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Video clips from interviews with

professionals in sports media....

and two from the vault.

I am often asked by my students what its like to work in sports television. Better than for me to say is to hear it from my former boss, Mike Matters.

Monday Night Football

By far, the busiest day of the week during the busiest time of the year at ESPN is Monday. Over 300 people are putting in a ten or twelve hour day to bring you the programs that run from 3pm to midnight.

"Monday Night Football" is more than a game.

Sponsorship:

ESPN pays Billions each year for MLB, NFL, NASCAR, college football, all the top tier sports. The way to pay for those marquee programs is through advertising. That means not only a break in the action of a game but sponsoring entire shows…OR individual segments such as “The Budweiser Hot Seat” or “Coors Light Cold Hard Facts” interview segments or, in this case, the GMC Defensive Player of the Week”.

Satellites

The ESPN complex is called "The campus". When I worked at ESPN, the campus consisted of two buildings and our travel department was in an annex on the west end of the campus.

 One of my jobs when I was an assignemnt producer at ESPN was to book travel with our travel department for a camera man, producer and talent. That is, someone like Chris Berman.

 I was also what's known as the satellite coordinator for SportsCenter. It was my responsibility to coordinate (with our Master Control operator) which satellites took in what games and fed them into our screening room where producers would tape games they'd edit for highlight packages. Now, ESPN is so big, they have a team of people to serve as satellite coordinators.