Michelle Beadle and Jalen Rose will join Mike Greenberg on ESPN’s upcoming morning show, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. The new show — the first big programming swing under the stewardship of Connor Schell, recently promoted to executive vp content by ESPN president John Skipper — will bow in spring 2018.
The program, which will air from 7 to 10 a.m., will originate from a new studio in lower Manhattan’s South Street Seaport, which was devastated five years ago by Hurricane Sandy. Rose and Beadle, who will relocate from Los Angeles for the show, will continue as full-time hosts of ESPN’s NBA Countdown for now. And Rose will continue to co-host the ESPN Radio show Jalen & Jacoby. ESPN declined to comment.
Greenberg has already announced that his last day on his popular Mike & Mike program will be Nov. 17, the Friday before Thanksgiving. His impending split from Mike Golic has been an unfolding saga since it was first rumored more than a year ago. ESPN executives have tried over the years to broaden the popular duo. In 2015, the network announced that Mike & Mike would relocate from ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., to the Times Square studios where ABC’s Good Morning America is shot. But the network reversed course a few months later in what many assumed was a cost-saving decision.
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Greenberg and Golic have both insisted there is no bad blood between them. And Golic will be paired with longtime ESPN personality Trey Wingo after Greenberg’s exit. Greenberg, meanwhile, will begin appearing consistently on ESPN programs after Mike & Mike wraps and in the run-up to the morning show launch. Bill Wolff is executive producer of the new program. Wolff recently returned to ESPN after several years at MSNBC (where he was executive producer of The Rachel Maddow Show); he did a stint at The View and also launched Chelsea Handler’s Netflix show.
Beadle returned to ESPN in 2014 after a short and unhappy stint at NBC. This year, she was promoted to a full-time spot at NBA Countdown, displacing Sage Steele.
Rose shot a pilot for ABC, Jalen vs. Everybody, executive produced by Fresh Off the Boat trio Nahnatchka Khan, Melvin Mar and Jake Kasdan, but it was passed over by the network. ESPN aired it last June.
Representatives for Greenberg, Beadle and Rose declined to comment; all three are repped by CAA.
