ESPN to Launch Second Season of 'Off-Mikes'
We'd never viewed this before and we kind of like it. ESPN is set to launch its second season of "Off-Mikes," audio drawn from banter between ESPN Radio’s morning drivetime personalities, Mike Golic and Mike Greenberg and accompanied with animation from design studio ANIMAX
The first 10 episodes of "Off-Mikes" premiered last May on ESPN.com. Expanded "Director's Cuts" versions of the original episodes launched on the site at the end of the summer. The shorts were also available as mobisodes from ESPN Wireless via Verizon's V-CAST.
Each program runs about a minute in length and uses actual dialog from exchanges between Golic and Greenberg as heard on the "Mike & Mike in the Morning" show, which airs on the national sports radio networks. ESPN producers select bits from tapes of the broadcasts, then the ANIMAX creative team chooses a segment for production in Flash. The animation is then synched back to the edited audio tracks of the original radio broadcast. A very interesting repurposing on content.
Comments
Believe it or not, this is not a new concept! SNL (Saturday Night Live) has been doing this for a long time with their "Saturday TV Funhouse". "Fun with Real Audio" is the segment, and they take news briefings, commentary, interviews, and the like, and put them to animated shorts. Although, I think with the backing of ESPN / ABC, this will do very well (2nd season is the keyword here, after all)