Scott Van Pelt is in his eighth year of hosting the late night SportsCenter with SVP on ESPN and it’s a show that he never thought would actually happen, but ESPN believed he can host SportsCenter a little bit differently and it has allowed him to connect with his audience and be more personal:
Van Pelt was a guest on The Dave Pasch Podcast this week and he mentioned the idea for the new SportsCenter came when Van Pelt had a conversation with then ESPN executive John Wildhack and then ESPN president John Skipper about bringing what he did with Ryen Russillo on SVP & Russillo on ESPN Radio to television:
“The conversation was just kind of an organic what do you want to do sort of a thing? I said it would be pretty cool to take the idea of radio and bring it to SportsCenter and have it a little bit less structured, but not just entirely abandon the notion of who won the games and what were the cool things that happened.
“It was the type of thing where I never thought they would do it. SportsCenter, as you know, has always been this sacred sort of a brand. The idea that they give me the keys to the car so to speak and let me go where I wanted, I just didn’t think it would happen. To John’s [Wildhack’s] credit, he said to use the car analogy, I don’t want you to stay in the middle lane. Treat it like there is a lot of lanes that you can explore and see what works and what doesn’t. It was just kind of born out of the idea that maybe it could work.”
Van Pelt did mention that being on radio helped him because he wants his audience to get to know him as a person.
“Enormously because what you learn in radio, which I’ve said was the hardest thing that I did and I don’t know what else can be harder in this field because it requires hours and hours and hours of interesting conversation and it’s everyday. Russillo helped me massively. I’ve always credited him for saying ok, we’ll talk about Bears-Patriots in the A block, but what’s the topic? What’s interesting about the topic? Narrowing that down.
“Anyone on radio can talk about sports. What you get to share there is who you are, what you think, what matters to you. I don’t mind being vulnerable and sharing, it’s part of my life. The highs and lows, talking about losing our dog Otis this past spring. You are going to bare your soul. I sat on television and bawled about my dog. I was at a Maryland football game this weekend and strangers come up to me and they say the thing you did about your dog, that thing you say about Otis, they know his name.
“When you share yourself the way Mike & Mike did in the mornings about their children and watching their kids grow up and sharing that part of their lives, if you are willing, to the audience gets to know you as a human and not just some person on television and they care about your life if you are willing to share it. Undoubtedly, that part has helped.”
While Van Pelt thinks it’s easier than ever to have a show, he thinks it’s even harder to connect with an audience:
“I think people recognize that I like sports. I tell them where I’m from. They know I’m a Terp…That coupled with having done SportsCenter for a long time, getting to sit alongside Neil Everett and Stuart Scott, you have all these different ways that you can connect to an audience. Radio is the one that made it really personal and that’s been a huge, huge help because now it’s harder than ever. It’s easier than ever to have a show, harder than ever to connect with people because there’s so many of them to sort of choose from.”
