Author: Marisa Guthrie

August 02, 2016 8:18pm PT by Marisa Guthrie

 Courtesy of ESPN

The network already has debuted the first two episodes of a podcast, which will be released daily and culminate in a one-hour primetime special Aug. 22 on ESPN2.

ESPN is getting into the true crime genre with a multi-platform initiative that could be a model for future storytelling at the sports network. Pin Kings follows the story of high school wrestling teammates whose paths diverge wildly – one becomes a drug trafficker and the other a DEA agent.

The network already has debuted the first two episodes of a podcast, which will be released daily and culminate in a one-hour primetime special Aug. 22 on ESPN2. The multimedia initiative is presented under the SC Featured umbrella and the TV version of Pin Kings also will get a preview on the Aug. 21 editions of SportsCenter.

The linchpin of the project is an in-depth print story set to run in the Aug. 26 NFL preview issue of ESPN The Magazine. Brett Forrest as been working on the story for more than a year along with ESPN producer Jon Fish; the duo hosts the podcast.

Pin Kings chronicles the journeys of Alex DeCubas and Kevin Pedersen, co-captains of their high school wrestling team in Miami, whose lives took totally opposite turns. DeCubas became the biggest trafficker of Colombian cocaine on the east coast and was infamous for designing and building an amphibious submarine in the jungles of Colombia in order to smuggle cocaine to America. He was apprehended and sentenced to 30 years in jail, but was released from federal prison in Miami in 2012.

Multi-platform storytelling is not new to ESPN. But Pin Kings, said Victor Vitarelli, senior coordinating producer, ESPN Features Unit, “takes it to a new level.”

He added that the network has already identified other stories that could be right for the same type of exploitation. Certainly longform true crime has been a hot genre since the Serial podcast, HBO’s The Jinx and the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer. And ESPN’s epic O.J Simpson documentary raised the bar for longform nonfiction storytelling. But, said Vitarelli, “ESPN would not be telling this story if there were not a very significant sports angle to it. These were All-American wrestlers who turned to the lessons they learned on the mat throughout their separate journeys.”
 

Marisa Guthrie

THRnews@thr.com

August 02, 2016 12:09pm PT by Marisa Guthrie

Bob Costas  Getty

“It’s going to be impossible, in some cases, not to address some of the issues that have come up because they will directly intersect with the competition,” says NBC’s primetime host.

Just days before the Aug. 5 opening ceremony of the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics concerns about Zika may be abating — it’s winter in Rio and mosquitoes are at a minimum — but security and severely polluted water still dominate headlines.

And NBC Olympics host Bob Costas told journalists gathered for NBC’s portion of summer press tour Tuesday morning that he intends to address the water problems head on. “One thing is certain; every bit of competition that takes place on open water, you’ve got to talk about the condition of the water,” said Costas, appearing at the Beverly Hilton, via satellite from Rio, with NBC Olympics executive producer Jim Bell and correspondent Mary Carillo.

“These athletes are dealing with it. And, in some cases, the best they’ve been told is try to keep your mouth closed,” continued Costas. “That’s rather difficult when you’re swimming, even in your backyard pool, let alone in open water. It’s going to be impossible, in some cases, not to address some of the issues that have come up because they will directly intersect with the competition.”

Bell chimed in that multiple open water test events have been held and so far none of the athletes have been knocked out by illness. But the waterways of Rio are nevertheless teeming with dangerous viruses and bacteria, putting 1,400 athletes at risk of getting violently ill. According to the Associated Press, the most contaminated areas are the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, where Olympic rowing will take place, and the Gloria Marina, the starting point for the sailing races. Even the water at Rio’s famed Copacabana Beach, the location of the beach volleyball competition, is extremely polluted.

When Carillo offered that she’ll be covering some of the open water events next week with Rowdy Gaines, Costas quipped: “Do you plan to take a dip yourself?” To which Carillo replied with an emphatic: “Absolutely not!”

The Olympics are generally plagued by negative headlines in the run up to the Games. And Costas said that he’ll have an “extensive” sit-down interview with IOC president Thomas Bach for the network’s Aug. 4 primetime special during which he intends to buttonhole Bach on many of the critiques that have dogged the Games, not just the Rio Olympics, including partnerships with authoritarian regimes (China, Russia), economic issues, pollution and, yes, Zika. “I will put every one of those questions to Thomas Bach,” said Costas. “We’ll see what happens.”

Traditionally, once the competition begins, viewers and the media, shifts its collective focus to the athletes. Clearly, NBC Sports executives are hoping that will be the case. And Bell noted that the network’s market research reveals very high interest in the Rio Games, even higher than for London in 2012. The advantageous time zone – Rio is one hour ahead of New York – will let NBC program the most live events ever for an Olympics, especially in primetime on NBC.

To that end, Bell confirmed that West Coast viewers who will not be seeing live content during NBC’s primetime coverage, can still watch all events live on NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app. “What we’ve found is that people who stream, watch more television,” said Bell. “So it doesn’t cannibalize our [linear] audience.”

Television Critics Association Bob Costas

Marisa Guthrie

THRnews@thr.com

March 17, 2016 10:01am PT by Marisa Guthrie

Donald Trump during a CNN debate   Joe Raedle/Getty Images

“I reject the premise that we’ve given too much attention” to Trump, said the CNN chief.

CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker disputed the popular narrative that the media has aided and abetted Donald Trump’s candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination by giving the erstwhile reality show host oxygen on his network. As the frontrunner, noted Zucker at a lunch with a small group of reporters on Wednesday, Trump was always going to get “a disproportionate amount of attention.”

But Zucker also pointed out that Trump, who has been a near constant presence across TV news, has been “much more available” than the other candidates. At CNN’s March 10 Republican debate in Miami, Zucker revealed that he spoke with several of Ted Cruz’s top aides and “offered them numerous options to come on for one-hour interviews, phone calls, town halls. They all said, ‘yes yes, yes, we want to do that,’ and then when we followed up with the invitation, it’s all ‘no,’” said Zucker, “My point is, you can’t have it both ways. So I actually reject that premise that we’ve given too much attention to [Trump].”

It should be noted that the narrative has been promulgated by Trump’s competitors, especially Cruz and Marco Rubio, who this week suspended his campaign after a crushing primary loss to Trump in Florida. And Trump has bragged about his ubiquity on TV news shows, boasting that he has spent very little on TV advertising.

Of course the election, and especially the debates have been a boon for cable news, which has had the disproportionate amount of primary debates and offered wall-to-wall coverage of on primary nights. Even the GOP face-off on CNN last week, the least watched out of all four debates on the network, was still watched by nearly 12 million people. The March 3 debate on Fox News ultimately pulled in close to 17 million viewers. But on Wednesday, Trump announced that he would not participate in what would have been the final debate of the primary season on March 21. That debate, which was set to air on Fox News, was later canceled.

Marisa Guthrie

THRnews@thr.com