Enjoy the first Awful Announcing podcast of 2018, featuring host Ben Heisler and Jim Miller, author of the ESPN book Those Guys Have All The Fun and one of the most prominent insiders in the worlds of both ESPN and sports media as a whole.
Heisler and Miller chat about plenty of ESPN-related topics, including some insight into the writing process of his book about ESPN’s culture, changes at the company since the publishing of Those Guys Have All The Fun, what the future holds for ESPN, and who he thinks could potentially replace John Skipper. They also discussed his Origins podcast, which covers ESPN in its second season after discussing HBO sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm in its first season.
- 6:38 – How he gets his subjects to open up and be as candid as they are
- 9:08 – What led him to research the origins of ESPN after writing Those Guys Have All the Fun
- 11:09 – Why ESPN was hesitant to cooperate with him for quite some time
- 12:08 – The most surprising thing he uncovered while talking to people at ESPN
- 13:10 – What has changed the most at ESPN
- 16:35 – Does he see any other networks as ever becoming potential legit competitors to ESPN
- 18:54 – On John Skipper’s tenure & if we’ll ever know how everything unfolded
- 20:39 – Who would he put odds on as the next President of ESPN
- 21:28 – How ESPN will handle the impact of a growing need for streaming
- 23:36 – How does he see them handling their main block (ATH, PTI, SC/The 6) moving forward
- 25:35 – Why ESPN still puts so much focus on SC as their main staple even as viewers may not see it that way
- 29:33 – What he anticipates ESPN doing to change their NFL shoulder programming
- 32:02 – Season 1 of Origins with Curb Your Enthusiasm
- 34:34 – Surprised Season 10 of Curb was announced so quickly after 6+ years off the air?
- 35:15 – Who he had the most fun talking to for Season 1
- 39:22 – Bold prediction for 2018
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