Retirements at ESPN, what's next in the announcer carousel, and the WNBA Finals roll on

0:00Coming up on the pod, some big names taking early retirement at ESPN, Fox narrowly avoids a World Series sweep, and a matinee for WNBA Finals Game 6.

0:16Welcome into the SVJ Sports Media Podcast. I'm Austin Karp. And I'm Josh Carpenter. Josh, I've attended three Panthers home games so far this season, and Carolina has split up 128 points in those three games. This past weekend, I was there for the Buccaneers game. Just not good. No defense at all. And it really took away from the halftime ceremony where they were fedding Luke Keekly for getting into the Hall of Fame. You had the Panthers owner, David Tepper. He had to be on the field. I'm sure he was pissed off as hell. I probably should stay away from Bank of America Stadium if this is going to be the case.

0:51You know, Austin, I'm going to spit some truth on the Carolina Panthers right now. It was somewhat ironic that Luke Keekly was getting his Hall of Fame ring on Sunday because, to me, the team has not had a backbone since Luke Keekly played for them, which has been six or seven years at this stage. You know, for a team to lay down like dogs like that in a game like that, it's embarrassing. And frankly, like, I'm not emotionally invested in the Panthers week to week now. I've gotten to that point with them. So I turned on the game on the radio. I went to pick up some groceries and I heard what was going on.

1:23I said, you know what? It's a beautiful 65 degree day in Charlotte. I'm going to do that instead. So that's where I'm at. Let's play a room of the Giants bandwagon. If you want sitting pretty in the NFC East, I get you a J.J. McCarthy jersey. You'll be all good. Yeah, I don't know if I'm going to buy into that. Anyway, awesome. Let's get to sports media. ESPN. We talk about ESPN a lot, obviously. There's some big names taking early retirement packages at ESPN that we reported on earlier this week. Like, tell us about what we need to know around these retirement packages. Well, this is a Disney-wide thing.

1:53It's important to know. Like, this is not just ESPN. This is something that is part of Josh DeMauro coming aboard. Anytime you have a new CEO added or there's some sort of merger of companies, they're always going to do these sorts of redundancies, they call them. Yes. In this case, it was a company-wide offer. Who qualified? First, you had to reach a 65-point threshold. You had to have a minimum of 10 years at the company, and you have to be a minimum of 50 years old. And you also have to be at a direct level or above to qualify for this voluntary offer. So if you can get to 65 based on your duration and your age, you qualify.

2:27But who this doesn't actually include are some of the most senior executives because they're on contracts. Some of the names we've heard so far that have taken this offer and a lot of them are going to take effect at the end of November. But some of them are going to be at the end of season. Mark Gross, who leads production on the NFL side, he's going to stay through the Super Bowl. Tim Corrigan, who leads production, has for a long time on the NBA. He's going to stay through the NBA finals. We've already noted previously that Clint Overby, who has been at ESPN events and runs a lot of their polls, he's going to stay through the end of February.

2:59But a lot of these names that you're going to start hearing about, it's going to be the end of November. When those voluntary early retirements start, you'll hear names there. And you might also hear some names of people down the road that are going to lose their jobs that didn't take this voluntary buyout. Not everyone's taking it. So a lot of senior executives, these two producers in particular, Mark Gross and Tim Corrigan, they have been there for such a long time. They've been so key on the production for those sports and other sports. Yeah. So what does that look like then for ESPN's NFL for its NBA production moving forward?

3:33Are there executives in waiting to take those spots? What does that look like? I'm sure there are. It's going to be a changing in the guard. Like I said, these guys have been there for 25, 30 years. People have probably wanted to move up the ranks. And this is going to be that opportunity you'll see really a changing of who under Mike McQuaid are going to be his new lieutenants there on the production side for some of the key sports like NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and other sports. And the Mike McQuaid change also just happening here in the last year or so. Yeah, so this will be him really putting his stamp on who is doing the key production for sports around Bristol and elsewhere.

4:07Yeah, so some big stuff happening at ESPN and Bristol specifically. specifically. Speaking of ESPN, Austin, TGL's 2027 schedule came out this week. They have, you know, a few more ABC broadcast windows, a bunch of ESPN windows, as you would expect. But two dates on that schedule I want to point out. There were two matches listed for January 17 or the 18th. Still to be determined, not exactly sure when those are going to be airing on ESPN. And it actually has a tie to the NFL that you want to tell us about this week. This is going back to the beginning of 2026 when I first reported that that deal, ESPN had a separate deal.

