Under Burke Magnus’s leadership, ESPN’s content group has undergone a ton of changes. In just his first three years as president of the division, Magnus has leaned into leveraging ESPN programming on other platforms—the impetus behind deals with Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith. This season, Magnus also pushed to carry Inside the NBA, the beloved studio show that is still produced in Atlanta by TNT Sports. Moving forward, he’ll run point on integrating NFL Media content into ESPN and figuring out whether ESPN should renew and expand its MLB.TV deal. Magnus discussed these issues (and more) during an appearance on the Varsity podcast, which posts tomorrow. We’re giving you a sneak preview tonight with a transcript that has been lightly edited. Enjoy!

John Ourand: You’ve made moves like giving Pat McAfee an afternoon timeslot and signing Stephen A. Smith to a $20 million-per-year deal. You’ve leaned into more remote productions. Where have you made the biggest impact on ESPN’s content?

Burke Magnus: This is where I’ve really leaned on my two kids as they went through high school and college. Kids can be every bit as big a sports fan as I was when I was their age, but their experience looks totally different. The way they express their fandom looks totally different. One of the great secret weapons that we have is our digital and social, how ESPN shows up on apps like Instagram or TikTok. It’s critically important for relevance, and critically important to reach younger fans that might not be experiencing you as much on television.

One of your biggest moves was to bring over Inside the NBA. You’re one season in—give us a report card. Does it need tweaks?

It has worked wonderfully. The production crew at Turner and the talent have all been fantastic to work with. All we did was put the ESPN logo on the desk and let those guys do their thing. If I could change something, it’s really unrelated to how the show appears onscreen. I would like to spread the shows over more of the regular season. It’s quite back-loaded at this point—we didn’t really get going until Christmas Day. It’s been incredible in the postseason because they’re on basically every single night.

Let’s talk about the NBA booth. Two years ago, you had Mike Breen, Doc Rivers, and JJ Redick. Then Doc and JJ both left for NBA coaching gigs.

We’re the cradle of coaches, that’s what I like to say.

How do you stand on ESPN’s NBA booth right now?

Mike Breen is the best in the business, so that was a great foundation to work from. We very consciously put Richard Jefferson and Tim Legler together on almost every single game they worked, because we wanted them to get as many reps as they could going into the postseason, and I think that’s really paid off. Credit to [E.V.P. of sports production] Mike McQuaid on that decision, and [S.V.P. of sports production] Tim Corrigan, for putting them in a position to really hit their stride. I feel like we have now landed on a combination that can take us through a bunch of years.

You are at the end of year one on a new NBA deal, sharing rights with Amazon Prime and NBC. How has this year been different from previous ones?

That was a bit of a learning curve. Turner had been our partner for many, many years and we knew exactly how things were going to come down. Having two new players, and three partners on the national level instead of two, led to a different scheduling matrix—both during the regular season and into the postseason—in terms of who got what and when. That all works itself out.

ESPN’s NHL viewership was up across the board. In fact, the NHL saw close to a 70 percent ratings jump in the first round of the playoffs this year. What do you attribute that to?

It’s a combination of things, including the Olympics and the 4 Nations. We have a Stanley Cup matchup with Carolina and Vegas that’s different from the past two years, when we had Florida and Edmonton two years in a row. Plus, the NHL has been creative with their tentpole events, like the Winter Classic and the Stadium Series. There’s a lot of heat around the sport right now.

The NFL now owns 10 percent of ESPN, and you’re the executive overseeing NFL Network. NFL Network had its own distinct draft coverage this year, but ESPN decided to simulcast its schedule release show. What kind of changes should we expect?

It’s going to be situational. The schedule-release show is much smaller than the draft, so that was an easy opportunity. What you’ll see in those cases is, we’ll incorporate NFL Network talent where we might simulcast a show on ESPN and NFL Network. But in terms of the draft, I think we’ll take the opposite approach. The draft is such an enormous thing. We’re already doing multiple shows on ESPN and ABC. I would argue it’s an easy decision in that case to have NFL Network do its own draft coverage, as they have before—in their voice and with their talent and from their perspective. It’s very likely you’ll see that continue. One opportunity could come on the third day of the draft, when they’re ripping through multiple rounds really quickly. That’s an opportunity for us to maybe combine forces and create a combined ESPN and NFL Network show that would air in both places. We haven’t made that decision yet, but to me, that’s low-hanging fruit.

What about Monday Night Football? Can NFL Network have an alt telecast?

To be determined. We haven’t gotten there yet. We have a lot of work to do between now and when the season starts. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of pregame and postgame elements. I’m just not certain what we’re going to be doing during the game.

You are a couple of months into a new MLB deal where ESPN carries MLB.TV. Is that performing like you thought it would?

When we were purely in the Sunday Night Baseball national business, we made game selections based on what we thought would drive the most audience. That’s why you saw so many Sunday Night Baseball games with the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Cubs, Cardinals, Giants. It’s a handful of teams that drove the conversation on a national basis and drove an audience for us. With MLB.TV, it really is too early to tell how the teams that, maybe, are not on that list are performing both locally and in the out-of-market. We’re excited to see where we are as we get deeper into the season.

On cord-cutting: “Charter’s trend is not the whole industry’s trend. That’s nonsense. Charter’s customers are down 1.9 percent, but revenue is down 9.1 percent. I’m not holding my breath for the others to follow.” —A media type

On the Petitti-Sankey feud: “Your article on Thursday was very fair. But you seemed to hold back a bit!” —A media executive

On Steph Curry’s new deal: “I can’t believe the guy who went to Davidson and played for Steve Kerr is selling out for Li-Ning.” —A journalist

On the Protect College Sports Act: “If Ole Miss, Tennessee, LSU, and Indiana can win because of unlimited transfers and uncapped N.I.L. spending, are the senators from those states going to do anything to prevent that?” —A Varsity subscriber

On F1 TV: “On Thursday, you published an email from an aggrieved F1 fan complaining about the Apple deal. That fan should know that they can also watch F1 through F1 TV itself, where I have had no problems. It’s 99 percent the same as it was in previous seasons, with the option to listen to either the F1 TV broadcast team or Sky.” —A Varsity subscriber

See you all on Thursday,
John