ESPN2 to Air Interactive TV Show Based on ESPN.com's Online Community Site, SportsNation

Sports programmer, ESPN, announced Tuesday that its ESPN2 channel will next month premiere a new, one-hour, daily, live interactive TV show. Entitled "SportsNation" and based on ESPN.com's SportsNation area--an online community site that allows sports fans to interact with athletes, coaches, sportswriters, commentators and one another in real time--the show is billed as "a live sports television show born from the Internet, fueled by fan interaction and focused on fun." It will debut in a 4:00PM timeslot on Monday, July 6th. "The fans will have unprecedented input in the show's daily rundown," the show's coordinating producer, Jamie Horowitz, said in a prepared statement. "Our goal is to bring the fan into our production meetings. The fans choose the topics, provide the angles, and decide how much Brett Favre talk is really needed. 'SportsNation' will focus on topics that dominate fans' email exchanges and blogs. The show will be a conversation between people who love sports but don't take every story so seriously. The funny Web stories everyone forwards to their friends will find a home on 'SportsNation.'"

According to ESPN, the new show will "engage hundreds of thousands of sports fans across the country" via the SportsNation area on ESPN.com, and will invite fans to interact with its hosts, Colin Cowherd and Michelle Beadle, "before, during and after" its broadcast via email, text, Twitter or phone. ESPN says that, in advance of the debut of the new "SportsNation" show, the SportsNation area on ESPN.com will relaunch with a new design, a "more blog-style" chronological layout, a new live chat index, and "direct tie-ins" to the show. ESPN claims that the SportsNation site averages close to a million unique visitors each month and that in March, uniques rose 18% compared to the same period last year. It also says that, since its launch in the fall of 2003, it has hosted over 4,000 chats and over 10,000 polls annually, generating an average of over 100 million votes. SportsNation on ESPN.com has since 2004 been sponsored by Toyota, which is also advertising on the new spin-off show.

In other recent news from ESPN:

• The company also announced Tuesday that it has signed an agreement with Comcast that will see its broadband video service, ESPN360.com, launching on Comcast.net (note: the deal will also see its ESPNU channel launching on Comcast's Digital Classic programming tier), bringing its reach to 41 million homes. According to Comcast, Comcast.net--which features around 130,000 videos from such content providers as ABC News, CBS News, Fox Sports, Disney, E!, G4, The Weather Channel, and CelebTV--reaches 17 million unique users per month. According to ESPN, ESPN360.com, which will be available to Comcast.net users free-of-charge, offers coverage of over 3,500 live global sports events each year.
• Just before the Christmas break, the company announced that, starting in the summer of 2009, it will launch three new interactive TV applications, which it says will help operators that carry its programming to grow their businesses and create "new, dynamic opportunities for advertisers." Two of the new apps will be EBIF-based and one will be tru2way-based. "ESPN has always been a leader when it comes to innovation and technology," Sean Bratches, the company's EVP of sales and marketing, said in a prepared statement. "And we know that our fans tend to be early adopters of technology. Now with ITV technology more widely available and of more importance to our affiliates and our advertisers, we want to enhance the fan experience at home. We believe these applications will be hugely popular and further advance interactive television in the industry. We have seen renewed interest in ITV not only from our customers but also from our advertisers, who are always looking for new ways to engage consumers. We're excited to bring the combined power of sports and these products to the market." The new apps, whose official names had not been finalized when ESPN announced them, are: 1) "ESPN My Vote" (EBIF), an interactive voting and polling feature that will be available during each live airing of "SportsCenter," "College Football Live," and "Baseball Tonight," as well as during college football and Major League Baseball telecasts; 2) "ESPN In Game Extra" (EBIF), which will allow viewers to pull up statistics and other information (e.g. player tracking, scores, standings and schedules) during live events; and 3) "My Bottom Line" (tru2way), which will allow viewers to customize the scrolling information that appears on the bottom of the screen during certain ESPN shows (the app would, for example, allow a fan of a particular sports team to program the "bottom line" to include only that team's scores) and which will also provide viewers with additional access to stats, standings and other information, and will be programmable to provide information about fantasy teams. ESPN says it plans to incorporate the two EBIF applications into coverage of over 3,000 events each year. Each of the three apps will also include specific advertising overlays, the company says.