Grabbed this from Peter King’s FMIA:
Peter King's Football Morning in America column reports 2020 NFL Draft could be combined ESPN/NFL Network telecast. Plus, Colts employees share new working reality.
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FMIA: Amidst Stunning 2020 Draft Possibilities
The draft continues to be a moving target in plans by the NFL, but with the first round 17 days away, a very different 2020 NFL Draft is taking shape. What I know this morning:
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Momentum is building for ESPN and NFL Network to do a combined draft telecast. Over the weekend I spoke with four people with knowledge of the ongoing discussions between the league, ESPN and NFL Network about draft weekend plans on April 23-25. It’s looking more likely that instead of the two football rivals doing info-warring separate telecasts, they’ll combine to do one telecast, likely out of the ESPN studio in Bristol, Conn., with NFL Network talent either co-hosting or being major contributors to the coverage. As it was explained to me, it’s looking more and more likely that West and East coast studios owned and operated by the NFL, in Culver City, Calif., and Mount Laurel, N.J., will remain closed by state decrees, while the ESPN facility is allowed to remain open on a limited basis. And the socially responsible thing, as one person told me, is to have one unified broadcast.
How will it look? TBD, though I’d expect NFL Network’s traditional host Rich Eisen and personnel expert Daniel Jeremiah, at the very least, to be have prime roles in the show. One good thing is while NFL Network and ESPN have a healthy rivalry, it’s not a bitter Red Sox-Yankees type; the executives and many of the anchors at each shop have mostly good relationships. This isn’t final, but it seems to be the way the league and networks are leaning right now.
This likely would not affect the scheduled ABC draft show. There are plans for that show to go on as scheduled, with the larger network doing less of a hard-core football telecast with different anchors and talent.
• There will be a Covid-19 Telethon element to the draft. The league is closing in on plans to weave a fundraising element into all three days of the telecast, complete with celebrity players and former players and coaches urging viewers to donate to coronavirus-related causes. Raising some number of millions for health-care providers or PPE gear or local causes or those out of work because of the pandemic could—
could, I stress—make the weekend a positive event in a sea of terrible news around America.
• If you gave TV people a choice, they’d prefer Roger Goodell on draft weekend to do what all Americans are doing these days: stay home. I wrote last weekend that having Goodell announce the picks from his home in Westchester County, N.Y., was a “worst-case scenario,” but it’s clearly the preference of several people in the draft-weekend discussion. Though ESPN is just a 100-minute drive from Goodell’s home, optically it makes no sense with the national stay-home recommendation for Goodell to be on the spartan set of a TV show. I don’t know what Goodell will do, but being on a home camera is the smartest option for him on the Thursday night first-round show.
More on draft logistics and current NFL events later in the column, but it’s most likely coaches and executives will have to draft from their homes. Amazing that so much is up in the air with the draft 17 nights away. As one person involved with the planning for the draft this year told me: “This is obviously going to be a historic draft. It’ll never be forgotten, but hopefully it’ll never be repeated.”