Gadgetory

welcome everyone to the ESPN SportsCenter we are all sports all the time and that's the way it's going to be continuing Sunday's New York New Jersey meeting up big time they were robbed out of course please take that off the rest they were here a long time it was a year ago this week that we took the air with the pledge very simply that we would bring you the most comprehensive sports news programming that you would find on television it's time for Mike and Mike on ESPN Radio and espn2 as we approach Thanksgiving things starting to come into focus back and better than ever Mike and Mike presented by Progressive Insurance our guests if you watch sports you watch ESPN in nearly four decades since it first went on the air the company in the small town of Bristol Connecticut has become the first and last word in games news and analysis but now when news breaks on Twitter and highlights show up on vine long before your TV ESPN has to become much more than a TV it has to be everywhere and it has to be there now if you look at how video had been processed over the last 50 years there was a single wire that was used to transport something from point A to point B now that it's really the ones and zeroes and at the data set we can use it we can address it it can be sent along a network this building is 4k ready an 8k capable we're now in the 1080p range not everybody can get that signal yet because the cable companies can't broadcast that but we are delivering that Sports Center has always been the most important show at ESPN and this year it got a huge upgrade a new 10,000 square foot studio in DC to the newest and highest tech building on ESPN's massive campus it's a huge space-age collection of screens cameras and cables designed to be live 18 hours a day and to help SportsCenter move at the speed of the internet that studio allows us to do things I think with virtuals technology with the catwalk walking through you have six screens that can go into three that can go into one Kevin is the king of the catwalk I just want you there's no one that walks the gallic like I embrace change in technology and so I think I think that that studio allows I think Hannah and I to kind of welcome the country everyday to say hey these are the toys that we have let's go all through it together we're gonna try this new thing and let's experience it together I mean everything we do is to try to create that mix of efficiency infrastructure at work flow right what does the content need to do with it how can we help them and that's been our goal you keep people tuned in by giving a good story when they want to find out something that's going on in sports they usually tune the ESPN because they know that we are going to be going out finding all that information out and being able to present it to them in a way that they can understand and that helps them understand what what is going on whether it be with NFL NBA whichever the sport maybe that's what we do it's what we're expected to do and that means that you know whatever platform they're using whatever time of day it is however they're connecting with their friends we need to be there because that's holding up our end of the relationship that relationship has changed ESPN's mission has always been to be everywhere sports fans are now that means fantasy teams and Twitter and being there when we want to watch the game on our phones and it means being ready for anything the advantage we have at ESPN is that we're in order sports so for the most part many things we have to cover are on schedules we can get people in the places where they can report that stuff we can think about the cadence of the day and how that should roll out in the mobile space the social space and on air the hard part and the most fun is when Odell Beckham jr. does something you've never seen before and that's when it's like all right where is everybody and what is this like and how does this show up in the social space if you are slow and want to make it beautiful you can't live in the Twitter space because some guy just held his phone up to his TV and put it up on Twitter and then here we come eight minutes after the play happen with the tada look at this beautiful opening and we've got music and natural sound and you're like I already saw it dude guys he receive Odell Beckham jr. taste I think the core still stays the same it's highlights its reaction its our analysis talking I think now we can just kind of add some some layers to the story that we couldn't get before the challenge for almost everybody else in the interest how do I create it what do i do how do I compete how do I cover this story about the Red Sox getting these two guys for us we don't even worry about that we've got people we're gonna plug them in place we've got experienced people know to tell the story then the question becomes okay now it's told what do we do with that content cable TV at least the way it exists now is dying services like sling TV are unbundling the channels but people are also just canceling their expensive subscriptions and are finding other ways to see what they want to see these P n says it's okay with that but it still has to figure out how to adapt everybody's doing cord cutting people are watching Netflix etc so what can we do to still give the people the the viewing audience the ability to see live programming that's what separates ESPN from all the other networks is all the live programming you don't really want to watch a game late because you already know who one kind of takes the fun out of the game so how can we do that better the platform's keep changing you know whether it's Apple TV or Roku or you're trying to make it prepared for a snapchat or Instagram in the last year we have seen just a we did about 3 million video views a month on over-the-top devices and Twitter and a year later that numbers are combined about 70 million digital is the perfect example of like I have three kids and I don't know what's going to come out of their mouth next you know that's the digital space it just rolls right if you turn it upside down and you say change is the normal you know not you know change is disruptive but we know that things are constantly going to change then you can cope a little bit better we don't know what's out there we don't know what's going to take hold it's 3d going to come back who knows what what is going to be out there so the infrastructure here the concept was how do we make it so it's more flexible adaptive and open to what's going to be presented to us neck that's the thing about the future you can make plans and invest millions of dollars in a brand-new facility to help data flow more places more quickly but you never know exactly what's coming so ESPN is learning what every media company in this century has to how to build a network that isn't just on TV or on the web but everywhere wherever they're consuming our product we want to be able to have what we can available to them to serve sports fans anytime anywhere under any platform there are our future and we keep that going for them you