Breakfast at Wimbledon on ESPN menu
ESPN will announce today new wrinkles to Wimbledon coverage that include resurrecting a decades-old NBC concept: “Breakfast at Wimbledon.”
ESPN becomes the sole U.S. TV outlet for the tennis Grand Slam tournament on grass this month when it kicks off June 25. But while NBC used the line largely as a marketing hook, ESPN also will use it as the title of a new hour-long pregame show that will air at either 7 or 8 a.m. ET depending on action during the tournament’s middle Saturday and last four days.
“Throughout the (TV) negotiations with the All England Club, they asked us to look at bringing back the moniker,” ESPN programmer Jason Bernstein says.
Also today, ESPN will name Mike Tirico as a host. The network announced earlier that John McEnroe had joined the fold as lead analyst. But the biggest change in coverage will be in scheduling. On secondweek coverage in past years, NBC and ESPN juggled time slots, with NBC sometimes picking matches and airing them on tape delay rather than pre-empting its Today show.
This year, ESPN vice president Jamie Reynolds says, everything will be live and “multiplexed rather than patchwork” as ESPN focuses on Centre Court action and ESPN2 on everything else. ESPN will stream 820 hours — up from 650 last year — on its ESPN3 broadband service and will add a 3 p.m. ET highlights show on the final Sunday — which could air opposite ESPN’s live men’s final if that match runs long. ESPN, Reynolds says, also will add an overhead “spider cam” rolling on cables for crowd shots. Says Bernstein when asked whether that camera might ever roll above Centre Court: “That’s something we’re all looking at and whether it would affect the mystique.”
Ochocinco-‘Knocks’ redux:
HBO got lucky when exuberant attention-seeker Chad Ochocinco joined the Miami Dolphins, the subject of this summer’s five-episode Hard Knocks, which premieres Aug. 7. Ochocinco showed up a lot onscreen when Knocks followed the Cincinnati Bengals in 2009. He sees himself as anything but camera-shy, noting in 2010 before his shortlived show with Terrell Owens on Versus: “Do you know how dangerous it is for us to have a stage like this?” Other Dolphins in training camp might take their hardest hits if they try to get between Ochocinco and a Knocks camera.
But despite speculation that the NFL Filmsproduced Knocks already was working with Ochocinco on Monday, HBO spokesman Ray Stallone says that isn’t true: “A member of the production team said hello to Chad in the Dolphins cafeteria. . . . There was no scheduled meeting or shoot.”
Duval in new role:
ESPN on Tuesday announced that David Duval would join its U.S. Open golf coverage as an ESPN3 analyst in what amounts to a TV tryout. While Duval says he’d definitely like to do TV eventually, he adds, “I don’t want it to be seen as a transition because I don’t believe my playing career is over.”