The Programming Details For ESPN's 25-Hour College Football Gimmick
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
I already said my piece about this item in a post last night, but here are the details if you're looking for them. The 25-hour coverage will start August 29th at 7pm and lead up to LSU-MSU at 8pm the following night. Rece Davis will be your host throughout the whole ordeal, and will host every college football show and segments of non-college football programs (i.e. PTI, ATH, SC, etc).
There will be a 25-hour "chat room" set up for all of you computey types, and a roundtable featuring former Notre Dame coaches. Other features to include: Coach and player interviews, Pep Rallies, Reports from VT on how they are coping with the shootings (they actually put that in the press release), and many other "roundtable" discussions (Best QB, toughest place to play, etc.).
I'm still hoping that ESPN can take this stunt into a money raising event for New Orleans and Virginia Tech, but as of yet they are only considering themselves. The event is officially titled.....
25 Hours of College Football Presented by TIVO
Here's the schedule if you care to plan to stay up for the Hawaii interviews at 3am....
8/29 | 7 p.m. | College Football Live: Live shots from the ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU Thursday night game telecasts; live coverage of the USC practice and interviews with coaches and players; live coverage of Louisville, Florida State and Mississippi State pep rallies plus interviews with coaches and players from both teams; live interviews with various coaches, including West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez; Notre Dame coaches roundtable with host Brent Musburger and former coaches Ara Parseghian, Lou Holtz and Charlie Weis. |
8/29 | 11 p.m. | SportsCenter |
8/30 | midnight | College Football Live |
8/30 | 12:30 a.m. | NFL Live |
8/30 | 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. | SportsCenter |
8/30 | 3 a.m. | College Football Live: Live updates with live interviews with Hawaii coach June Jones and Hawaii quarterback Colt Brennan |
8/30 | 5 a.m. | SportsCenter |
8/30 | Noon | College Football Live |
8/30 | 3 p.m. | Outside the Lines |
8/30 | 3:30 p.m. | College Football Live |
8/30 | 4 p.m. | NFL Live |
8/30 | 4:30 p.m. | Rome is Burning |
8/30 | 5 p.m. | Around the Horn |
8/30 | 5:30 p.m. | PTI |
8/30 | 6 p.m. | SportsCenter |
8/30 | 7 p.m. | College Football Live |
8/30 | 8 p.m. | #2 LSU at Mississippi State |
I hope Rece can survive this nonsense. That's a lot of programming.
USA Today Breaks ESPN Press Release On 25-Hour College Football Telecast (Awful Announcing)
10 Comments:
Matt- If you are creating an event like this around a game that involves two teams from an area that was completely devastated by a Hurricane, and you're also using a National tragedy for content during said event.....
I think it's warranted when everyone knows this is just a gimmick. A gimmick like this will get a lot of viewers, and you could help a lot of people. But no one every thinks like that. It would be a win-win.
If your Three's Company marathon had people being smacked with rakes...I'd hope that TVLand could add something in.
I love college football as much as anyone, but c'mon, THIS is overkill.
As if programming college football preview shows every day now on ESPN wasn't enough, it's now become too much of a good thing.
Forgotten is the fact that ESPN is spending over a day leading up to a game that will be GAWD AWFUL. MSU is one of (if not the) worst team in the SEC and LSU will CRUSH them. Why do a 25-hour pregame for this game. I guess Fox Sports is already covering USC vs. Stanford.
"There are just too many damn talking heads."
- David Byrne
If Rece Davis can survive Lou Holtz's barrage of spit, he can survive this.
It's not so much a pregame to LSU/MSU as it is a season preview. C'mon, they're doing a Hawaii practice at 3 in the morning, that's awesome. Lighten up.
Or would you rather watch NASCAR Now or something?
it looks like 14 of the 25 hours is made up of regular ESPN programming.
ESPN will have no problem filling up all 25 hours. They will just blather on and on about Ohio State, Michigan, Notre Dame and the other schools they shamelessly shill for. They'll probably preview the LSU/MSU game about five minutes before kick-off.
Hey Chris, look at the content. Does this answer your question:
"Notre Dame coaches roundtable with host Brent Musburger and former coaches Ara Parseghian, Lou Holtz and Charlie Weis."
Maybe they can also debate who's the better coach: Knute Rockne or Pete Carroll
I don't understand your insistence that ESPN add some sort of charitable element to this. "They are only considering themselves"? They're a commercial enterprise whose goal is to make money. When TVLand runs a Three's Company marathon, should they be donating money to Victims of Rakes to the Face?