Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

All Burke Magnus, EVP of Scheduling and Programming For ESPN

05/31/2018 at 4:48pm EDT

from Ryan Glasspiegel of The Big Lead,

I did an ESPN carwash speaking to talents and executives earlier this week. Yesterday we posted a podcast with 6PM SportsCenter co-host Kevin Neghandi. This is a Q&A with Burke Magnus, EVP of Scheduling and Programming, who oversees sports broadcasting rights acquisitions....

If you could have the NHL package that NBC has, and add MLB playoffs and the World Series, would you rather have those two together or the Monday Night Football package if it was an either/or thing?

Magnus: This is a fun game to play. Can I have them all? It definitely has to be zero? At the moment, I don’t envision a world without Monday Night Football, or an NFL package. That being said, hockey is something that a lot of people on this campus — it’s one of the most frequently asked questions in our staff meeting town halls: When are we going to get back into hockey? I should probably just wear a shirt that says ‘this is when the contract ends, so don’t ask me again’.

We did do the World Cup of Hockey and now with ESPN+ where the NHL is an equity partner in BAMTech and having Stanley Cup coverage and all the playoff games re-airing on-demand there, it’s great to have.

This is the one time of year, for those scheduling wonks like myself, where if you really pay attention you figure out that the oddity of the NBA playoff schedule is that in the early rounds our games are limited to Friday through Sunday and Turner has all the week. That is still a vestige of us leaving the mid-week available to do the NHL playoffs. Now, it goes back two deals in the NBA so it’s not looking ahead it’s a vestige from the past, but this is a long way of saying we could schedule the NHL playoffs pretty easily even with our NBA commitment right now.

a bit more

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About Kukla's Korner Hockey

Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

From breaking news to in-depth stories around the league, KK Hockey is updated with fresh stories all day long and will bring you the latest news as quickly as possible.

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