In everyday life, there are some people who do need a structured routine and a direction on where to take something whether it be at your job or which path to go down in life. When Katie Nolan first agreed to join ESPN in 2017, she was looking for specifics on what he was going to bring to the company, but it was something she never really got.
Katie Nolan was a guest on South Beach Sessions with Dan Le Batard and she said that when she signed the first of her two contracts with ESPN, the specifics of her role were very vague and she just wanted to know what she needed to do to meet the bar ESPN was looking for from her.
“I signed my contract with ESPN. It was very vague at the time. They did not know. They were like we’ve got a whole video team and we want to do something digital with you and we want you to be the face of our digital presence and we are going to pay you all this money,” Nolan said. “I thought they weren’t going to pay me all that money and not give me stuff to do, so don’t just not sign this because it doesn’t outline you will have a show.”
Nolan brought up this quote that she gave in the press release back then:
“I could not be more excited to have a prominent digital presence while also making appearances across ESPN studio programming. When I was a little girl, I always dreamed that one-day announcements regarding my specific assignments would be forthcoming.”
As Katie Nolan looks back at first agreeing to join ESPN, she wished that she would have made ESPN tell her what exactly they wanted her to do.
“I think the press release when they announced I was going to work there, I think the quote I gave them was something along the lines of making fun of how vague it was that they would not tell me what I was really going to do. It should have been a red flag, it should have made me be like ‘Make them tell you what they want from you’.
“If there’s no bar, I don’t know what measure I’m being judged by and that ended up being what hurt me in the end. I didn’t know who my boss was, I didn’t know what they wanted me to do.”
While at ESPN, Nolan ended up hosting her show on ESPN+, Always Late, with Ashley Braband as her co-host and producer. Even though ESPN told her yes to doing the show, she never knew if they were actually supportive of her in the idea.
“What we ended up doing is — Ashley Braband, who was my life raft at that company, she saw me right away and was like ‘I recognize what you are trying to do, I align with you, and I want to help you do it’. We got to the point where it’s like let’s pitch them a show because they are launching ESPN+ and they are going to need stuff for it.
“We had to film it in a prop closet a pilot for it just to show them what it would be. We filmed that and they were like ok. It was very surprising to me how easy it was to get the yes, but are you supportive of this or are you just going to let me do this?”
In fact, Nolan said that the most fun she had while she was at ESPN was being on Highly Questionable because there was more than just talking about sports on a sports show.
“I looked at the shows they have and was like ‘I don’t really fit into any of these…Your show became the thing that was ‘Oh they get it, they’re just funny, they don’t take it too seriously. They know that there’s more to talking about sports than just talking about sports’. If it weren’t for you, I probably would have left at the end of the contract. Doing Highly Questionable was the best and the easiest and the most fun and I’m forever grateful to you for that.”
Katie Nolan talked about her time at FS1 as well when she hosted Garbage Time with Katie Nolan and she wanted to make a show that could cater to people like her who didn’t feel they were reflected in sports TV at the time.
“I grew up loving sports and watching a lot of sports, but not watching a lot of sports TV because I didn’t feel like they were talking to me. Anytime they made a joke which I love jokes, they were always like I was the butt of the joke or anytime women were involved, it was always how hot they were. It didn’t feel like it was for me. It didn’t offend me. I just would watch the games and I didn’t know any of the people on sports TV.”
“When I got on sports TV, I was sort of like let’s make it for the me’s of the world who don’t feel reflected in the other stuff. It’s 24 hours of programming, you can make 23 of it for what it is and then let me get that 24th hour.”
As Katie Nolan looked back at that time, she wished she knew what would come later in her career and said one of the challenges of having her own show was that she always felt she had to fight for everything with management.
“Knowing when to take a swing and when to not, it’s basically knowing what pitch to take and which one is that’s the one I’m going to hit. A lot of having your own show is navigating the people above you and I didn’t understand managing up at all. I didn’t participate in it and that’s to my detriment,” she continued.
“In terms of topics or jokes or sketches or things you need, I was always willing to fight for the thing we needed without ever realizing if everything you want from the network is a fight, then they are not going to want you around much. Knowing the industry better now, knowing myself better in the sense of what areas I can put my energy into instead of putting my energy into everything, I have to be okay with that.”