4:44Around the wild card. Just around the wild card for that Monday night slot. It was a five-year deal. That expired after last season. It doesn't mean that ESPN was going to lose a wild card. That's part of their broader NFL deal. They're going to keep that no matter what. What you saw in previous years before this Monday night slot was created, ESPN would have that Saturday afternoon window. They wanted to really blow it out a little more. They wanted to do the Manning cast, which they've done around the wild card. There is still some uncertainty as to what that wild card on Monday, who's going to have that?

5:14Is someone going to have that? Or could the NFL even move to a three and a three, just do this on Saturday and Sunday and not do a Monday? They found success having that Monday window to themselves. Now with this equity deal that happened, the NFL is a 10 % stakeholder in ESPN. So maybe they just want to give it to them without having to do a deal. So some things to work through there. A deal could still be struck. We'll see. But for right now, there is some uncertainty as to whether there is going to be a Monday wildcard for ESPN. And so that's how that impacts that TGO schedule. I don't know when they'll figure that out, but that will initially work.

5:48The NFL one might be just a little more important than what happens with the TGO. Just a little bit more. Well, Josh, let's go back to the NFL. Let's talk a little bit about talent. We saw CBS lock in J.J. Watt long term. But what does this mean for the long-term future now of Troy Hickman? Where do you think he is next season? Yeah, Troy Aikman, that's a great question. I would find it hard to believe that Troy Aikman would not have a job calling NFL games next year. The problem with that is that there aren't a lot of top seats open. And if Troy Aikman is going to be calling NFL games for a network, he's going to be in the top seat, in my mind at least, right?

6:20Would you agree? He continues to be still the best analyst out there for Nettof. So Fox is locked up with Tom Brady. Yes. CBS is locked up with J.J. Watt. NBC is locked up with Chris Collinsworth. Amazon's now locked up with Kirk Herbstreit. Where does it go? Could it be a Netflix? Could it be something else? I don't know. I do see Greg Olson taking his seat at ESPN. It would be Buck and Olson at that point. And we had talked a lot about, I thought it could be CBS. But Troy may have played himself out of a job. Of a potential job at CBS. because what is David Burson, the head of CBS Sports, Skydance Sports now, what does he not like?

6:53He doesn't like any drama. He likes to operate a drama-free environment. And Troy, getting into all this, and especially during a company's Super Bowl year, that's CBS next year. I don't think that he wanted that drama. He's like, Burson is like, I like what I have. And J.J. Watt, we can develop him. He's good enough. He will be our guy for the Super Bowl next year. But yeah, you bring up an interesting point in Netflix. If Netflix really wants to continue to blow this out and they're going to have four games again next season, They're not going to have that opening one from Australia. Yeah, Troy Aikman would bring a lot of cachet to that.

7:24That would really give them the credibility that maybe they have been searching for. That is a big name. Luke Keekly is going to be an analyst. He's a great job. They've tried some other people. And Luke's great, but Troy is Troy. That could be an option. And maybe Troy does a one-off or something like that, a small package next year, and then maybe in 28 and beyond. We're also assuming that he does want to be on TV. That Troy, maybe he's talking to Jerry Jones about a front-off position. position. He's consulted with the Dolphins before. Maybe that's something he wants to try at this point. Can I make a front office position where can I turn all of this experience I've had on the TV side?

7:56Can I now go into a front office and do a John Elway? I want to go back to ESPN and assuming that Corey Aikman does move on, you think it's going to be Greg Olson. That's the obvious choice. Maybe it is him, but let's talk about some other potential options. I mean, Sean McVay is a name that's thrown around a lot. He's a guy who's talked about his coaching career. He's still very young, but he's won a Super Bowl. How long does he want to do it or does he want to move into TV? His quarterback in LA, Matthew Stafford, he's my age. He's a little bit older than I am. His career is winding down. We've heard that ESPN would love to kind of kick the tires on him in an NFL analyst role in some capacity.

