With the NFL announcing Wednesday that its popular NFL Network morning show “Good Morning Football” will be moving its production from New York to Los Angeles later this year, a major question is whether its current cast will relocate.
As part of the move, the show will go on hiatus for the summer starting on March 29 and relaunch later in the summer. It will then air out of NFL’s West Coast media headquarters in Inglewood, Calif., which sits adjacent to SoFi Stadium, home of the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams and Chargers. That property includes five soundstages and a 5,970-square-foot space for NFL Network’s “Total Access” and “GameDay” shows. There is an expectation that “Good Morning Football” will air from 8-10 a.m. ET after moving to California, as opposed to its current three-hour bloc.
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The “Good Morning Football” weekday crew currently features host Jamie Erdahl and analysts Kyle Brandt, Jason McCourty and Peter Schrager, with contributions from Will Selva. Staffers were informed of the move to L.A., which was first reported by Sports Business Journal, earlier this week. The main quartet are all East Coast-based and all have children, so it’s a big ask professionally and personally to relocate across the country. Those involved with the decision said the NFL has asked each member of the cast to continue with the show. The decision was a surprise to everyone, according to a source briefed on the matter.
Studio shows frequently have talent changes, including “Good Morning Football,” which previously saw the departures of Kay Adams and Nate Burleson. Asked what the expectation was regarding the principal on-air members of the show relocating to Los Angeles, an NFL spokesperson declined to comment. The spokesperson did say, “We are excited to have ‘Good Morning Football’ produced out of NFL Media’s headquarters in Los Angeles, which features a world-class studio space and operations right next to SoFi Stadium.”
The larger context to this, as The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand has previously reported, is that the NFL has been trying to unload its league-owned media assets for some time now. (NFL Media consists of NFL Network, NFL.com, NFL RedZone, NFL Films and NFL+.) The NFL has been in cost savings mode with its media assets, including the NFL Network laying off around 5 percent of its workforce one year ago.
Sports Business Journal reported on Wednesday that around 60 NFL league employees have taken a voluntary buyout offered to around 200 workers in early January. Fans of “Good Morning Football” certainly recognized that the show did not travel to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl, airing its show from New York instead. “Good Morning Football” launched on Aug. 1, 2016, the first NFL Network show to originate from New York.
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The NFL said when the show relaunches in L.A., it will feature a two-hour extension series, which will be syndicated. The extension series is a separate show that will have a different title and will not air on NFL Network. Sony Pictures Television will distribute the new extension series.
All of this comes under the backdrop of the NFL signing new agreements in 2021 with NBC, CBS, ESPN, Fox and Amazon collectively worth about $110 billion over 11 years, nearly doubling the value of its previous contracts.
Jerry Jones biography
Some publishing news: Don Van Natta Jr, the ESPN senior writer and winner of three Pulitzer Prizes, has signed a deal with Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, to write a biography of Jerry Jones, the owner, president, and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys. The working title of the book is “The Star,” scheduled to be published in 2026.
Jones, now 81 years old, purchased the Cowboys in 1989 for $140 million. Sportico recently valued the franchise at $9.2 billion.
“The most fun I’ve had at ESPN — maybe in my career — was the profile I did of Jerry Jones nearly a decade ago, in the summer of 2014,” Van Natta said in an email. “No one in sports is more powerful and influential, quotable and mercurial, than the owner and general manager of the world’s most valuable sports franchise. But there is so much about Jerry Jones that is still not known. I’m betting that the best way to tell the story of the rise of the NFL’s astonishing popularity is through the remarkable life story of Jerry Jones.”
Big Ten women’s basketball title game on CBS
CBS may find an unexpected viewership bounty this weekend thanks to its Big Ten media rights agreement. As part of the conference’s deals for college football and basketball, CBS has the rights to the championship game of the Big Ten women’s basketball tournament. The top four seeds for the tournament are No. 1 Ohio State, No. 2 Iowa, No. 3 Indiana and No. 4 Michigan State, so if the seeds hold, CBS would get a Caitlin Clark title game on its network.
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The game will mark the first time the Big Ten women’s basketball title game will be on broadcast TV. Lisa Byington will call the final alongside Julianne Viani. AJ Ross will work as a sideline reporter. Byington, the television voice of the Milwaukee Bucks, said she has called 10 to 12 of Clark’s games while working for Big Ten Network.
Iowa’s 93-83 win Sunday over Ohio State, which saw Clark pass Pete Maravich for the most points in Division-I history, men’s or women’s — averaged 3.39 million viewers on Fox and peaked at 4.4 million viewers. That game was the most-watched regular-season women’s basketball game in 25 years since CBS aired UConn-Tennessee on Jan. 10, 1999, and drew 3.88 million viewers.
GO DEEPER
Calling Caitlin Clark: Broadcasters on the honor and challenge of announcing history
Sports media podcast
If you are into sports media nerddom, my colleague Andrew Marchand joined me for a 96-minute podcast this week on a variety of topics.
We discussed expectations surrounding Tom Brady as an NFL analyst; how he will be judged; what it will be like when he is at a game as a broadcaster; what Brady’s arrival means for Greg Olsen; and whether Fox’s No. 2 is a better job than the lead analyst for “Thursday Night Football.” You can also hear our conversations about Dale Earnhardt Jr. leaving NBC and heading to Amazon Prime Video and Warner Bros. Discovery Sports; Clark’s impact on the NCAA Tournament and the WNBA; and more.
You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and more.
(Photo of the “Good Morning Football” logo: Robin Alam / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
