Brian Berger featured former ESPN personality Kenny Mayne on the most recent edition of his Sports Business Radio podcast. Mayne, who was part of SportsCenter from 1994-2001 has been promoting a new documentary, Wiffle Ball, which can be seen on FUBO TV. Additionally, Mayne and Berger discussed several other topics including the current state of sports media.
“You worked for the big corporate structure of ESPN and now you get to pick and choose your projects,” Berger said. “How have you transitioned to that?
“There was sort of a nice soft landing in between that,” Mayne replied. “Right after I left ESPN in May of ’21, that’s a long time ago now. At the time there were a whole bunch of opportunities that just kind of came my way. And we took that summer to figure out what made the most sense…I didn’t want to stop working. Because it’s funny, people will say, ‘oh, hey, how’s your retirement?’ I was like, I’m not trying to be retired. I don’t want to be, I don’t really ever want to be.
“Given what I do, I don’t know why I’d ever quit. You know, it might be much smaller at some point, but, it’s just me saying stupid stuff and taping it. That’s been my job for a number of years.”
Mayne went on to explain the role he had with Caesars upon leaving ESPN as an ambassador.
“And then that ended,” Mayne said. “And the last year, I’ve just sort of been experimenting. I’ve done a few small projects, but I also wondered what do I want to do that’s just mine, that I don’t need bosses to approve? And that turned out to be this little movie that we’re promoting called Whiffleball.”
Mayne explained the project and how it is based off of a time he threw wiffle balls with Ken Griffey Jr. who was then a Seattle Mariners rookie. Mayne was starting out in TV and got Harold Reynolds to bring Griffey along for a piece they were taping, and he has held on to the tape of that story since 1989.
Berger then asked Mayne about the state of sports media. “What do you make of where the sportscasting landscape is going?” Berger asked.
“Sometimes I’m puzzled by it,” Mayne replied. “You’ll hear companies cutting back all sorts of so-called nonessential people that, you know, built the place or most of us think are necessary to execute everything. But then they throw a pile at individuals. But they’re probably thinking, well, doing that is to our long-term benefit because that individual has such a following that it will bring the audience that we need in order to pay the price for what we have to give to get that person. But I have no answer. I don’t really know anymore.
“A lot of times people will think because you work somewhere for a long time, you know why they think how they think. And it’s like, I don’t know, I think a lot of people are guessing and they’re going quarterly. I don’t know how many people have these visions for the next five years, we will do it exactly this way.”
Mayne continued saying, “I think they react, it’s like stocks, they react to occurrences in the market and there’s a little bit of a copycat notion, they’re doing this, we better do this. But for the consumer, it’s actually quite a great time.”
Mayne talked about how few programming options he had growing up versus the landscape today and added, “And now, you just can’t turn anywhere without information hitting at you, some of it not good information. So that one you have to piece through a little bit…I think for the consumer, it’s been a benefit because there’s just so many more choices, so that’s a good thing. And I think the quality is really strong.”
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