NESN’s Elle Duncan set to join ESPN as SportsCenter anchor

Awful Announcing has learned that ESPN will be adding NESN anchor Elle Duncan as a SportsCenter anchor, and will soon announce the hiring.

Duncan has been with NESN since 2014, hosting both NESN Live and NESN Sports Today. Prior to her work in Boston, Duncan worked for Atlanta’s NBC affiliate, WXIA, and was a sideline reporter for the Atlanta Hawks. Duncan also worked as an on-field reporter for SEC and ACC football on Fox Sports South.

When contacted by AA, Duncan confirmed that she’d be joining ESPN and talked about what she’s looking forward to working for the company.

“I think for anybody who is a sports broadcaster, grew up in sports, watching sports, playing sports, ESPN is the penultimate [job]. The opportunity came about to join the team and for me, I’m all about learning and growing and wanting to get better, and I think that in order to do that, you surround yourself with the best in the business. ESPN is obviously filled with really talented people who essentially do what I’m hoping to one day get to, which is marry sports and their personalities and their opinions while also trying to be objective and a journalist.

“The ceiling is so high. I feel like you could work for ESPN for 15 years and not do everything that you could do at ESPN.

“As far as the timing goes, I spent a few great years at NESN learning and growing and getting better. When ESPN calls and you have an opportunity to join the Worldwide Leader, you take it.”

Duncan also briefly discussed the necessary changes in her focus as a broadcaster going from a local outlet in NESN to a national one in ESPN.

“It’s not only the reach, but it’s your focus. My focus is pretty narrow [with NESN], but because I like sports, I stay on top of most things. My focus is on the four Boston teams, and in particular because of NESN, the Red Sox and Bruins. I think one of the difficulties is that your job never ends at ESPN. There’s something happening at 1, 2 o’clock in the morning and again at 6, 7 o’clock in the morning and all throughout the day.

“I think that really widening that scope and staying on top of everything that they cover, whether that be your strong suits all the way to the sports you’re not as knowledgeable about. For me, it’s that – having to really widen what I’ve been focused on and thinking about national topics rather than regional ones.”