As you may have heard, this is typically the slowest week of the mainstream sports calendar. That, however, didn’t stop Friday from being one of ESPN’s most chaotic days of the year, as the Worldwide Leader found itself — like most — impacted by the global tech outage.
Yet despite its issues, ESPN managed to put together a full slate of live morning programming, largely on the fly. That’s certainly no easy feat, especially considering the unpredictable nature of live TV.
The outage appeared to affect ESPN as early as 2 a.m. ET, when the network was scheduled to air an episode of SportsCenter according to its internal schedule . Following the end of of NFL Live , it aired an episode of the In The Arena: Serena Williams ESPN+ docuseries before re-airing last week’s ESPY Awards around 3:10 a.m.
At 5 a.m., ESPN aired another episode of In The Arena , but come 6 a.m., the network was understandably concerned about viewers tuning in to find re-runs. But while technical difficulties prevented SportsCenter from airing from Bristol , the network was able to adjust on the fly and air the video simulcast of its Unsportsmanlike radio show, which was being hosted by Freddie Coleman and Courtney Cronin.
That carried ESPN to 8 a.m., when it was time for Get Up . And despite the show being without graphics or b-roll, it was able to get on the air, with Domonique Foxworth even appearing remotely from Washington D.C. in what some might consider a minor miracle considering the circumstances.
Not only was Get Up able to air, but it was also a strong episode, especially considering both the tech issues and the lack of sports currently being played. The show’s ingenuity was best exemplified by its “Sneaky Hembo” segment, in which producer Paul Hembekides wrote his daily trivia question with marker on a white board.
(Hembo, as often seems to be the case, wasn’t as sneaky as advertised)
Anyone with any experience working in TV likely knows how difficult it can be to do a show without the crutch of b-roll to help lighten some of the load. And in this particular instance, it’s hard to imagine that ESPN’s habit of getting Ryan Clark and Dan Graziano — an analyst and reporter, respectively — reps as hosts didn’t pay off, as they helped carry the show alongside Mike Greenberg, whose broadcasting experience thrives in such situations.
First Take began in its usual slot at 10 a.m. ET and offered more of the same, with Christine Williamson masterfully quarterbacking the show alongside a panel that included Clark, Harry Douglas and Mike Tannenbaum. Were there some hiccups on either live show? Perhaps. But none notable enough that a website named “Awful Announcing” felt compelled to write about them.
SportsCenter was finally able to come back online at 2 PM ET with Hannah Storm and Jay Harris at the anchor desk.
It goes without saying that the last four years have made creativity and adaptability not just assets for television networks, but necessities. As Friday showed, ESPN’s morning slate — both on the air and behind the scenes — possesses both of those characteristics in spades. So much so that it seemed largely unaffected by a global tech outage, even if that obviously wasn’t the case.
The post ESPN’s adaptability was on full display during Friday’s global tech outage appeared first on Awful Announcing .
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