SBJ Media: After TNT’s Fab Five success, ‘it’s all basketball’ for title game

When I spoke to ESPN’s David Kraft about his retirement, he was all about getting some tee times starting this month as the weather warmed up in Connecticut. But some of those tee times will have to wait, as Kraft has agreed to stay on with ESPN for a bit longer and work through the end of August to assist the news desk where needed. One big area where Kraft will be instrumental: the integration of the NFL Network team into ESPN.

“It’s all ballgame.”

That’s how TNT’s Craig Barry and his team are treating Monday’s UConn-Michigan NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship game. Barry, TNT Sports’ EVP and chief content officer, noted that during the Final Four there have been a number of TV elements like the Coach K interview, the Fab Five alt-cast and the concert during the bridge show, but now “it’s all about the game tonight.”

With the game being in Indianapolis, there will be a tribute piece to the 1975-76 undefeated Indiana men’s basketball team, but the rest of the broadcast will be focused on what Barry thinks will be a very close game between the Huskies and Wolverines. “In our production meetings, we’re hyper-focused on bringing the absolute best presentation of this game to the fan,” he said.

How the Fab Five alt-cast came to be

While Chris Webber and Jalen Rose both have been working for TNT Sports’ college basketball studio show all season, the idea for the Fab Five alt-cast came from a different source — young TNT producer Torrence Wilson. “It took me about two seconds to say yes, and that’s literally how it came to be,” Barry said.

The reunion also wasn’t without other logistical hurdles, and Nate Smeltz, TNT Sports’ SVP/talent relations, global communications, client events and partnerships, coordinated to get everyone together. That included navigating around the schedule of Nets assistant coach Juwan Howard, who had games on Friday and Sunday in Brooklyn. But once that was all worked out, Webber, Rose, Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson were ready to go.

While many alt-casts are in studios with a number of voices, the Fab Five “watch party” format was meant to be more casual and conversational and reflect watching the game in the venue. TNT positioned the five former Wolverines, plus host Adam Lefkoe, in the middle of the student section on the Michigan side, but right by the court with a direct view of the floor. Everyone also had live broadcast feeds and replays on monitors.

“Traditional alt-casts work in the boxes around the main broadcast window,” Barry said, name-dropping the “ManningCast” as an example. “But then to be able to have them shoulder-to-shoulder and still have them in the box so they’re interacting real time — you’re seeing the chemistry kind of bubble up. But yet, when you’re watching them on the air, you can focus individually on each of them, and so I thought it made for a really compelling format for the alt-cast.”

Barry praised the chemistry between the former college teammates despite only having appeared publicly together a few times over the last 30 years. “It felt very much like I was on the couch with these guys, listening to them watch this game,” he said.

As for any thought on running it back with the Fab Five for an alt-cast during the championship game, Barry quickly put the kibosh on that.

“First take, best take,” he quipped.

ESPN has some distinct counter-programming for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship on Monday night in the new documentary “Sports Heaven: The Birth of ESPN,” which tells the story behind the creation of the network, including founder Bill Rasmussen’s efforts to launch the network, early financial backing from Getty Oil, the first programming deals and investment in satellite tech.

It’s also a one-shot performance for the doc on ESPN linear airwaves, as this isn’t a production of ESPN Films but of an outside company in Tenero. “The priority for us was Bill Rasmussen very much wanted his story on his network,” said longtime ESPN exec Mike Soltys, who is now the company’s historian and a producer on the documentary. “He particularly liked ESPN over ESPN2, and he particularly liked prime time over daytime. And so, he’s very happy with it. But they acquired it for the one air, and then Tenero hopes to sell it to somebody else. So it will be a free agent next week.”

But while ESPN Films isn’t involved with the production, there was plenty of support and cooperation from many senior and long-tenured ESPN personnel, including interviews with the likes of Rasmussen, Jimmy Pitaro, Chuck Pagano, Rosa Gatti, George Bodenheimer, Chris Berman and Bob Ley.

“Everybody that’s in the film, we asked, and they were happy to do it. Nobody turned us down,” Soltys said. “We had a director of photography, Bruce Taylor, who worked at ESPN a long time. He provided that comfort level for people to know that this is the crew that’s coming into your living room.”

Looking for buried treasure

One of the better finds for Soltys while making the film was a rehearsal of the first “SportsCenter” from Sept. 7, 1979, which not only had he never seen, but he didn’t know existed.

The director of the film, Greg DeHart, was actually surprised at how little video was available from the earliest days. “The issue was in 1979, because ESPN’s losing a lot of money, if something wasn’t going to be repeated, Getty had the instruction that we had to tape over the tape, because tapes were too expensive to just keep going through them,” Soltys said. “It was like almost no ‘SportsCenter’ from 1979. ... We tried the town of Bristol, the state of Connecticut and the local news stations and the NBC affiliate. We did get a little clip of Berman on the weekend sports that he was doing before he came here. But Chris Berman in 1979 on ESPN — I’m not aware of it existing.”

