The ESPN+ service has been up and running for just about a
month, and Disney has not started disclosing its subscriber
count.
Opera buffa
A portion of the NFL panel is dedicated to dismissing the
chatter of ratings catastrophists.
"We don't have to buy into the narrative that the NFL is
failing," says Sean Hanrahan, ESPN senior VP for brand and
marketing solutions. He notes that "Verizon just doubled
their money and their commitment to the league" while "Papa John's
left and in less than 24 hours a new pizza company was in for more
dollars."
But the partisan Magna crowd seems more than happy to sit back
and listen while Ryan pontificates about all things football. Ryan
naturally obliges, and his assessments of some of his former
players and the current crop of NFL Draft prospects is absolutely
lethal.
After dismissing Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield as "the
most overrated guy in this draft," Ryan lays into the luckless
Sanchez: "I think he was a really good quarterback for us, but a
franchise guy? That wasn't him." He goes on to suggest that the
Giants would be "stupid" to trade superstar wide receiver Odell
Beckham Jr., before suddenly turning the tables and lashing out at
his own sartorial inelegance: "Remember how I used to wear that
stupid vest all the time?"
Despite all the laughter that greets Ryan's opera buffa
analysis, at no time does he say anything that can't be printed on
the front page of The New York Times. This is obscurely
disappointing, so I introduce myself after the panel breaks up to
see if I might be able to extract some rude language out of him. It
takes all of four minutes and 17 seconds to hit pay dirt. As it
turns out, the secret is to invoke the New England Patriots. In
retrospect, this should've been obvious.
"Whenever we'd play those guys, I'd say to the officials, 'Look,
we're going to beat the fuck out of this team,' " Ryan
recalls. "Because I wanted them to know that our intention was to
kick this team's ass, and we didn't want their guy to get any, you
know, preferential treatment. Because sometimes it's, like, 'Hey,
listen, that's [Tom] Brady. Different rules apply.' Well, I wanted
the refs to understand, I don't care who the hell he is, that
wasn't my view of it."
Ryan also had a few things to say about Super Bowl LII ("worst
defenses ever"), the L.A. Rams' terrifying twosome of Ndamukong Suh
and Aaron Donald ("it's scary the kind of pressure they can put
through the middle on ya") and Tony Romo, who went from taking
snaps for the Dallas Cowboys to becoming an overnight sensation
last season in the CBS broadcast booth. Ryan is not all that
impressed.
"Sure, Romo calls a lot of plays ahead of time, but do you know
how easy that is to do?" Ryan says with a laugh. "If Romo always
knows what's coming, how is it that I used to trap him into
throwing picks all the time? Show him one coverage, play another,
and he'd throw right into the damn thing!" Coaches have elephant
memories. The play to which Ryan is referring to here happened
during a Sunday night game back in 2011.
The ground up
Back in November, during a private walk-through of the South
Street Seaport studio, Bill Wolff, VP for studio production at
ESPN, told advertisers that the creation of digital content was no
longer a secondary consideration. "When you produce a TV show
nowadays, it is mandatory to consider the digital components in the
producing of the linear product," Wolff said, as marketers got
their first look at the space that would house "Get Up!" "We built
social media producers into our org chart. So we'll be doing
everything from making stuff that is tailored to Instagram and
Snapchat and all those places, to republishing material from our
show to be consumed in the secondary app market."
While there wasn't a great deal to see inside the studio space
(at the time, the "Get Up!" sets were still under construction),
many of the ad reps braved the chilly autumn air to take in the
view from the facility's roof, a vast acreage of space that looks
out over the East River to Brooklyn Heights while the Brooklyn
Bridge looms a stone's throw to the north. Wolff had some
Letterman-esque stunts in mind for the outdoor space, saying that
he was curious to find out how far it is from the rooftop to
Brooklyn's Dumbo neighborhood. "I think it's a 3-wood. We will find
out," he said. "If Aaron Judge wants to swing a bat and hit a ball
into the East River, I will have a camera to record that."
Later that same evening, a TaylorMade rep was seen discussing
the feasibility of getting one of the PGA Tour vets who endorse the
clubs to take Wolff up on his offer. Wolff would go on to note that
one of the key advantages of starting a show from scratch is having
the freedom to build recurring "franchises" (Top 10 lists, plays of
the day, etc.) around brands.
All of what Wolff said last fall plays into the Magna on-site
pitch, but in a sense, it's the ratings for "Get Up!" that really
drive home the urgency of getting out ahead of the digital pack. In
its first month of production (April 2 to 30), "Get Up!" averaged
271,714 viewers, down 18 percent compared with the year-ago
"SportsCenter" deliveries. To date, the morning show notched its
highest numbers on the morning after the first night of the NFL
Draft, drawing 434,000 viewers and a 0.2 rating among adults 18 to
49.
Back at the Magna event, things begin winding down after the NBA
panel wraps. Dani Benowitz, executive VP for strategic investment
at Magna, says that while she's been in back-to-back meetings for
much of the afternoon, she's impressed by what she's seen of the
day's presentation. "It's like show-and-tell," Benowitz says. "It's
one thing for our media partner to come in and go, 'We have VR, we
have a new app,' but to actually be able to play with it, touch it,
see how it works is huge, as opposed to just listening to somebody
who gets paid to tell me how great their stuff is."