In the fall of 2001, a nearly 30-year-old Eric Shanks was dispatched to Italy to acquire Serie A rights and stand up an entirely new sports network under Sky Italia. When he arrived, one of the companies Fox had acquired, Telepiu, gave Shanks \u2014 who, at the time, couldn\u2019t speak a lick of Italian \u2014 a tour of how they covered soccer. Shanks found a half-dozen analysts sitting around folding tables and watching the games on TV, with an MC figuratively passing the mic.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne guy would raise his hand, and the [host] would look across the room and he\u2019d be like, \u2018OK, now we\u2019re going over to Giovanni in Palermo.\u2019 And then Giovanni would start talking. Then another guy would raise his hand. \u2018OK, now we\u2019re going over to Mario, he\u2019s in Milano,\u2019\u201d Shanks recalled. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018What the f— is going on?\u2019 And then, \u2018Oh! That\u2019s the live look-in.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Shanks immediately saw the opportunity: \u201cThis is what the NFL needs, this jumping around to all the best moments live.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Shanks joined DirecTV amid its negotiations with the NFL in 2003, he sought to include a clause that granted the satellite TV provider the right to live look-ins across NFL games. NFL RedZone went live in 2005.<\/p>\n
David Hill, then Fox Sports\u2019 chairman, said the plan worked largely because of the combination of director Jonathan X, previously a technical director for sports on Fox and HBO, and producer James Crittenden.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe paired them with Andrew Siciliano, because it was really a radio show,\u201d said Hill, referring to the host\u2019s L.A. sports radio background. \u201cWe kind of did it because it was cool. \u2026 But then we discovered at the end of the season that all these people were watching it, and suddenly RedZone became huge.\u201d<\/p>\n
NFL Network mimicked the strategy with its own RedZone program, hosted by Scott Hanson, several years later. Though the original was put to bed after YouTube acquired Sunday Ticket for the 2023 season, its legacy is undeniable. Hans Schroeder, executive vice president and COO of NFL Media, said Shanks had just the right mix to pull it off.<\/p>\n
\u201cEric is just incredibly knowledgeable. He knows the product, he knows what\u2019s going to make the experience a great one for fans. And he knows the business side in an incredibly deep way,\u201d Schroeder said. \u201cTo have both of those things as sort of that overall leadership as a sports executive, it\u2019s a really incredible skill set.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the fall of 2001, a nearly 30-year-old Eric Shanks was dispatched to Italy to acquire Serie A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,36805,514,14803,39932,82],"class_list":["post-707684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fox-sports","tag-nfl","tag-portfolio","tag-print","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}