MLB Network’s ‘Intentional Talk’ to broadcast live from Wrigley Field

MLB Network’s longest-running talk show is taking its act on the road again.

Intentional Talk will broadcast live from Wrigley Field this Friday from noon to 2 p.m. ET, a rare two-hour edition of the usually hour-long program, timed to coincide with the Chicago Cubs’ 150th anniversary celebration and co-host Ryan Dempster’s induction onto the franchise’s 150th Anniversary Team.

RYAN DEMPSTER, who was just named to the #Cubs 150th anniversary team, and Kevin Millar will co-host MLB Network’s “Intentional Talk” from 11 am-1 pm CT Friday from Wrigley Field.

— Jeff Agrest #🟦 (@JeffAgrest) August 25, 2026

Dempster and Kevin Millar will host from the field, with current and former Cubs expected to join throughout the broadcast as the team celebrates all weekend. Third co-host Siera Santos will not be part of Friday’s broadcast, as she is committed to hosting duties for Apple’s Friday night game.

“What a special moment it is to bring Intentional Talk to Wrigley Field,” Dempster told Awful Announcing. “There’s no better way to kickstart an incredible weekend at the friendly confines.”

“In my humble opinion, Wrigley is just simply one of the top three places to visit if you’re a sports fan,” added Millar. “The Ivy, the scoreboard, the draft beer funneling down in the bleachers, all of that tradition and history just fires me up. So, to go there and celebrate our buddy Ryan Dempster and the rest of the Cubs greats, it’ll just make for an awesome afternoon.”

For Dan Komyati, the show’s coordinating producer since its 2011 inception, Friday’s broadcast doubles as a tribute to the connective tissue between Dempster and the city that shaped this particular chapter of his career.

“Just as Ryan has become part of the fabric of Cubs baseball, his personality is at the heart of what keeps Intentional Talk authentic and entertaining,” Komyati said. “So, it’s pretty special to be able to celebrate him, and all the history around one of baseball’s most cherished franchises live from Wrigley.”

Since 2023, Millar, Dempster, and Santos have made road trips a regular part of Intentional Talk, hauling the show to Bristol Motor Speedway for the Speedway Classic, a cornfield in Iowa for MLB’s Field of Dreams game, Cooperstown for the Military Classic, and TCU’s campus in 2024, the show’s second-ever college broadcast after an earlier stop at Texas in 2022, before this week’s trip to Wrigley. The travel appears to be paying off, as Nielsen has Intentional Talk up 17% in average viewership over last year as of Aug. 16, with the show hitting a season high of 161,000 viewers on Trade Deadline Day earlier this month.

Here are some standout moments from this year’s edition of the show, including appearances from Jacob Misiorowski and Miguel Vargas, as well as a joint appearance with Mike Trout and Kevin McGonigle at the MLB All-Star festivities in Philadelphia.

“I think our show is unique. It’s fun. It (connects with) the younger generation and the older generation,” Millar told Awful Announcing last year when commiserating his 15th anniversary with IT. “We talk baseball. We laugh. We have player interviews every day, which I think is fun for the fans. We used to do a lot of off-season stuff. You see their houses, and you see where they live. They talk about something outside the game, whether it’s Mookie Betts throwing five or six 300s as a bowler, or whether it’s guys like Jeff McNeil, who won the [Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions in golf].

“I think that’s what our show is. You’re going to see the realness, see who’s cheap, see who’s best dressed, and I think you get some laughs. That’s what our show does. The topics are what happened the night before, but after that, it’s off-script, and I think Siera Santos and Ryan Dempster do such a great job.”

Millar and Dempster, working without Santos, will try to bottle that same off-script chemistry Friday.