Script & Recording of today’s media call
ESPN’s Steve Levy and Craig Bengtson, Vice President, Director of News, joined some media members today on a call to discuss the debut of SportsCenter from its new home in the 194,000-square foot Digital Center 2 Sunday at 11 p.m. ET (or immediately following Sunday Night Baseball).
Available: Recording and Script (below)
TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY’S CALL
Q. Craig, this is less about Digital Center 2 and more of a news philosophy question. Given your position and background at ABC News and CBC News, philosophically, if an ESPN analyst makes a comment about a player or an issue in sports, do you view that comment as news or cross-platform news? If yes, why? If no, why?
CRAIG BENGTSON: You know, I think it’s difficult to answer that without a specific example. You know, I think any time we have an analyst who has the credibility that so many of ours do have, you know, depending on what they say and what they believe, it could easily be news or not, based on what the question and what the answer is.
Q. And would you say in terms of your own philosophy, that would be true of other analysts at other networks, or do you feel that it’s specific to the sports analysts at ESPN?
CRAIG BENGTSON: No, I would say that, again, I think they’re all different and they all have different levels of credibility and name recognition. When a high‑profile former athlete says something averse to someone who is less high profile, it obviously potentially means more, and depending on their connection to the story line or the people involved in the story, you know, that’s a factor, too. It’s difficult to say, again, without a specific example, but I think in general, if you have a high‑profile former athlete saying something of significance, that can become newsworthy.
Q. After a few weeks of rehearsals and getting used to the new studio, what’s going to be the biggest difference for anchors and analysts actually working in it, and how is it going to change their job? And then also, what’s going to be the biggest new experience for the viewers that we’re really going to notice straight away?
STEVE LEVY: I would say the biggest change for us is certainly awareness of our surroundings. The way I understand it in doing rehearsals, we are almost never, never going to be sitting behind the desk. That might be an opening shot, an establishing shot, a shot for a serious story or a serious discussion, but we’re going to be all over the place, and the place is massive.
So that’s what I mean by awareness of the studio, where we are, where we’re standing, where we’re looking, where we’re going next, what the next move is, and also, I can tell you from the anchor perspective, the desk is nice and comfortable, to be seated there and you have all your papers and all the highlights and all the cards and all the news and notes. But walking around we won’t have that luxury, so sort of the safety net of the hard paper, the script, that won’t be available to us. I think it’s going to be a lot looser. I think the show is going to be a lot looser. I think it’s going to be a lot more on the fly. I think that leads to a lot of fun, a lot of laughs, and in turn, better television, so that’s something we’re all kind of looking forward to, as well.
CRAIG BENGTSON: You know, what’s great about the studio is we finally have a studio that was built to support a 24/7 show. We’re currently working off a studio that was built at a time when we were live only three hours a day, and now we’re live 18‑plus hours a day. What that means in general, I think it’s going to be initially a dramatic change in the experience for viewers for a variety of reasons. Number one, because the studio is built for 24/7 program, the programs will be differentiated in different ways by where they stand on the set, because the set has many multiple anchor locations. The lighting in the morning is different than the lighting at night. The music in the morning is slightly different than the music at night. There are more than 100 video and graphic display monitors versus 15 on the current set. They’re big, they’re large, they’re going to be able to deliver information in a better way to the audience, and I think that will make more compelling television.
The graphics have all been adjusted. There are fewer numbers, they’re bigger, they’re bolder, they’re more colorful, they’re going to make it easier for people to digest the information.
The SportsCenter app and what we do in the digital space will be a larger part of the show in terms of how we deliver that information on the television program. I think it’s going to be a dramatic change in a positive way for viewers in terms of how they consume SportsCenter and how we present news and information in a better way.
And frankly, it also is going to be for our employees. I can tell you that the excitement this week is palpable on campus. The 600 or so people who support SportsCenter in one way or another and have gone through months of training and rehearsals are experiencing something with the show that they have not before. I mean, it is truly evolving in a unique way, and they’re excited about it. They’re excited about the opportunity to be creative in ways they haven’t been before, and that’s really just a wonderful thing to watch.
Q. Steve, how is your approach going to be different? I know we hear this is a little more personality driven. Can we expect some other, I guess, personality type of change? Will you go off script and talk NHL when you feel like it or what’s going to change for you?
STEVE LEVY: You know, it’s an interesting question. There’s definitely a push to have more personality, but you still have to be who you are. You can’t fake that, and if you’re not funny, like myself, you can’t try to be funny. That’s just not going to work for anyone.
