Sunday, July 29, 2007

ESPN's new college football show


This apparently started last week. I wish it would come on at night instead of in the middle of the day...

From USA Today:

College football has produced some of sports TV's most memorable, dramatic moments of recent vintage. Recall Boise State's wild 43-42 overtime victory against Oklahoma during last month's Fiesta Bowl or Vince Young and Texas upsetting Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush and Southern California in the national title game in 2006.

Looking to capitalize on college football's growing popularity, ESPN plans to launch this summer a weekday series, College Football Live. The 30-minute show will kick off July 23 and run through bowl season in January, says David Berson, ESPN senior vice president of programming.

Modeled after the network's daily NFL Live, the new show will be hosted mostly by Rece Davis and feature breaking news, features and analysis. Davis will be joined by a rotating mix of ESPN's college football talent, including Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit from College GameDay, Lou Holtz, Mark May, Bob Griese, Doug Flutie, Todd Blackledge, Craig James and Ed Cunningham.

The show will come on at 3:30 p.m. ET Monday-Friday on ESPN. When Monday Night Football starts, the Monday edition will shift to 2 p.m. on ESPN2. To make room for the new show, the first half of ESPN's afternoon programming block, including Outside the Lines First Report, 1st and 10 and Best of Mike and Mike, will start 30 minutes earlier.

Why now? Berson says ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC posted record TV ratings for college football programming in 2006. College GameDay posted its highest ratings in 20 years, and ABC successfully launched Saturday Night Football.

"College football fans want more content," Berson says. "This has been a long time coming. It's a natural extension for us. We expect it to become a staple of our programming, like NFL Live and Baseball Tonight."

2 comments:

LDavis said...

Thank God I just got a DVR.

Pool Jones said...

Today, I set the alarm on my watch so that I can remember to make a trip to the break room, which has a TV with cable, at 2:30 every day.