NEW YORK — As cord cutting hits ESPN, the network is making a big push to seek out fans where they already congregate, producing content tailored specifically for Snapchat and streaming. For some of ESPN’s veteran hosts, this shift requires some adaptation. For newer faces, the format feels more natural.
Scott Van Pelt, who joined the network in 2001, will host a new, short-format, morning SportsCenter that will air only on the ESPN app. The program will be less of a show than “a digestible spoonful,” he said, focusing on the single most important news item of the day or a repurposing of a compelling segment, and covering fewer topics.
“It actually probably allows less because there’s not as much space, so it’s going to force us to be lean,” he said, comparing the streaming show to the traditional, linear broadcast of SportsCenter. “It’s going to force us to be concise. And that is not my strength.”
For years, Van Pelt hosted a radio show, either solo or with former co-host Ryen Russillo. “Radio is great because it gave me three hours to wander, but now I’m trying to narrow the focus to what’s the most important thing, what’s the best thing that you need to see that you might not have,” he said. “It’s going to be a fun exercise.”
At the network’s Upfront—its annual pitch to advertisers in New York City—Van Pelt and other ESPN speakers stressed that SportsCenter in all its forms remains the legacy brand of the industry, and not just the network itself.
“What SportsCenter is and continues to be is the great validator, the great magnifier and amplifier of a story,” he said. “If it’s on SportsCenter, it matters.”
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Katie Nolan joined ESPN last October and became one of the SportsCenter on Snapchat hosts a month later. She will also anchor a new weekly late-night program, Always Late with Katie Nolan, that will air on the ESPN app.
(Photo by Steve Fenn / ESPN Images)
“I think it’s just going to be fun, light and not take itself too seriously,” she told SportTechie in an interview. “That’s the benefit of being on streaming—I want to be complementary to what’s happening on ESPN. I don’t want to be, like, ‘I don’t think we need analysts and numbers.’ I want you to watch that, and then at the end of the week, you come and watch [my show] and remember when that happened and how funny that was.
“The benefit of being streaming on digital is that we can kind of live in that world and play around with all the information and stuff that you get on ESPN but make it different and more me.”
ESPN originally courted Nolan to increase its personality-driven programming. The network’s own promotional materials tout her “sharp, irreverent and authentic voice,” and her acerbic wit was clear during an interview. After her first thoughtful answer to SportTechie, she interrupted the second question to ask why the reporter’s notebook page remained empty.
SportTechie: “How does ESPN …”
Nolan: “I noticed you wrote nothing. Was nothing I said interesting?”
SportTechie: “No, I was recording it.”
Nolan: “I was just watching your pen like, ‘Oh man, I’m not nailing it. He would be taking notes if I was nailing it.’”
On the Minskoff Theater stage for the Upfront event, Nolan relayed that 80 percent of the three million daily Snapchat audience was under 35, saying, “The SportsCenter we make talks to the audience the way they would talk to their friends because it’s in an app they use to talk to their friends.”
Nolan then joked about the lack of additional news about her eponymous show, promising updates on an index card that proved to be blank. At the digital advertising NewFronts event earlier this month, she explained one benefit of streaming: the lack of a hard cap.
“Some weeks maybe it’ll be 27 minutes—maybe I had stuff to do,” she said back then. “Some weeks it might be 35, we’ll go crazy.”
As this reporter made dutiful chicken scratchings in his notebook at Upfront as affirmation of her insight, Nolan said she’s eager to minimize the meetings and conference calls. “I just want to make some people laugh,” she said.
“Hopefully it’ll be soon,” Nolan added. “I don’t have any date yet, but it’ll happen eventually. Dates are just—time is a flat circle, you know? Dates are not real. You can watch it whenever you want. ‘Always Late because you don’t care about dates.’ It’s a good tag line.”