But I think it is the looseness. I think it leads to more fun without trying to be funnier. It makes the show more fun and more enjoyable. It’s the age‑old thought in television that if you’re having a good time doing it, then the audience will be having a good time, as well. That never gets lost at ESPN, to entertain and inform or inform and entertain as the two biggest things, and we’re going to try to do both. And I think the new set allows us to do both better.
Craig mentioned it, the excitement is palpable. I mean, you can’t walk five steps on campus now without anybody saying, ‘Did you see the new set?’ ‘What’s the new set like?’
‘Have you seen this corner of the new set?’ So for veterans like Stuart (Scott, co-anchoring with Levy Sunday night) and myself, guys who have been doing the show, really the same show for 20 years, the butterflies are back. It’s a really cool experience, and I think it’s going to translate to the audience, and I think it’s going to progress.
I mean, it’s going to translate on opening night, but then two weeks later you’re going to see something as a viewer for the first time that we didn’t see two weeks ago, and that might be the case in six months from now and in another year from now, as well. It’s a new and exciting time for all of us behind the scenes and for the viewer, as well, as the show progresses and gets more modern with the times.
Really a fun time on campus, and again, I think it’ll translate on TV.
CRAIG BENGTSON: Steve made some really good points. We never ask our talent to be funny. It’s really hard to be funny. There’s some terrific comedians who aren’t funny all the time. What we do ask them to do, and frankly all of our employees, is to have fun. And when you’re having fun, sometimes you have those moments.
And as far as on the set, you are going to see the talent on camera a lot more. I think frankly right now we cover them up too much. Sometimes it’s like radio on television, and these guys do have personalities. We’re not asking them to be more personable, we just want to see them. When you see who’s talking to you, and being able to turn around and point at a screen and see this is the number they want us to focus on when we’re listening to them, that’s just a better way to communicate. The fact that we’re going to have a balance now between the talent on camera along with the content, I just think will make for better television. And again, I think it’s a better way for us to communicate with our viewers.
Q. I think the biggest question is how do you think consumers will be able to really experience this along with big events such as the World Cup? Are you guys going to have it be a program where it’s more involved, especially in a social media aspect?
CRAIG BENGTSON: Well, on the set, for example, we have a social media news room, which I’m not sure any other set has. In our new control rooms there is now a seat for a social media producer, which is we didn’t have when we built DC 1 years ago. We’ve tried to adjust with everything that’s happening in the marketplace in terms of new technology and the type of information that people consume, so social media, the SportsCenter app, will be part of the show on a daily basis. What’s happening in the Twitter space, which obviously as we all know is really today’s newswire, will be an important part of the show, and we’re just going to be able to deliver that information to people in a way that can help drive the conversation in those spaces, not just on television, but also in the digital space.
The set really allows us to change how we communicate with people in every way.
Q. My question is how advantageous or just lucky is it that you have a huge, big event that everybody can relate to in the World Cup, an external event, happening at the same time as you’re broadcasting as you guys have a huge internal event for your company, and how do the two kind of work together?
CRAIG BENGTSON: You know, it’s just the way the timing worked out. It was not planned that way. You know, we had actually at one point thought we were going to be able to launch earlier than we currently are. At the end of the day, we wanted to launch the building and launch SportsCenter when we were ready, and whenever that was, that’s when it was going to be.
You know, it just turns out between the World Cup and Wimbledon this week and so on, there are a number of events that just help us to do what we do. But it really wasn’t timed for any particular reason, but we’ll certainly take advantage of that.
STEVE LEVY: It would be ideal to be coming out of one of the World Cup games. If we were all about tying these two things in together, to come out of a World Cup game with the massive audience rating into our first show on the new set, that would be something. But that’s not the case, and that shows that, as Craig said, the timing is merely coincidental. I think we broke ground seven years ago, so couldn’t have timed it out to follow a particular game well before the World Cup schedule came out or anything like that. We’ll be in our normal slot following Sunday Night Baseball. I’m sure there will be additional promotion based on the show and the new set.
This is actually something I asked last night in our newsroom doing the show from our old home. I said, ‘How much of Sunday night’s show is going to be about the set,’ and that’s sort of a slippery slope. We don’t want to make it about the set. The show on Sunday night is the big show of the week obviously, the Sunday night 11 (p.m.), and that’s going to be about the show. It just so happens to be in the new set. I asked, ‘Are we bringing back old timers? Are we flashing back to our original set? Are we doing a walking tour throughout the 90 minutes on Sunday night?’ and what I’ve been told is, ‘No, that’s not the case to any of those things.’ We might show some wide shots and I’ll try to scream to Stuart across the studio, which is so massive now, but other than that, we’re going to do the old show in the new studio. And again, that’s something we’re all very excited about.
