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Roku Picks Up ‘Good Morning Football’ as NFL Readies Relaunch of Show
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- Roku Picks Up ‘Good Morning Football’ as NFL Readies Relaunch of Show
NFL fans will soon be able to wake up once again with a cup of coffee and hours of football talk … and they will be able to stream it too.
The league has set a launch date for the rebooted version of Good Morning Football, the NFL Network morning show. Good Morning Football will return on July 29, with Jamie Erdahl, Peter Schrager and Kyle Brandt remaining as co-hosts of the show, joined by former NFL defensive end Akbar Gbajabiamila and news reporter Sherree Burruss. Schrager and Brandt will split their time between New York and Los Angeles.
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However, the NFL will also launch a two-hour syndicated version of the show on the same day called GMFB: Overtime , set to stream on Roku Channel, with the Fox TV stations set to begin carrying the show in September. Sony Pictures Entertainment handled distribution for the show, which also counts Sony's Michael Davies as executive producer.
"What we've been focused on is, in a world where linear television and the media just a lot of places in general are going through a lot of change," says David Jurenka, senior VP and GM of NFL Media in Los Angeles. "How do we make sure that our best franchises continue to grow and develop?"
The NFL announced back in March that Good Morning Football would move its production from New York to its Los Angeles campus, and that it was developing the syndicated extension. The league needed some time to figure out the details of the new version of the show, including the talent, some of whom are still to be announced.
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"We just have more tools to play with in our studio [in L.A.], and thought that we could both preserve some talent and also bring some new talent forward," Jurenka says.
The deals with the Fox TV stations and Roku also underscore its desire to expand football-related programming to new platforms and time periods.
"They are two non competitive platforms, we're actually going where fans are and however they want to watch," says Flory Bramnick, executive VP of distribution for Sony Pictures Television. "They're very different audiences, so some people will go to their local station, some people will go to Roku, but we are making this as broadly available as possible."
The addition of Good Morning Football also mark a significant expansion in the sport space for Roku, which has picked up exclusive live rights from Formula E and MLB, and has been picking up other sports content like The Rich Eisen Show (which GMFB will lead into).
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Joe Franzetta, who leads Roku's sports content, says that the platform expects "to be able to establish an exciting home for this new show."
"We think that we have a dedicated audience that this will appeal to. We have our one stop shop Sports Zone, which we have integrated with a lot of different partners content, whether it's the NFL's or NBA's or MLB's Formula E or whatever it might be," Franzetta adds. "And we want to be able to continue to add, relevant, contextual, complementary programming that is free and ad supported. And of course, the NFL is a huge, huge partner that's loved by many, and the ability to give them, to give our viewers the opportunity to see this free, ad supported, NFL-focused sports talk every single day was a tremendous opportunity."
For the NFL, the rebooted show and syndicated extension will also add hours of football content every week, which connects to the leagues larger goal of being ubiquitous in media, on broadcast networks like Fox, ABC, CBS and NBC, cable channels like ESPN, and streaming services like Amazon, where its Thursday games live, or on Netflix, which has the docuseries Receiver currently running.
"We've got a large inventory of games, but there's a lot of time other than Sundays, Thursdays and Mondays, when we can drive engagement, and there's this insatiable appetite that fans have," Jurenka says. "And I think what we're doing with Good Morning Football is just the next step in that journey to engage fans and supplement and complement what the live game is doing."
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