Excerpts from Call Re: August 11 Launch of Live
9 a.m.-3 p.m. ET SportsCenter

With ESPN’s SportsCenter less than a week away from going live 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Friday, Norby Williamson, executive VP, production, and anchors Hannah Storm (9 a.m.-noon) and Chris McKendry (noon-3 p.m.) participated in a conference call to discuss this initiative. Below are excerpts from the call, which can be heard in its entirety by logging onto espnmediazone.com, then “Conf. Call Calendar” at the bottom of the left column.

Norby Williamson, on going live weekday mornings:

“We’ve done more and more of this – go back to Sammy Sosa’s corked bat, to a lot of the (Roger) Clemens stuff, to Michael Vick and the other big stories that are happening, and we’ve fired up the studio. Now we’ve had a lot of practice doing this, we’ve become more strategic with it… and that led us to the decision to allocate significant resources and go live all the time, five days a week.”

Chris McKendry, on the opportunity to report breaking news:

“I was in to rehearse, and ended up going live. Twice this week news dictated rehearsal turn into live television. Journalism instincts kick in – if there’s a big story out there, you want to be the person delivering it. You want to be involved in the big stories, so I was prepared and happy to stay.”

Hannah Storm on how the six live hours will evolve:

“In the first hour, you’ll see a game presented one way, like a straight chronological highlight. Then, you’ll see it broken down in a different way in the second hour, and a different way in the third hour. The same with our analysts -- we may have one talk about Brett Favre in the first hour, maybe Chris Mortensen in the first hour, then a beat writer from Green Bay, then one from Chicago in the third hour. This way we’ll be able to offer a broader look at the issues of the day.”

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