By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

BRISTOL, Conn. - After about 70 minutes of free form discussion on all things ESPN from (primarly) George Bodenheimer and John Skipper, there is one clear picture that has emerged: this place is terrifying.

It is quite clear that Bodenheimer, Skipper and John Walsh control the sports world. Every last corner of it. Even if they claim otherwise.

“Nobody here believes were an 800-pound gorilla,” said Bodenheimer. “We try to maintain the culture of the scrappy underdog - the ‘Litlte Engine that Could.’ Nobody gave us anything, we built this all on our own and we work hard to maintain that culture.”

It’s a culture that Bodenheimer said is driven by four company priorities for this year (many ESPN employees actually wear a laminated card of the goals and the company mission statement around their necks daily):

1. SportsCenter - “The most important brand to us after the ESPN brand,” he said.

2. Ad/Sales - “It’s not your father’s ad business any more,” said Bodenheimer.

3. ESPN.com - “Boy is it booming,” he said.

4. International - “We have the potential to be a more global brand,” said Bodenheimer.

With those priorities in mind, the operative words that Bodenheimer used twice in highlighting the four points was “journalistic focus.” With that emphasis, a logical discussion of the “Who’s Now” experiment unfolded with Skipper joking that he was suprised to hear one reporter call it the “most villified” programming in recent memory.

“I remember Petticoat Junction,” laughed Skipper with his folksy, southern drawl.

The executives fell short of calling “Who’s Now” an failure.

“We encourage people to try and do different things and the summer is often when we do some kind of stunt of different kind of content,” said Skipper. “Two years ago we had ‘50 States in 50 Days’ and last year (and again this year) we did the Make-A-Wish segments. ‘Who’s Now’ didn’t work as well as the Make-A-Wish, I’ll say that. I wish the execution had been crisper and sports-centric.”

Said Bodenheimer, who constantly empahsized that ratings and traditional audience measures don’t tell the whole story for his brand, “It did drive traffic to ESPN.com and the opinion of ‘Who’s Now’ fell along age lines. Eberything we do is a balancing act and not everything is perfect.”

Clearly.

. . . On the Ombuds position that was created two years ago with George Solomon and carried on with Le Anne Schreiber, John Walsh said the concept came from newspapers and all the execs appeared content with what the position has done for the company, despite the infrequency of Schreiber columns and her tendency to do one-topic columns. “Their frequency has been entirely up to them,” said Walsh.

. . . The execs. were emphatic in pointing out a May study by Sports Business Journal that indicated ESPN’s coverage of the NHL (not one of their current properties) and AFL (one of their properties) was on par with other major media outlets.

What the execs ignore is the placement and priority of those stories and there is an undeniable percpetion that ESPN properties get more coverage. “It’s mostly not an accurate perception,” said Skipper. “No one in our news operation has been told we need more soccer or AFL coverage.”

. . . Walsh re-empahsized the company’s emphasis on that journalistic focus by discussing the large commitment to the enterprise news group that is forming.

. . . On the issue of whether there is ever too much content or too many writers hired away from competing news organizations, the simple answer was “No.”

“We hire based on a simple proposition,” said Skipper. “We’re never satisifed that we have enough talented people.”

. . . The next session is about to begin and will feature a discussion on the State of SPortswriting and Commentary with Walsh, LZ Granderson, Jemele Hill and Buster Olney.

We’ll be back after this session and leading into a SportsCenter Overview session.