In a regular season matchup between the Las Vegas Raiders and Los Angeles Chargers, there had been significant history made by halftime. After two quarters of play, the Chargers found themselves down in the contest 42-0, a record deficit by an NFL team through half of regulation play. The score rendered collective aghast around the league and left fans stunned, and it was up to the Amazon Prime Video broadcast of Thursday Night Football to contextualize and synthesize just what was happening. Sideline reporter Kaylee Hartung was expecting her pre-scheduled interview with Chargers head coach Brandon Staley to be fully upended, awaiting a team representative to deliver the update.
Nonetheless, Hartung made eye contact with Staley and could tell that he was walking over for the interview. She was thoroughly surprised and knew that his team was in the midst of significant tribulation but grateful that he respected her and the aspect of the broadcast for which she is responsible. Hartung surmises that coaches generally do not want to talk to her at halftime because they usually address the team and review plans for the remaining stretch of gameplay. As a result, she aims to be succinct and direct in her questioning to gain real-time insight, a short endeavor with a lasting impact.
“I’m not a reporter who ever wants to ask a ‘gotcha’ question to a subject, no matter who that subject is,” Hartung said. “I want people I interview to tell me exactly what they mean and give me insight into what they’re thinking. That’s how I think of it is, ‘How can I help the millions of people watching learn something in this moment when I’m the only person who can ask that coach that question?’”
Much to Hartung’s astonishment, Staley eloquently responded to her query related to the team’s substandard play. The Chargers ended up losing the game 63-21, and Staley was relieved of his head coaching duties the very next day. Of course, the team was battling a short week between games since they were playing on Thursday Night Football on Amazon. The OTT streaming platform landed the package of games in an 11-year agreement reportedly worth about $1 billion annually. The pact, however, came into effect one year early because of a willingness by previous rightsholder FOX Sports to exit its contract.
Prime Video was tasked with putting together a strong broadcast team of commentators and production personnel to execute the league’s first-ever regular streaming-based platform, enlisting the assistance of award-winning producer Fred Gaudelli. With play-by-play announcer Al Michaels and color commentator Kirk Herbstreit, the company compiled an experienced lead commentary booth.
As the search to continue building the lineup persisted, Hartung was in conversations with the company about the sideline reporting role. After the initial surprise of being contacted for the job when she had not reported on the sidelines for five years, Hartung met with the executives involved and was convinced the opportunity was right for her.
“Amazon was never trying to reinvent the wheel in doing this; they wanted to deliver,” Hartung said. “From the very beginning, their vision was to deliver a broadcast to the quality that NFL fans not only expect but demand, and I think we’re doing that.”
When Hartung was 10 years old, she and her family endured the loss of her father after he was involved in a plane crash at an airshow in Baton Rouge, La. As the family was mourning, the faint volume of CNN encompassed part of the setting to simply provide noise. Suddenly, a brief 30-second anchor voiceover recalled the plane crash and provided relatively superficial details. At the time, Hartung did not understand why the news outlet was not reporting on her father, what he accomplished and the life he lived. The rapid news report caused Hartung to ponder over infusing stories with more details and humane aspects.
Since her mother worked at the Louisiana State University Tiger Athletic Foundation, Hartung frequently had field-level access and behind-the-scenes opportunities surrounding the sports teams. At the same time, Hartung had remained passionate about news media and watched NBC TODAY, going so far as to write a paper in seventh grade saying that she would one day work on the show. Fast forward to last fall and Hartung finds herself as a correspondent for the program, frequently making multiple appearances per week and balancing it with her other related obligations.
Although Hartung was in her second year on Thursday Night Football, it was the first where she had to balance the work with NBC TODAY. Even though she had to sacrifice significant amounts of sleep on certain days, it allowed her to remain true to her roots as a news reporter while also covering sports. For much of her career, Hartung had to reluctantly make a choice between these niches but ultimately fluctuated between the two because of her passions for both.
“I think I’m very lucky to get to cover both, and I’ve been working my whole career to get to cover both and now I’m finally able to, and that for me is a personal win because I don’t want to just be a sports reporter or just be a news reporter,” Hartung explained. “I want to be a great reporter, and I think there are incredible stories to be told on both sides of that coin.”
