In any press release from a media company or public relations firm, the wording is always important because you never know what effects it can have. In fact, according to Turner Sports senior vice president Tara August, it ended up costing them hiring Kobe Bryant.
Last week, Charles Barkley was on The Draymond Green Show on The Volume and revealed to Green that Turner Sports had a deal with Kobe Bryant, but it ended up falling through.
Soon thereafter, August went on The Steam Room with EJ and Chuck podcast with Barkley and Ernie Johnson just to clarify Barkley’s comments a little bit. He wasn’t wrong, but it was actually the wording in the press release that cost the big deal from happening 12 hours before it was going to be official.
“It was an amazing opportunity that we had when Kobe had announced that he was retiring,” said August. “We knew he was the best and we wanted him with TNT with you guys. This was the season right before we added in the additional Tuesdays. We started talking to Kobe at the All-Star Break and then meeting with him along the way up until the end of the season.”
“We got the deal done, a short version of the deal done. He was really excited. We made up plans that we were going to announce it during the playoffs,” she continued. “The great Craig Barry and Drew Watkins came up with this amazing piece of tape that we would use as the announcement video. Kobe had his creative hands in it. We did the deal and then we got to the press release.
“The press release talked about what he would be doing on Tuesdays and Thursdays with TNT and Inside The NBA and contributing the rest of the season. He didn’t like that kind of phrasing in the press release. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to do PR or other things or a litany of things to promote the show. It was actually the press release wording where the deal fell apart.”
In fact, Bryant actually had a lot of ideas for Turner Sports that the company was willing to try.
“End of the season came and he had some really unique ideas about the Tuesday package,” August said. “We were going to sort of say hey, do you want to executive produce this with us in a different way? He had some really unique ideas. I don’t think that we were totally bought into all of them, but we were willing to try.”
While the deal never got done, August mentioned that the two sides were able to work on different ideas together. However, she like everyone else, wonders what would have happened if Bryant had decided to join TNT:
“The best thing that came out of it was we still worked with him,” said August. “Both sides really still had so much respect for each other… He still came on our air and did some other really fun projects. It was one of those deals that never really got out that it could have happened and how that would have changed things.”
