Allen Berezovsky/Getty Images
- ESPN replaced retired NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski with Shams Charania.
- Burke Magnus, who made the hire, spoke about his talent strategy after layoffs.
- He said stars are as important as ever to the sports-media giant while it continues to evolve.
As many basketball fans have likely heard, the latest major NBA signing is Shams Charania to ESPN.
The 30-year-old scoop master is replacing Adrian Wojnarowski, the genre-defining NBA reporter who had unexpectedly retired from the news-breaking business three weeks earlier. ESPN’s star free-agency deal came at the right time, as the NBA season tips off on October 22.
Charania — who just left The Athletic and had previously been at Yahoo Sports — looks to be a natural fit at ESPN, and not just because of his news-breaking talent. Those who made the hire are fired up since he’s young, popular on social media, and has cross-platform experience.
“It felt like it was a perfect way to solve this problem,” said Burke Magnus, ESPN’s head of content, in an interview with Business Insider on Wednesday.
It’s worth noting that the wunderkind reporter wasn’t the only candidate to replace Wojnarowski, his former mentor. Magnus said that the sports-media giant had considered filling the role internally — either with its current NBA reporters, or even with MLB guru Jeff Passan.
“We considered redefining the role, and we talked about a variety of options there,” Magnus said. He later added: “Jeff was a unique person because he could have easily, in my opinion, changed sports and ultimately been very, very good at NBA the way he is at baseball. But it would’ve been a lifestyle change for him.”
There are no such questions with Charania, who will be as busy as ever at ESPN. When he’s not breaking news through social-media posts, he’ll write stories, pop on shows like “NBA Today” and “NBA Countdown,” and host a podcast, Magnus said.
It may initially seem counterintuitive to give away Charania’s scoops, which are what he’s paid to produce, for free on social-media platforms. But scoops are very difficult to paywall since breaking news can travel instantly, so Magnus hopes that Charania’s posts will act as a top-of-the-funnel mechanism that brings his followers to ESPN’s platforms for deeper analysis.
“X seems to be the preferred platform of news-breaking, but then it’s quickly repurposed and amplified through our own ESPN-branded social platforms,” Magnus said. “A companion article quickly follows on espn.com and the app. Depending on what time of day it is, the person can zoom into a relevant show on linear television, and it just kind of goes from there.”
Well-known reporters like Charania can also provide a halo effect for ESPN’s brand. After all, it would be hard for ESPN to call itself “The Worldwide Leader in Sports” if it always got scooped on stories.
‘It is the stars that cut through’
Charania is joining a new-look ESPN headlined by outspoken stars with big personalities, like Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee. These two popular pundits have an outsized sway at ESPN, as was clear at the sports giant’s media day in late August.
Magnus referenced this dynamic after ESPN’s recent reorganization, which includes a Sports News & Entertainment team led by Dave Roberts.
“It certainly is about big personalities who fans gravitate towards, sort of the Howard Cosell — ‘you love ’em or you hate ’em, but you still watch ’em’ dynamic,” Magnus said. “That’s ‘Get Up’ with Greenie [Mike Greenberg], and that’s ‘First Take’ with Stephen A., that’s Pat’s show, etc.”
As ESPN fights against the decline of pay TV and embraces the rise of streaming, it must make tough decisions — and that includes layoffs.
In the last few months, veteran NBA reporter Zach Lowe, host Samantha Ponder, and analyst Robert Griffin III each were let go. Magnus insisted that pay, not performance, was behind the recent talent turnover.
“You can look at the talent over the last two years, and I don’t think there’s anybody on the list where I was like, ‘Oh, well, we’re not going to miss them,'” Magnus said. “These are really, really hard decisions that are necessary for us to operate the business and hit the financial expectations that we have.”
While it may seem like ESPN is shifting toward a barbell strategy with well-paid star personalities balanced out by interchangeable hosts, Magnus pushed back against that idea.
The ESPN content president said he wants shows like “SportsCenter” to be more personality-driven and less focused on commoditized highlights and top stories.
“It’s kind of back to the future in that regard,” Magnus said. “We’re going to put a renewed emphasis on talent and personality around ‘SportsCenter’ — the way it used to be.”
For all the coming and going at ESPN, including Woj and Charania, some things never change.
“It is the stars that cut through,” Magnus said.