’s not commenting publicly about Holder’s tweet.
  
  

------ Intersport-SBJ Brand Innovation Summit ------ 

MAXIMIZE THE POWER OF SPORTS 
Fresh voices driving the industry forward. 
June 10-11, 2020 
The Ritz-Carlton Chicago 

For More INFORMATION and to REGISTER, 
go to www.Brand-Innovation-Summit.com.

Enjoying this newsletter? We've got more! Check out SBJ College with Michael Smith on Tuesdays and Thursdays for insights into all the latest news around the world of college sports. Also check out SBJ Football with Ben Fischer on Friday afternoons.

Something on the Media beat catch your eye? Tell us about it. Reach out to either me (jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com) or Austin Karp (akarp@sportsbusinessjournal.com) and we'll share the best of it. Also contributing to this newsletter is Thomas Leary (tleary@sportsbusinessdaily.com).