HBO’s Hard Knocks premiered this week, and with the premiere comes a companion podcast, hosted by Good Morning Football host and Fox Sports reporter Peter Schrager.
According to HBO, the podcast will only run for the five weeks of the Hard Knocks series, and the guest on the first episode is NFL on Fox analyst Ronde Barber, a former player under Raiders coach (and Hard Knocks star) Jon Gruden in Tampa Bay.
It’s an all-new season of Hard Knocks, the 18-time Emmy-Award-winning series from HBO Sports and NFL FILMS. Today marks the launch of the official “Hard Knocks Podcast,” a new weekly audio feature that will provide football fans with more insight and conversation on the acclaimed reality series.
Hosted by NFL Network’s Good Morning Football co-host Peter Schrager, the podcast will introduce a new edition for five consecutive weeks matching the run of Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Oakland Raiders, which premieres a new episode every Tuesday night at 10:00 p.m. (ET/PT) on HBO.
This is an interesting dive into original companion content from HBO, but at the same time, I feel like they’re not fully committed to it. The first episode, available on iTunes and other homes for podcasts, is only 26 minutes long. If there are only going to be five episodes, and they all max out at around a half hour, we’re looking at around two and a half hours of content over five weeks. I think Hard Knocks fans would be willing to listen to twice that much (if not more) complimentary content over the five weeks of the show, and if the podcast is received well and HBO wants to do it again next year, I can definitely see it expanding.
I like the initiative from HBO. I just wish it went further.
