'DETAIL'ORIENTED
Kobe focusing on niche show for ESPN+ rollout
IF KOBE Bryant wanted to, he could be one of the lead analysts on ABC/ ESPN or for Turner Sports. His status as an all-time great and his distinctive personality make him the type of ex-player who is a no-brainer for networks to call, but Bryant doesn’t want to be in a studio or on games.
“Zero,” Bryant said when asked about his level of interest in one day being a regular analyst.
Instead, Bryant is building off his Academy Award for best animated short in “Dear Basketball” by producing and hosting a new show on ESPN’s offshoot service, ESPN+. The show is called “Detail” and will feature Bryant breaking down film to a minute level.
“I felt like it’s important for the next generation to learn how to watch film, how to study the game,” said Bryant, who started his own company, Kobe Inc., in 2014. “I felt like if this show was around when I was 10 years old, 11 years old, I would have gained so much insight, so much value from it, that by the time I’m 22, 25, my knowledge of the game would be at a much, much higher level than my predecessors.”
ESPN+ is not a part of your regular cable package. It is available for a separate fee of $4.99 a month on top of your current $7 or so per month. The idea of putting content like “Detail” on this new service is to try to convince diehard basketball fans that this is programming they can’t get anywhere else.
Bryant is fine with that, as he doesn’t want to be on “NBA Countdown” or “Inside The NBA.” He is sort of a boutique NBA analyst.
“I love what I’m doing now,” Bryant said of Kobe Inc., which includes Kobe Studios. “I love coming to the office [and] writing, editing, creating. Building a studio is no small task. It’s all encompassing. I just don’t have the time to sit at a studio [TV desk] and do that.”
Bryant is not the only one with his own signature special. Alex Rodriguez will also produce some unspecified programs for ESPN, but Rodriguez’s shows will not be on the burgeoning ➤ Clicker Consulting: With Jeff Van
Gundy and Mark Jackson potential candidates for the Knicks’ coaching job and maybe others, there could be at least one opening on ESPN/ABC’s top team with play-by-player Mike Breen. The job should go to Doris Burke. Burke played her college hoops at Providence College, but this would be no PC move. Burke has not been given anything, as she has worked her way through the ranks, first finding acclaim on Liberty games on MSG years ago. It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t played in the NBA; she has shown her skills for years, going rung by rung, and now, if Van Gundy or Jackson move on, she should transition from the sideline into one of the top game-analyst seats in the sport. It is an easy call.
➤ ESPN+ began Thursday, which the company has presented as a very big deal. It is a process that ESPN needed to begin, but with so much focus put on it, ESPN will have to make sure there is no confusion with it or with it being mostly ignored by sports fans, despite the resources ESPN has poured into it.
ESPN+ will not offer any of the regular, top games and programming you see on ESPN’s legacy channels (ESPN, ESPN2, etc.). Instead, it is offering games that might have niche appeal. This is why the hype seems to outweigh the initial product.
If you are a cord-cutter, ESPN+ does not give you ESPN, but instead a collection of mostly not-ready-for-primetime games and some added documentaries (like the Kobe specials).
The set of live games on ESPN+ are not premier ones as, for example, there is one MLB game per day offered. They are not team specific, and out-ofmarket fans likely would just stay with an MLB.TV plan, if they wanted that, meaning if you are a Yankees fan living in Kansas, you would stay with the MLB.TV package.
ESPN+ may find more success with more niche programming, like Ivy League action and smaller leagues, which might have a group of diehard fans who will pony up for the service. These ultra-loyal fans are where these subscription models can excel at a reasonable monthly price point, but there are limits on scale compared to major, must-watch events, like the NFL. There will be no NFL games on ESPN+.
Disney/ESPN has presented this as a very big deal, but it seems, here at the start, it is more complementary, because the core ESPN business will continue on your regular ESPN channels and as a free component of the app. This does give ESPN/ Disney a chance to test out the technology before potentially one day making it the main event.
➤ Going against the overall TV narrative, NBA ratings were up across the board during the regular season. … TNT/NBA TV will use six teams to cover the first round of the NBA playoffs: Marv Albert and Chris Webber; Kevin Harlan and Reggie Miller; Brian Anderson and Kevin McHale; Ian Eagle and Brent Barry; Spero Dedes and Mike Fratello; and Pete Pranica with analyst Greg Anthony.