One area where Soltys’ research for the film will come in handy is for ESPN’s 50th anniversary set for 2029. “If you’re going to do an anniversary big, you got to do it a lot of time in advance,” he said. “Anything that I’ve uncovered for this film, I’ve made a digital home for it.”

ESPN is adapting to a different set of MLB national media rights for 2026, with 30 exclusive — but mostly midweek — national games during the summer. That means juggling a different broadcast talent schedule, reports my SBJ colleague Mike Mazzeo.

A rotation of play-by-play announcers will include Karl Ravech, Jon “Boog” Sciambi and Mike Monaco, with Kevin Brown also contributing on select games.

“It was a little bit of a challenge,” said ESPN SVP/Sports Production Mark Gross. “We had ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ for 35 years. But once you get the schedule and start to size it up, [Ravech’s] got different responsibilities with [the College World Series] and [Little League World Series]; Boog works with the Cubs; Monaco has some tennis, and Kevin is with the Orioles. So we just pieced it together in what made sense for them and for us when they’re available.”

On the analyst side, Eduardo Perez, David Ross, Doug Glanville, Jessica Mendoza and Todd Frazier will be featured. Adam Ottavino will also join as a game and studio analyst, making his first appearance May 7 for Cardinals-Padres at 10pm ET.

Mets-Dodgers on April 15 for Jackie Robinson Day at Dodger Stadium will mark ESPN’s first exclusive game as part of the deal. Joe Buck will call that game with Ron Darling and Orel Hershiser, and “Baseball Tonight” will take place at the ballpark. “It’s a no-brainer,” Gross said.

“Our package is different, but we care more about it than we’ve ever cared about it,” Gross noted. “We’re just getting itchy to do a game, and we’re not that far away now.”

The 90th Masters tees off Thursday, and it’s also the 40th anniversary of Jim Nantz’s first year working the event for CBS. That anniversary brought up a fond memory for SBJ golf/media reporter Josh Carpenter.

“I was a longtime fan of Nantz’s and actually had a connection to him: My mom was/is close with his aunt. And with me being an aspiring journalist, as a junior at UNC Charlotte at the time, they set me up so I could meet him following the third round of the 2010 Quail Hollow Championship,” Carpenter recalled. “After being in a trance and shaking his hand for what felt like 10 minutes, we chatted briefly, and he joked that he would save a spot in the 18th tower for me one day.

“We said our goodbyes, and as I was trudging up the hill near the clubhouse with my now-wife, someone from Nantz’s team ran us down and hand-delivered the tie he had worn on the CBS broadcast that day. It’s a small tradition Nantz has kept over the years, doing the same at the Final Four and with other aspiring media students. I’ve held onto it over the years and still think about that brief exchange any time I see Nantz on a broadcast, golf or otherwise.

“So, cheers to the best to ever do it as he calls his 41st Masters this week.”

• Shaquille O’Neal and TNT Sports will launch a new league dubbed “Dunkman” this summer. The first pro dunking league, with backing from Eli Lilly & Co., aims to build on the success of last year’s TV series, with Shaq as commissioner. The live events will air on TNT, TBS, truTV and HBO Max. Additional content will be on Dunkman social channels, Bleacher Report, House of Highlights and YouTube.
• Range Sports has hired FanDuel Sports Network VP and Head of Content Partnerships & Acquisitions Ben Berchuck as SVP/Media Rights Consulting. He will report to Range Sports Head of Media Rights Consulting David Sternberg. Prior to FDSN, Berchuck worked on live sports partnerships and programming for Facebook/Meta, and also had a stint working on Wasserman’s media rights team.
• For Opening Day games, 15 of 29 U.S.-based MLB teams saw local viewership increases compared to 2025.
• The latest episode of the SBJ Sports Media Podcast features my chat with my colleague Richard Deitsch on Big Data’s effect on March Madness viewership. We also discuss the implications on TGL media rights with Tiger Woods stepping away from golf.
• With Augusta National celebrating the 90th Masters, the media industry is also marking a milestone for this year’s tournament: It’s the 70th Masters on TV. My SBJ colleague Josh Carpenter looks at the evolution of the Masters broadcast in this week’s magazine.
• SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo reports on a growing trend — MLB teams investing in content studios to produce shorts on social media.
• ESPN on-air personality Marty Smith signed what he called a long-term contract with the network, writes Carpenter.
• NFL owners signed off on a series of changes to the league’s internet resolution and related policies that determine what teams can and cannot do in terms of distributing digital content and making money online, writes Ben Fischer in his latest SBJ Football newsletter.