8:34They really like him. Look at some other players who are close to retiring. Travis Kelsey, again, this year it was kind of a question of whether he would come back. Is he a name that could join with, you know, he already has that podcast with his brother Jason. Jason started doing some NFL games this year on NFL Network. Could that be a potential scenario where you pair Joe Buck with the Kelsey brothers on a broadcast? I think it's a lot of interesting scenarios that play with Troy Aikman potentially moving on. I totally agree with you that Buck with any combination of like the Kelsey brothers could be fun.

9:07It also could be interesting if they wanted to do it with the Manning brothers. But I don't see either of those happening. I do see it being buck and one other person and why i think it's olsen is espn may have learned their lesson they tried jason witten right off the field didn't work out they saw what happened with drew breeze you talk about some of these guys like a stafford these guys haven't done a lot of tv yeah and if greg olsen has shown anything is that he's an a he's done a super bowl he gets it he can sit in that seat for a long time everyone's like oh who's the fresh talent coming off the field we can just plug them into an a booth no these guys need some reps they need to learn the craft you You see what Drew Brees is doing now.

9:44He's on the three team at Fox. He's going to work his way up, and he's getting that time necessary to do this next phase of his career. One of the reasons why CBS sees this musical chairs going on, maybe that's why they locked up J.J. Watt so quickly, saw that he has what it takes to be an AAL. He's one of their guys. He's in-house. They know him. Yeah. He said, let's go ahead and lock him up. So a good move there by CBS. Austin, let's talk a little World Series, all classic. We did have the potential for a sweep Tampa extended the series to a fifth game. What can we expect coming out of the World Series coming up?

10:18Well, getting to five is huge because Fox already had to deal with the sweep in the NLCS, the Dodgers and Brewers. So getting to at least a fifth game was important. You get to six and seven, that's where you can really start to make money. But yeah, I have to imagine they're breathing a little easier. The ad market overall has been really good for Fox. That gets back to the summer where they're crushing it with the World Cup, but they're also doing really well with baseball. You have around 80 ad slots for a World Series game. Those are the 30-second spots. Those are going for around$550 ,000 for one of those 30-second spots.

10:50You get the game six and seven. You can tack on another 30 % premium for those ads. That's how important it is to maybe get to six or seven in any World Series or any seven-game series. What does a five-game World Series mean for Fox overall for the MLB postseason? You're looking at ad revenue around$275 million. You get to game six. you're already bumping up to around three and a quarter seven games almost 375 million dollars and the increases if you get to seven games again you would have been talking about basically what you did for dodgers and blue jays last year that's what big market team their big well-known team dodgers and viewership how's that uh surprising at this point that is what surprised me everyone was talking about this this is the misnomer they're like oh a small market world series Tampa's not a small market.

11:36It's bigger than most markets in baseball. Small payroll, yes. People were asking whether this was going to be close to the record low that the Diamondbacks and Rangers delivered back in 2023. Not even close. Not only is it well above that. First off, it's down from Dodgers Blue Jays, down from Dodgers. It was going to be. We expected that, but not as much as we thought. Where is it? It is well above 2023 and even well above Astros and Phillies from 2022, above the World Series from 21, above the World Series from 2020. So it will be nowhere near record lows. Some of this has to do with those changes in methodology by Nielsen, but it shows that baseball is in a healthy spot right now.

12:15If you can get these sorts of numbers, well north of$10 million on average just for those first two games, probably closer to$11.5 for Brewers and Rays. All right, Josh, let's get to some WNBA finals talk. Are you going to be watching at lunch today, Game 6, Dream and Valkyries? I guess the question is, am I going to be watching it on USA or SyFy? SyFy is where you normally go for your season. It's Halloween this week. Maybe we mix it up a little bit that way. Yeah, I'll check it out. I'll see what's going on with the WNBA. I think really interesting discussion, Austin, around moving this game to 12 o 'clock, 1230.

12:50On a Thursday. On a Thursday afternoon. With a West Coast team playing. How does that work from the TV side? What were some of the discussions like on the back end and how this came to pass? Well, it's clearly not ideal for Versant, which has games 5, 6, 7. 12.30 on a weekday, especially when you have a rabid Valkyries viewing. We talk a lot about coffee. Well, the San Francisco market has been, yes, breakfast for WNBA. But 9.30 for Valkyries fans on Thursday, you're going to be watching on your commute. It's not ideal. So you have USA. All of the other Versant WNBA finals games, those have been simulcast on CNBC.

