SBJ Media: A Direct-To-Consumer Future For ESPN

As the director of investigations for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, representing the Democrats during the impeachment hearings, Daniel Goldman is getting a lot of air time this week, which is making many of his old NBC Sports colleagues smile. NBC hired Goldman to be an Olympic researcher for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. NBC Senior VP/Olympic Production Joe Gesue and Executive Producer Molly Solomon interviewed him for that role more than 20 years ago. “He’s getting more airtime than any Olympic researcher ever,” said Solomon, a former Olympic researcher herself.

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR DELIVERY OF ESPN?

• Disney is contemplating plans to take ESPN -- the linear channel -- over the top. Such a move won’t happen soon -- it probably won’t happen for a decade or more. But during an on-stage interview at Code Media this week, Chair of Direct-to-Consumer & International Kevin Mayer gave voice to the possibility, marking the first time a Disney exec has talked in any detail about ESPN becoming strictly an over-the-top service.
  
  
• Mayer: “At some point, we may very well make it the a la carte option available over the top for ESPN. We’re not at that point now, and I don’t think we’re really very close to that point. People are still well served in the bundle who are sports fans. But we’re always monitoring the situation.” When Recode’s Peter Kafka asked when live NFL games would be on ESPN+, Mayer did not equivocate. “There will be a time,” he said, again, without providing a date.
  
  
• It’s no secret that cord cutting is affecting the sports media business, and direct-to-consumer is all the rage these days. The reality is that the cable bundle will co-exist with direct-to-consumer services for several years. Still, it was sobering to hear an exec who is in the running to eventually replace Bob Iger talk about the future of video in such stark terms. For a company that still makes billions of dollars from the traditional cable bundle, Disney execs can envision a future without it. Mayer admitted that services like Disney+ and ESPN+ could accelerate the cord-cutting trend.
  
  
• Mayer: “When the pay-TV numbers are low enough, and all you have are sports fans that are in that bundle, does it make sense at that point -- rather than wholesaling to what is basically a sports fan-only bundle -- to be a retailer and enjoy the retail economics of that?” he asked. “That’s something that we keep thinking about. I’m not sure where the precise crossover point will be. But that is the type of thing that we think about a lot at Disney.”

MOLLY SOLOMON'S MOMENT

• The fact that the Tokyo Olympics are just eight months away is what made Jim Bell’s announcement earlier this month that he was leaving NBC -- and would not oversee network production for the Summer Games -- so shocking. When I caught up with Bell’s replacement this afternoon, Molly Solomon, she sounded unconcerned. After all, she’s a veteran producer who has held just about every production job at NBC Sports, starting as an Olympic researcher for the 1992 Barcelona Games. Solomon: “I’m going to take the next month to really get up to speed on what the plans are. An Olympics is two-and-a-half or three years in the making. The foundation’s built. The framework of the house is going up.”
  
  
• When I asked Solomon to describe her production philosophy, she relayed advice that now-Turner Sports President Lenny Daniels told her in 2000 when he directed some Olympic coverage for NBC. “As we got ready to go on the air in Sydney for the very first time, he said, ‘I have one bit of advice for you. Do one thing in every show you produce that’s memorable. Always put your imprint on something. Make something special. Never mail it in. Never roll over the rundown from the day prior,’” Solomon said. “That’s been my guiding roadmap to production. That’s about reinventing every single day and trying to think about things in a different way and try to present it to the audience differently.”
  
  
• When Solomon started as an Olympic researcher in 1992 and was commuting to 30 Rock for her first day on the job, somebody pickpocketed her on the subway. She called her father from a payphone in the basement of 30 Rock, expecting him to tell her to take the next plane home. Instead, he told her not to tell anyone what happened, and to pull herself together. “It all came full circle yesterday when my new job was announced,” she said. “I thought about that phone call.”
  
  

SPEED READS

• Brent Musburger was on Peter King's podcast and touched on the NFL's popularity growth through the decades: "I grew up in Montana. Baseball was clearly No. 1, and I was a baseball guy. But I realized soon that football translated better to television ... and that’s where the growth was going to be."
  
  
• Davis Love III cited Tony Romo's smooth transition from player to TV analyst as something that helped him agree to join CBS for PGA Tour coverage. Appearing on the "Golf Digest Podcast," Love said he liked how CBS gave Romo plenty of behind-the-scenes reps well before his first NFL game. "They know me well enough to know that I need practice and that I’m willing to work at it."
  
  
• Ace Media, the NFLPA's content and production arm, worked with STX Entertainment on some custom content around the new film "21 Bridges," a New York City-set crime thriller. The Jets' Le'Veon Bell and Ty Montgomery, along with the Giants' Jabrill Peppers, used their Twitter and Instagram feeds to help drive buzz for the movie.

• ESPN is crowing about the viewership for Seahawks-49ers, which was the top primetime show -- broadcast or cable -- from Nov. 11-17, beating NBC's “Sunday Night Football” and Fox's “Thursday Night Football.” The game's audience of 16.95 million viewers marked the first time a cable program won the week in primetime in nearly four months and proved to be ESPN’s most-watched “MNF” game since 2016.
  
  
• I received several emails after writing about former Washington Post assistant manager editor George Solomon, including one from industry vet Phil Hochberg, who wrote: “Nice tribute to George, who deserves it for the job he did with the Post Sports section.” The Athletic’s Evan Parker, a fellow Terp, wrote, “That picture [of George] at the bottom should have been above the fold! That one’s a framer!”
  
  
• DAZN hosts a Beverly Hills party tomorrow for the premiere of its documentary “One Night: Joshua vs Ruiz.” (Didn’t get an invite? Email Skipper!) Guests expected to attend: Sylvester Stallone, Oscar De La Hoya, Sugar Ray Leonard, Evander Holyfield, Larry Merchant, Jim Gray, Gennady Golovkin, Dolph Lundgren and Logan Paul.
  
  
• You’re not alone in wondering why Fox scheduled my Terps for its high-profile noon window on Saturday a couple of weeks ago -- a 73-14 loss that was not as close as the score appeared. Jimmy Traina asked Fox Sports' Joel Klatt on the "SI Media Podcast" about a run of non-competitive games in the window: "Blowouts are the worst. ... While the strategy has worked from a ratings perspective, my hope is in the future Gus [Johnson] and I can call more competitive games.”

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