CBS News Face the Nation reporter Bob Schieffer was sending Hartung’s work with the property to Sean McManus, who at the time was serving as president of CBS News and CBS Sports. She eventually received a call from the CBS College Sports Network to gauge her interest in being a sideline reporter for college games, a proposition she did not pass up.
The company had a newspath affiliate program involving correspondents in different bureaus, and she was looking to be accepted into the rotation. When she assumed that CBS News was not interested in granting her this chance, she auditioned with and eventually joined the ESPN-affiliated Longhorn Network.
The first contract she inked with the entity – a two-year deal with a third-year option – ensured five appearances on ESPN. By the conclusion of her first year, she exceeded that total nine times over and flourished at the company. Hartung was part of the launch of SEC Network in 2014 and treasured building something from the ground up, an opportunity she invested time and effort to effectuate.
As her career has continued, Hartung has recognized how fundamental it is to remain ready for the next opportunity – even if it seems premature at times. Despite not being ready to leave ESPN, the call from CNN to serve as a correspondent was a summons back to news she answered. In the ensuing two years, Hartung affirmed that she consistently showed up on the worst day of people’s lives and navigated through initial uncertainty and discomfort.
“It was very infrequent that I smiled through two years on television at CNN, and so frequently people would ask, ‘Do you miss sports?,’ and my answer was a resounding ‘Yes’ with every time I was asked that question, but I think those two years at CNN for me were just an incredible learning experience,” Hartung stated. “I’m very proud of what I did in the situations I showed up in and the way I could serve the people whose stories I told, but I didn’t feel like I was being the fullest version of myself.”
Hartung continued her work as a correspondent for ABC News beginning in 2019, contributing to programs such as World News Tonight, Good Morning America and Nightline. Although she was enthusiastic about the role, she recognized that Amazon Prime Video and Thursday Night Football was the right chance to assimilate back into sports media. Reflecting back on the 2022-23 season, it is evident to Hartung how much she has grown in the role.
“I’ll be completely honest and say I was terrified [in] Season 1,” Hartung said. “I hadn’t been on the sidelines in five years and I was nervous. I was nervous with every game, with every time that red light came on knowing how big of an opportunity this was, knowing how badly I wanted to be great and knowing how many eyeballs were watching.”
Since Hartung had not covered the NFL before, she needed to establish relationships and develop sources around the league to compile strong, comprehensive and accurate reports. Simultaneously, she was assimilating into a new role with new colleagues and working to foster friendships and chemistry with her teammates. When they were in Houston for their first preseason game together, she vividly remembers a moment of bonding that served in constructing the current product.
“We all walk back into the hotel lobby after the game and everybody’s kind of looking around like, ‘What do we do next? Where do we go?,’ and there’s a bar in the hotel lobby, and before you know it, we’re all sitting around a table, last call comes, Al’s telling stories and we’re asking the hotel, ‘How much longer can we stay?,’ because we don’t want to go anywhere,” Hartung recalled. “That was Week 1 and guess what? That happens every week – it doesn’t get old.”
Even though Hartung presumes she and her colleagues are suffering withdrawals from not being able to spend quality time with one another, she reflects on the year with gratitude and excitement. Amazon generated a 24% increase in total viewers from the previous season, averaging 11.86 million viewers across its 15-game slate according to data from Nielsen Media Research. All of those contests finished ahead of other programming on broadcast and cable television, including the first-ever NFL Black Friday Football contest. Part of that success can evidently be linked to Hartung, who is collecting and disseminating information to enhance the overall presentation.
“Your credibility is everything in this industry whether you’re covering news or sports,” Hartung said. “Two years in, I think I’m at a place where I’m proud of the relationships that I’ve built and proud of how hard I’ve worked.”
Hartung’s football work week begins on Sunday and is largely focused on the two teams she has coming up on Thursday night. Because of the detail required in her job, she makes sure to watch full games and meticulously takes notes from the sideline reports for the previous week. In the days beforehand, Hartung catches up on sleep and prepares for the week ahead, which is filled with meetings, interviews and collaboration.
“The most fervent fans of those teams don’t want to hear the same stories told a week later, right?,” Hartung said. “You want to keep building whatever storylines exist, so if my two teams are playing at the same time on Sunday, I’ll watch one game in real time and follow the other.”