13:26CNBC is not doing it they're sticking with their live financial news so they can cover the markets that's why you're getting it'll be on E and it'll be on SyFy and before anyone makes fun yes SyFy this SyFy that SyFy has shown sports in the past Premier League Championship Sunday they get some matches because they're all at the same time SyFy had some of those matches for Premier League that's a new one to me I was not aware of that we're seeing Fandango enter sports SyFy I mean what's next Austin Home Shopping Network you haven't lived until you've seen the Stanley Cup playoffs on Golf Channel, which has happened.

14:00It has happened. You're right. It was a Sharks game a couple years ago that happened. Good call. Great pull on that. Josh, before we get to who won the weekend, I've got to ask you, Jay-Z, officially announced Super Bowl halftime performer, what do you think? I'm not anti-halftime show. It's just not my thing. I'd rather get up. I'd rather go get a beer during halftime. I'd rather spend that 25 minutes doing something else, cooking something extra. So I don't feel strongly about this. I will say it did feel a little bit like maybe the NFL just couldn't find anyone else. And they said, Jay-Z, your production company, Roc Nation, is producing this halftime show.

14:33You're the guy. And that was my initial thought. But then, you know, Roger Goodell did point out that, hey, when they signed this deal with Roc Nation to produce the halftime show, Goodell said, hey, at some point, you're going to do this. So maybe this was the year that they just said, hey, Jay-Z. Because that's a lot later as far as an announcement. Much later. We got it at least a month earlier, maybe even more in past seasons. Yeah, so it's interesting to see them go back to bringing in someone who hasn't done a ton in the current. They're bringing in a classic for this one. I think he's still hot.

15:01I think he's still contemporary. I really like the decision. I think it was a great choice. There's no need for anyone to try and schedule any sort of counter show with Kid Rock that brings in around four to five viewers. This is going to be a huge audience. People are going to tune in. You know Jay-Z is going to tap into some of the biggest stars on the planet to join him on stage. It is a win for the NFL, even if he wasn't the first choice. So yes, Jay-Z pulls a little bit of a Keyshawn Johnson, says, give me the damn ball. I'm okay with it for the halftime show. Love to see it. We'll look forward to it.

15:32Well, Josh, we're here. Who won the weekend? You get to go first. Not necessarily the weekend. For me, it's a who won Tuesday night. For me, it's a recent guest of the SBJ Sports Media Podcast, Joe Davis. Again, I'm a broadcast guy. I'm a history guy. I love seeing announcers call out former announcers, current announcers in this case, but just kind of historic moments. Joe Davis, the end of Rays, Brewers, Game 4 with that walk-off fan. We'll see you later tonight. Jack Buck kind of coined that phrase. I think it was a 91 series. And then his son, Joe Buck, did it a number of times over the years.

16:09The most memorable to me was that ALCS game four between the Yankees and Red Sox when David Ortiz, home run, sent that to a game five. And Joe Buck said, we'll see you later tonight. I love seeing that. Again, being a history guy, I love seeing that. Austin, who won the weekend for you? Josh, I'm kind of going with an obscure one here. I'm going with El Clasico, which was on ABC on Sunday afternoon, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid. This was a time slot that typically had belonged to F1's U.S. Grand Prix in recent years. But that went over to Apple. They were able to put this on broadcast TV, and it ended up being the most watched La Liga match that ESPN has had since it brought on rights for that Spanish soccer league a couple of years ago.

16:51Meanwhile, you know, F1's Austin Grand Prix, it was kind of invisible. That's what F1 has been on Apple. Oh, that was this weekend? Exactly. The only thing I heard about it was that Ted Cruz got booed, and, you know, the title might be decided before the Vegas race even happens. So I'm giving it to El Clasico, getting record viewership, taking advantage of a good time slot. Love to see you go outside the box, Austin. You'd never go outside the box with anything. Box, box, box. That's me being sarcastic, by the way. That was an F1 joke, too. I got F1 jokes. There we go. Well, that does it for this week's SBJ Sports Media Podcast.

17:23Thanks, as always, to our production team, Chris Mason, Reginald Walker, and AC Wyatt. And finally, thank you for listening. Please make sure to like and subscribe to the pod wherever you get your podcasts. For Austin Carp, I'm Josh Carpenter. We'll talk to you all again next week.