The return of “Playmakers” to ESPN is a coin toss.
Odds are 50-50 that the sports network will order a second season of its controversial, behind-the-scenes drama about a pro football team, network exec Ron Semiao said last week during the TV Critics Association’s winter meeting in Los Angeles.
Smart money says ESPN will cave to the NFL–its most important franchise–and kill the 25-year-old network’s first scripted dramatic series.
Even before “Playmakers” launched in August, the league began publicly pressuring ESPN to cancel the 11-episode show due to its “unrealistic” portrayal of football players as thuggish, cocaine-snorting babe hounds. (And we thought they were Boy Scouts.)
ESPN must decide the show’s fate by March 1 but most likely will make the call after the Super Bowl on Feb. 1, says Semiao, senior vice president of ESPN original programming. The actors, including stars Omar Gooding and Russell Hornsby, are under contract until June.
“The NFL is an incredibly important partner to us, and we’re an incredibly important partner to them,” Semiao says. “We aired the series despite their objections, but we’re also not in the business of rubbing things in our partners’ noses.
“Clearly, the NFL is not happy with the show. That’s not our intent. It’s fiction. Football is the backdrop because we are a sports network. We established an audience with engaging story lines. Viewers are invested in the characters.”
And Disney, owner of ESPN and ABC, is invested in the NFL. Big-time.
More Top Picks Best Amplified Phones For Hard Of Hearing
“Monday Night Football” is one of ABC’s few hits. On ESPN, “Sunday Night Football” has been the cable network’s highest-rated series every year since its 1987 debut. Also, ESPN runs scads of NFL-related programming, such as “NFL Countdown” and “NFL Prime Time.”
The NFL has given no ultimatums to ESPN, Semiao says. Although the NFL’s dissatisfaction has reached the highest ranks–commissioner Paul Tagliabue lobbied Disney chief Michael Eisner–Semiao says he would like the league to recognize “Playmakers” as fiction and for the show to continue.
“Viewers have been able to make that distinction. It’s not like viewership of NFL games has declined or people are turning in their season tickets. A movie might be critical of doctors, but people still go to doctors.”
Showtime
With or without “Playmakers,” ESPN will stay in the series and made-for-TV movie business, says network senior vice president John A. Walsh. ESPN’s third original flick, “3: The Dale Earnhardt Story,” will debut in late summer. In development is “Hustle: The Pete Rose Story,” a TV movie about the disgraced baseball great who recently admitted to lying in his years of denials about gambling on baseball when he managed the Cincinnati Reds. On the series front, filmmaker Spike Lee will produce a two-hour pilot based on his 1998 basketball movie, “He Got Game.”
———-
Edited by Cara DiPasquale ([email protected]) and Kris Karnopp ([email protected])