they will become ESPN employees on April 1<\/a>. Current contracts will be honored; when they expire, ESPN either will \u2014 or won\u2019t \u2014 renew them.<\/p>\nBasically, it\u2019ll be ESPN\u2019s call as to whether the relationship continues. Which makes sense, because ESPN now runs NFL Network.<\/p>\n
The process of picking on-air talent is far more subjective than objective. There are surely some ESPN executives that \u201clike\u201d or \u201cdon\u2019t like\u201d certain current NFLN on-camera personnel. <\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Maybe they\u2019ll eventually call it something like ESPNFL.<\/p>\n
For now, no one knows how it will play out. It\u2019s no surprise, then, that McCarthy reports some on-air employees are in \u201cpanic mode.\u201d While another unnamed source said \u201cpanic\u201d is too strong, morale isn\u2019t great. And that\u2019s to be expected.<\/p>\n
Until the dust settles on the Stamford\/Scranton-style assimilation of the two operations, it\u2019s 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\u2019ll each have one less considerably big thing to worry about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With ESPN acquiring NFL Network, ESPN will soon be inheriting all NFL Network employees. Via Michael McCarthy of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-316964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}