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ESPN announces new lineup of 30 for 30 series

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edited May 2012 in From the Cheap Seats
ESPN Doubles Up on ’30 for 30’ Documentary Series
By RICHARD SANDOMIR

Amy Sussman/Getty Images for The New Yorker
Bill Simmons, editor of ESPN’s Web site Grantland.com, prodded the network to produce “30 for 30.”
ESPN’s faith in sports documentaries is so deep that on Tuesday it will announce a second go-round for its “30 for 30” series, which made its debut in the fall of 2009.

The first 30 films — produced by independent filmmakers as diverse as Albert Maysles, Barry Levinson and Ice Cube — were meant to celebrate ESPN’s 30th anniversary over a 15-month period. But the network, which began in 1979 and is now owned by Disney, grew so enamored of documentaries that it kept making them under the ESPN Films banner before agreeing to introduce a new “30 for 30.”

“When we embarked on ’30 for 30,’ we always wondered if there would be 30 good stories,” said Connor Schell, vice president and executive producer of ESPN Films. “Now, I think all of us in this group believe that there is an infinite number of stories.”

There are new dimensions to the series, which will return this fall and span two years. The documentaries are being integrated with Grantland.com, the ESPN sports-culture journalism Web site whose editor in chief is Bill Simmons, the popular ESPN columnist and podcaster. Mr. Simmons prodded ESPN to produce “30 for 30,” and is an executive producer.

As the films roll out, they will be augmented on Grantland by podcasts, feature stories and oral histories. A short digital film — which will be unrelated to the longer ones — will make its debut each month on Grantland.

Mr. Schell described the shorts as “visual editorials,” of five to nine minutes. “They’re meant to be interesting conversations with people who have a point of view about something or sports stories that don’t require a four-act treatment,” he said.

The first digital short, by Eric Drath, which will be posted Tuesday on Grantland, is an interview with Pete Rose, whose gambling on baseball earned him a lifetime ban in 1989. Rose, 71, Major League Baseball’s hits leader, is interviewed at the barren-looking shopping mall in Las Vegas where he signs autographs and other memorabilia, as employees act as barkers to lure shoppers into the store.

“The shorts give us a chance to tell stories that might be a little more clever or off the beaten path, and let us try things, like humor or animation,” Schell said. “The short films are really consistent with the type of storytelling that Grantland does every day. My hope is that the `30 for 30’ brand translates into that space.”

The new full-length documentaries will include films about the North Carolina State basketball team that won the N.C.A.A. men’s championship in 1983; the 100-meter final at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul whose winner, Ben Johnson, tested positive for steroids; Bo Jackson, the athletic marvel who played baseball and football and starred in the “Bo Knows” series of Nike ads.

Two films that made their debut at the Tribeca Film Festival are also on the roster: “Benji,” about a high school basketball star in Chicago who was murdered in 1984, and “Broke,” about athletes who lose their fortunes.

Mr. Schell said that “30 for 30” — which attracted an average of 1.2 million viewers for the initial showings of the documentaries — became a brand that was worth extending.

“We felt it had power,” he said. “It resonated with our fans and consumers, and we saw it in social media; people referring to films as `30 for 30’ films that weren’t part of `30 for 30,’ ” like “The Announcement,” which detailed the events before and after the public revelation by Magic Johnson that he had H.I.V. “That meant something to us.”
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