CRAIG BENGTSON: Yeah, I don’t think there are many viewers who care whether we have a new set or not. I think they will enjoy it once they see it and enjoy how we communicate with it, but I’m not sure they really care about the new set. I think at the end of the day, they just want their highlights, their scores, their analysis. We’re just going to do our show on Sunday night, and other than saying ‘Welcome to SportsCenter and we’ve got a new set here,’ I’m not sure we’re going to mention it at all. We’re just going to do the show and let it and the environment that we’ve created speak for itself.
Q. Craig, how specifically will social media be incorporated into SportsCenter on a show‑to‑show basis? You were mentioning social media producer somewhere on the set. Can you be specific as SportsCenter heads forward obviously with this new digital center, how will viewers see social media or how will they experience social media during SportsCenter shows?
CRAIG BENGTSON: So initially, at least, we’ve now got a social media producer in the control room. We now have the social media newsroom on the set, which allows the folks who are creating content in the social space on dot‑com, on the SportsCenter app, to have access, immediate access not only to our talent but obviously guests that we may have, and our analysts, which is just from an efficiency standpoint, helpful.
All of the new graphics, all the new animation that you’ll see in the program, you’ll also find that day, on Monday, on the app and on SportsCenter or any SportsCenter material and any of the social spaces that we now exist in, including ESPN.com in the digital spaces. That’s something that they’ll notice.
We are going to begin using the SportsCenter app within the program, initially in the touch screen, so we can use it just like you would use it on your phone. It’s not as a gimmick or as a promotion, although it certainly can work that way, it’s really just an option for us to look at some content that normally might not be getting in the show but it on the app or on ESPN.com and give us a chance to bring it to life on the SportsCenter set, either in the touch screen initially, and eventually in these enormous video walls that we have.
You know, we certainly understand the importance of Twitter in the social conversation of sports on a daily basis, and we’re just going to try to use the set and the environment to connect it better than we can now.
STEVE LEVY: Here’s my thought on Twitter. Do you want to know how Twitter helps me the most right now and all the SportsCenter anchors? Twitter catches mistakes. Our audience is so smart and so locked into our show, that they bail us out from time to time ‑‑ I would say a couple of times a night. What I mean by that is, can you imagine how many highlights we’re doing over the course of a two‑hour, the usual 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. stint? How many highlights? How many statistics? How many nuggets? And we’re off by a year, or a percentage point, or you get the guy’s first name wrong — his name is Dave instead of Roger. You can imagine the volume of material that we’re providing. We’re only human like everybody else, so we make mistakes.
And a quick check of a personal anchor’s Twitter feed — and sometimes it’s nicer than others — how they point out these mistakes. But they help. We can’t always take the correction at their word because maybe they’re wrong, too, or maybe they’re just playing with us, but at least it alerts us to a potential mistake. Then we check it with our own research and then we go back and fix it so it’s perfect for the on‑air product. Twitter has greatly aided the accuracy of SportsCenter, really, on a nightly basis, and I appreciate that.
Q. In terms of making mistakes, which I think that was an amazing answer, by the way, when you’ve been getting used to the new studio, have there been any funny events, either the staff or anchors or production team learning how all this new technology and new space works?
STEVE LEVY: I guess we haven’t really been on TV from there yet, so you mean like in rehearsal time? Buccigross fell off ‑‑ we have like these platforms to stand on now on the new set, and Buccigross fell off during rehearsal. Fortunately he’s such a finely‑tuned athlete he wasn’t injured on the play. But those are the kind of things that certainly could happen, and I imagine we would go back at least on the shows of record that are going to last throughout the overnight and the rare time that SportsCenter is on tape, we’d go back and fix that.
But I think there is some of that. I think there is some of that for the audience. I know there’s certainly some of that for the anchors: ‘Hey, what’s going to happen in the next segment?’ ‘We’ve never done this this way.’ ‘I’m going to be standing directly in front of the highlight — how is this going to work? Or am I going to be blocking the actual key play or trying to show a guy sliding into third base in a close tag play, and, wait a second, I’m standing directly in front of third base, am I going to be blocking this?’ These are all things we tried to work out in our May rehearsals, but I think it adds to the intrigue certainly of the opening night and the few first weeks of the show to come, and adds to the live fun experience for everyone involved, especially the audience.
