Former NFL quarterback and Bachelor contestant Jesse Palmer has built a nice media career for himself, both in sports and in news. While you know him best as a college football analyst, he’s also recently served as a correspondent for Good Morning America along former football players like Michael Strahan and Tim Tebow.
But now Palmer is taking on a new role as the face of a new syndicated show that will air across the country from a controversial British tabloid.
Today the Daily Mail announced not only plans for a new daily syndicated television series in America, but that Palmer would be the host. The announcement says Palmer will remain at ESPN but it seems like he’s leaving GMA for the gig.
Jesse Palmer, ABC News Correspondent, ESPN Football Analyst and former NFL quarterback will head up the new daily syndicated series, DailyMailTV, set to launch across the United States on Monday, September 18, 2017.
The 38-year-old joins DailyMailTV from ABC News where he is a Special Contributor for Good Morning America, America’s most-watched morning show, and an analyst for ESPN.
He will continue with his role at ESPN while hosting DailyMailTV, which is being produced by Stage 29 productions and DailyMail.com.
‘I’m honored to be joining DailyMailTV. I’ve always been a huge fan of DailyMail.com, so to bring the world’s most-read English language newspaper website to television for the first time is an opportunity I couldn’t refuse,’ said Palmer.
To say the least, it’s a bit of a headscratcher. First of all, it’s rare to see someone from ESPN step outside of Disney’s corporate bubble, especially with Palmer seeming to have a pretty decent gig as continuing to move forward at GMA. The ABC morning show is a bonafide success and legitimizes Palmer’s push into news and pop culture in a big way. If he ever wants to leave ESPN and go full-time into that realm, there’s few places better to do so than GMA and ABC News.
The Daily Mail on the other hand is a polarizing British tabloid with a huge online presence, but many, many detractors. The paper has become the “most-read English language newspaper website” through sensationalized clickbait headlines, celebrity obsessions, and lots and lots of SEO. Think of the Daily Mail as TMZ meets first generation Bleacher Report.
What kind of show will this even be? My guess is it’ll be a more digital-focused version of what you might see on a number of celebrity-focused syndicated shows like Extra, The Insider, or Entertainment Tonight. Except with the Daily Mail’s reputation, pretty much anything is possible.
The Daily Mail has been branded an “open sewer” by The Guardian, been forced to pay damages to the First Lady of the United States over an incorrect story, and perhaps most amazing of all, it’s been banned by Wikipedia as an unreliable source. If you can’t even be trusted by WIKIPEDIA of all places, that literally links to everything, then that really says something incredible about you. For what it’s worth, the online resource gave its rational as “centred on the Daily Mail’s reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication.”
That might not be the horse I’d want to hitch my wagon to, but maybe Palmer sees it as an opportunity to be the face of a new daily show and expand his news and pop culture career.
