Tweetback: Timberlake’s SNL vs. SVP/Bucci’s SportsCenter; WBC in Spanish on ESPN pleases fans; Magical March Madness
Front Row knows you have better things to do all weekend than check your social media feeds, so we do it for you.
Here, from the ESPN PR universe, are some of the Tweets, posts and other commentary you may have missed.
You can thank us later!
But first, we have some fun looking back at two shows that had themselves a spectacular Saturday night:
“I’m willing to bet there were probably some deadspots for Justin [Timberlake] or the show,” said ESPN’s Brian Tully, who produced Saturday’s 11 p.m.-1 a.m. ET SportsCenter. “But we had great stuff the whole night. If I’m a sports fan, I wasn’t switching away.”
While Tully admits to not having been able to watch the well-received Saturday Night Live with Timberlake as host, he feels strongly that his crew – led by anchors Scott Van Pelt and John Buccigross – had the edge in Saturday’s post-prime time programming.
“It’s Championship Week,” Tully said, “one of the best weeks of the year and we had all these buzzer beaters PLUS the WBC brawl AND Tiger Woods and so much more. It got to about 11:40 p.m. and we were looking around the control room saying, ‘We haven’t even gotten to this or this or this.’ It was a combination of great material with an tremendous team behind the scenes.”
SportsCenter’s own Saturday night live edition actually started early (10:52 p.m.) as Duke’s win over North Carolina ended prior to the end of its programming block.
“We live for breaking news,” said Tully, a 17-year veteran at the network. “The energy level that Scott and John brought was phenomenal and made for a fun show. You could tell they were enjoying giving the highlights as much as we hope people were enjoying watching them.”
Whether or not it was more fun than Timberlake’s fifth hosting opportunity for SNL is for others to determine. But Tully is sure of one thing:
“We do know Brooklyn Decker was watching us,” he said.
Decker, who attended the UNC game with Andy Roddick, tweeted this after she was incorporated into SportsCenter’s game’s highlights:
@sportscenter @buccigross ha!
— Brooklyn Decker (@BrooklynDecker) March 10, 2013