Sports Centering

ESPN’s programming/production chief Mark Shapiro never rests on his laurels, so even signature show "SportsCenter" and its 3 straight years of ratings growth is subject to tweaking. Soon Shapiro’s team will be strategizing about forming steady anchor teams for the show, returning to the style of consistent tandems from earlier days, when the team of Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann was a mainstay. Viewers will see consistent teams beginning in the fall. That’s because over the next few months anchors will be involved in somewhat of a boot camp, where they’ll hone their interviewing, reporting and journalistic skills. This will be needed as SportsCenter increases news reporting, storytelling and journalism, Shapiro says. This won’t be done at the expense of SportsCenter’s trademark humor and plethora of highlights. Still, Shapiro says he wants to "break news…we want to be in front of the news cycle, not in it." To this end, ESPN will add 10 reporters to its roster of 20 field journalists and increase contributions from scribes at espn.com and ESPN The Magazine. Other Shapiro priorities: an NFL deal, developing more original content through the EOE brand, continuing a relationship with Baseball, maintaining an edge in sports tech (as evidenced by the new graphic look of "Sunday Night Baseball" and "sniffing around NASCAR."