Think hard. Before the Manningcast, when was the last time you watched ESPN2 for something other than a college football or basketball game that either your favorite team was playing in, or you wagered on?
What was once a vibrant breeding ground for not just future star ESPN talents but about a half-dozen programming concepts for the Mothership turned, over the last 5-6 years, into a property that was an after-afterthought. Whether that’s started to turn very meaningfully in the other direction or not remains to be seen, but for the first time in years ESPN has utilized ESPN2 to take a chance on something unique. It worked in spades. Peyton and Eli have been revelatory on their Monday Night Football sidecast, and it would qualify as good news for the business if ESPN further rebuilds the channel as an incubator for original content.
Additionally, ESPN recently announced that they would be airing The Point, a weekly hockey show hosted by John Buccigross, Thursday afternoons on ESPN2 in conjunction with their return as hockey rights-holders.
Until about 2015, ESPN2 featured a lot of opinion programming that was ultimately promoted to ESPN. Jim Rome Is Burning started weekly on ESPN before becoming a daily show on ESPN2. Dan Le Batard is Highly Questionable (later shortened to the latter two words) started on The Deuce. ESPN2 also launched a trio of shows by Jamie Horowitz — SportsNation, First Take, and Numbers Never Lie (which later morphed into His & Hers with Jemele Hill and Michael Smith).
In 2012, John Koblin, now a media reporter at the New York Times but then writing for Deadspin, noted that ESPN2 talk programming had so much momentum that it was actually eroding SportsCenter viewership in the morning: “In September 2011, the 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. editions of SportsCenter had 636,000 more viewers a day than the same time slot that First Take owned on ESPN2, according to data from Nielsen. Over the next six months, a period that stretched from Tebow’s emergence in Denver through his trade to New York, First Take narrowed that deficit each month. By March, when Tim Tebow was traded to the Jets, the SportsCenter lead was down to 182,000 viewers—less than a third of what its margin had been.”
At first, when talk shows would be elevated from ESPN2 to ESPN, the well would eventually be replenished. However, that stopped happening around 2015 due mainly to cord-cutting causing headcount cost cuts across the board at the company. ESPN played defense when Horowitz poached familiar talents Colin Cowherd and Skip Bayless over to FS1. First Take moved to ESPN, Mike & Jemele were tabbed to host 6 pm SportsCenter, and ESPN2 ceased being a proverbial bench for the bigger network.
To the extent ESPN has tried out experimental video content, most of it has gone to the over-the-top subscription platform ESPN+. Assuming ESPN and the NFL had the rights worked out accordingly, I would’ve bet a lot of money that Peyton and Eli would have been placed on ESPN+ based on the fact that that’s where their Places shows air and that’s the platform ESPN has been beefing up.
While Media Twitter would’ve found Peyton and Eli on ESPN+ and still loved it, it’s undeniable that the brothers have accomplished far more reach on ESPN2. ESPN+ has about 15 million subscribers, while ESPN2 is in over 80 million homes. As much as we hear about how cable is dying and streaming is the future, those trains have not nearly crossed yet as far as sports are concerned.
While we’re here, I want to push the idea that it would be a no-brainer for ESPN to run a nightly NBA show on ESPN2. Put it on from like 11pm to 1am ET, have a creative young panel break down the East Coast games that already ended and do Red Zone-esque live look-ins for juicy West Coast contests. They could use it to break in up-and-coming hosts, newsbreakers, feature writers, former players, and producers that could eventually land on their new daily show NBA Today (replacing The Jump) and Countdown (where there’s a shakeup every year or two). What’s the reason not to do that show?
Even as ESPN continues de-emphasizing talk programming to triple down on premium live events, it makes sense for them to replenish their TV talent bench. ESPN2 is a place where they should keep taking more swings.
Ryan Glasspiegel is a contributor for BSM. He has previously worked for Outkick, The Big Lead, and Sports Illustrated. In addition to covering the sports media business, Ryan creates promotional products for brands and companies including t-shirts, hats, hoodies, and various types of swag. For business inquiries email him at Glasspiegel.Ryan@gmail.com or find him on Twitter @sportsrapport.
