With ESPN acquiring NFL Network, ESPN will soon be inheriting all NFL Network employees.
Via Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports, NFL Network on-air talent was informed this week that they will become ESPN employees on April 1. Current contracts will be honored; when they expire, ESPN either will — or won’t — renew them.
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Basically, it’ll be ESPN’s call as to whether the relationship continues. Which makes sense, because ESPN now runs NFL Network.
The process of picking on-air talent is far more subjective than objective. There are surely some ESPN executives that “like” or “don’t like” certain current NFLN on-camera personnel.
Then there’s the concept of economies of scale. ESPN already has an army of on-air employees. They can, if they choose, shift some of them to NFLN. Or use them on both platforms. Either way, that would be cheaper than keeping every single NFLN employee, once their current deals expire.
The deeper question is whether NFL Network will continue to have its own unique identity, or whether ESPN/Disney will blur the lines to the point at which NFLN is simply an unnumbered ESPN affiliate.
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Maybe they’ll eventually call it something like ESPNFL.
For now, no one knows how it will play out. It’s no surprise, then, that McCarthy reports some on-air employees are in “panic mode.” While another unnamed source said “panic” is too strong, morale isn’t great. And that’s to be expected.
Until the dust settles on the Stamford/Scranton-style assimilation of the two operations, it’s more than fair for the NFL Network employees to wonder what in the hell is going to happen next. The sooner ESPN lets them all know, the sooner they’ll each have one less considerably big thing to worry about.
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