On Monday morning, Hartung has a Zoom call with the broadcast’s producer and director, along with two producers dedicated to the sideline role and a former NFL athletic trainer. The session is a review of the week prior so they can position themselves for sustained performance and improvement and the first of several meetings ahead of the Thursday night broadcast.
By the time Tuesday approaches, she is on the phone with Michaels and Herbstreit to speak with head coaches, quarterbacks and other star players involved in the game. There are also times where Hartung has to interview players unannounced because of their tight schedules, underscoring the necessity of remaining on standby.
In addition to her Thursday Night Football work, Hartung is compiling and reporting on separate stories for NBC TODAY, achieving a delicate balance of two esteemed entities. On most weekday mornings, she is awake by 2:30 a.m. and tries to accrue respite whenever she can, including on airplanes although she tries to avoid red-eye flights.
“I’m always to the city that we’re in by Wednesday morning, go to practice and then have dinner with the crew on Wednesday night,” Hartung explained. “I have a sideline production meeting on Wednesday night where we go through all of my material that I’ve gathered through my own calls and whatnot, and then our big production meeting Thursday morning and kickoff Thursday night.”
Over the course of the game, Hartung has several stories prepared and is ready to interject with her reports when called upon. The key is finishing by the time the ball is snapped so Michaels can deliver play-by-play of the action. Everything changes, however, when there is a significant injury that can alter a season, let alone the ongoing game, for a football team.
“It is reporting in its most elemental and basic form where you’ve got to get the questions answered that are clearly [at the] top of everyone’s mind and concern,” Hartung said. “….You go in with as much of a plan as you can have and then you throw it all out the window and the game breaks out.”
During the week, Hartung apologizes to every player she speaks with because of the condensed week that they are facing. While part of the job of sideline reporters is to bring casual and die-hard fans newfound information and insights about their team, she understands the difficulties in amassing the totality of that material in a five-day span. Hartung is devoted to carrying out her responsibilities without taking shortcuts to achieve the final story, yearning for others to avoid the feeling she had while mourning the loss of her father.
“When they hear their story told, do they feel like I did that justice?,” Hartung said. “….It’s about how you make people feel. Whether you’re the subject or you’re the viewer, it’s about how you make people feel.”
Hartung was in Las Vegas reporting on Super Bowl LVIII for NBC TODAY, delivering updates and following both the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs throughout the week. Coming off a strong regular season for Thursday Night Football and joining NBC Sports for two playoff games – including the Peacock exclusive NFL Wild Card contest – she had to adapt her reporting style to news. There are several occurrences when Hartung reports on sports for the morning show, adapting her approach while displaying her knowledge and rapport with several teams and leagues.
“The stories you’re telling are different, and it kind of goes back to the way you want to make fans care about the games; the way you want to help raise that level of investment fans have – and when I say fans, I mean the TODAY show audience,” Hartung said. “I really enjoy that I get to help the TODAY show audience invest more in their care of the NFL.”
Part of the Thursday Night Football game crew attended Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas and celebrated when reports emerged that the outlet had landed the rights to exclusively stream an NFL playoff game next season. Prime Video is reportedly paying $150 million for the contest, which will take place during the Wild Card round. It remains unknown whether it will be the only streaming-exclusive presentation.
“I think it’s a credit to the work that we’ve put in through these two seasons,” Hartung said. “Our crew with a playoff game – it’ll be good TV. I love the way I feel like our crew on the whole is different and is unique in the scheme of the NFL broadcasts, and I think that we have a certain level of excitement and enthusiasm for the game each week that a playoff game will only heighten.”
As Hartung continues to excel as a news and sports reporter, she wants to be an asset to her colleagues and overall consumption audience. There have been moments in her career where she has struggled internally with confidence, one of which was her assimilation to covering the NFL.
At the conclusion of the first year of Prime Video’s presentation of Thursday Night Football, Gaudelli bestowed Hartung with the most improved player award. Humbly accepting the honor, she regarded it as a compliment and excitedly anticipated the second year. With innovation abound and a plethora of possibilities ahead, Hartung looks to perpetually improve both on set and along the gridiron.
“I feel fulfilled professionally right now in a way that I am just so grateful for,” Hartung articulated. “It sounds so cheesy when I say it that way, but it’s true. I’m quite literally getting to live out a dream, and I just hope I get to stay on this ride for as long as possible.”
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