CRAIG BENGTSON: One of the goals when we built the set was to be able to put a camera in the middle of it, and if you turn that camera 360 degrees you’d be happy with whatever we were showing the audience. So what we’ve done is we’ve really built one set with many, many locations on it, and we’re actually just saying we’re going to welcome the audience into the middle of sports, into the middle of our home, and we’re going to allow them to see what we do. The talent will be on camera more often, you’re going to see cameras every once in a while going through, you may see a researcher run across with a card for an anchor. We’re going to allow people to come into our home a little bit and see how we do what we do, and occasionally that may lead to some interesting moments, which I think we’re all good with.
Q. Is there any one sport that you think really is going to benefit with all this space and technology? We’ve got football season coming in, that’s kind of the biggest sport out there. Is it really going to affect how we appreciate the NFL with all the touch screens and in what ways?
CRAIG BENGTSON: I don’t think it’s sports specific in any way. I think the opportunity for us to do what we do in terms of any sport is going to look grander, more compelling. But more importantly, I think people are going to enjoy the experience of the video better. Steve and his colleagues are going to be able to tell stories better because now they’re going to be standing in front of us explaining to us rather than us just covering them up and not quite sure what to look at or what number to pay attention to. So I don’t think in any way is it sport specific. I think it’s all going to look better.
STEVE LEVY: I agree. I was just going to add that that’s one of the keys for the anchors, as well, what Craig just hit on. Standing in front of a massive highlight, that’s one thing. But to be able to stand in front of a screen that has a text on it, real information, that’s going to be entirely different. Because now, when we take a graphic full screen, your eyes can sort of gloss over that as we’re giving you other facts and figures that pertain to the facts and figures you’re seeing on the screen. But the difference now is I’m going to be standing in front, and I’m going to point to or circle or highlight this one particular line, which is in essence, if you’re watching this for 12 seconds, this part of the show, this is the ‑‑ if you take away only one thing from these 12 seconds, this is it: Bam, sort of in your face. You will not be able to gloss over it. You will not be able to miss this key point because I’ll be standing there pointing to it, and I think that’s going to help keep everybody’s attention, keep everybody’s focus, and again, to get the critical piece of information out of those 15 seconds that you might have otherwise lost.
Q. What is one of the biggest concerns dealing with the texts or technology that you guys may have to encounter? Seems like you guys implemented a lot of new digital media technology, more graphics, and since you have all of those, what are you most concerned about when it comes to that, if it’s things failing or not working properly or so forth?
CRAIG BENGTSON: You know, I don’t think at this point I have any concern about anything from a technology standpoint failing. I mean, our colleagues have worked really 24/7 for months now to make sure this building and its 900 plus miles of fiber are doing what they’re supposed to be doing.
I think the biggest challenge, even after months of rehearsal, will continue to be that it’s really changed how everyone who touches SportsCenter does their job, whether it’s Steve and his colleagues as talent, the producers, the CPs, right on down to the PAs. All of their jobs have changed, and particularly the directors, who again, have gone from 15 monitors they had to worry about to now more than 100 video monitors that have to be populated with video and graphics 24 hours a day.
That challenge, I think, is a positive one. I think everybody is thrilled about the opportunity that their jobs have changed in some way, and in a positive way. And ultimately they’re going to be able to deliver content differently and be created in ways they never have before. So I think that the greater challenge is just for us to get comfortable with all of the technology and all of the opportunities that we have now that we didn’t have before.
STEVE LEVY: Mistakes happen, and whether it’s technology or human error, those mistakes happen. And you know what? They happened on the old set. They happened on the first set. They’re going to happen on somewhat a nightly basis. I think the thing is to stay loose, especially with the new set, to have a good time with it. I think there’s probably going to be some growing pains. The studio is jumping, I don’t have the exact figures, but is it three times bigger? Four times bigger? And 20 times the television monitors? And 20 times everything. I think there’s going to be a growing period, a feeling‑out phase, and again, I think the SportsCenter we do on Sunday night will look vastly different from the one we do in even three months from now, and certainly in six months and a year from now and going forward, as we get comfortable with all the new toys. It’s like buying a luxury car: A. nobody ever reads the manual; and B, over time you figure out what this car can do. And then you realize, ‘Hey1 Wow! I didn’t know I could do that. And people tell you, ‘Hey, you have that car, it’s got this automatic starter.’ ‘Wow, I didn’t know I could do that from my key.’ So I think that’s somewhat similar to the new set. We’re going to find out over the course of time just how fast this car can go, and that’s part of the excitement, I think, too.
CRAIG BENGTSON: Yeah, the most basic execution of a segment on Sunday is going to look terrific. We’ll just add a level of difficulty as we go, as we all get comfortable with our new roles.
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