Peter Schrager’s long-rumored ESPN show reportedly close to becoming official
· Yahoo Sports
Peter Schrager’s 2 p.m. show seems to be sports media’s worst-kept secret at this point.
OutKick’s Bobby Burack reported that ESPN is expected to announce a new 2 p.m. show hosted by Schrager in the coming week(s). The show itself has been the expected outcome of ESPN’s afternoon lineup shuffle since at least May, when The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported that a program built around Schrager was the leading candidate to replace the 2 p.m. edition of SportsCenter.
Visit betsport.cv for more information.
Schrager’s name has been tied to ESPN’s afternoon shakeup since almost the moment Around the Horn was canceled. When CNBC’s Alex Sherman first reported that ESPN was considering replacing the 2 p.m. SportsCenter, he described the concept as an “all-sports” show rather than another NFL-only hour, and Marchand reported last spring that Schrager doing a show at 2 or 5 p.m. was “pretty likely,” floating the idea that he could be “a central figure in some sort of ensemble” rather than a solo act.
Schrager joined ESPN from NFL Network and Fox Sports last April after nearly a decade as one of the faces of Good Morning Football, and quickly became a fixture across Get Up, First Take, NFL Live, and The Pat McAfee Show. He stole the show at McAfee’s NFL Draft Spectacular that spring, launched The Schrager Hour podcast with Omaha Productions in the fall, and stepped in as a guest host for Mike Greenberg on Get Up, a run that gave ESPN executives confidence he could anchor an hour of his own, per Marchand’s reporting. He’s also been candid about missing the three-hour daily runway he had at Good Morning Football, where he could spend eight minutes on whatever topic interested him that day. A solo show would hand him something close to that format again.
The 5 p.m. hour, by contrast, looks like it’s staying put. That slot has also been filled by SportsCenter since Around the Horn’s cancellation, and while Scott Van Pelt was floated for months as a candidate to take it over, he confirmed on his own podcast in April that he’s staying in his late-night role rather than moving. ESPN executive Burke Magnus had pushed hard for a reunion between Van Pelt and Ryen Russillo to anchor the new hour, telling Andrew Marchand it was “a bit of a selfish concept by me” given how big a fan he’d been of their old radio pairing, but Russillo’s own schedule — and later move to Barstool — made the setup unlikely. Without a concept he could actually build around, Van Pelt opted to stay with the format that’s already earned his SportsCenter 10 Emmy nominations and regularly lands him timely interviews with players and coaches in the immediate aftermath of major games, interviews that simply wouldn’t be available to a show airing at 5 p.m. instead of after primetime.
With Van Pelt staying put and SportsCenter continuing to outperform where Around the Horn once sat, the pressure to force a decision at 5 p.m. has eased, at least for now. The 2 p.m. hour, on the other hand, appears to finally be arriving at its answer, even if the details remain scarce and an announcement looks imminent.
The post Peter Schrager’s long-rumored ESPN show reportedly close to becoming official appeared first on Awful Announcing.