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On Oct. 28, Mike McCarthy, the general manager of Marquee Sports Network, sat toward the back of the conference room on the second floor of the Wrigley Field office building watching the Cubs introduce David Ross as their new manager.
There were at least 13 TV cameras lined up for the Ross press conference, a newsy Monday morning after a Bears loss, right in the middle of a teachers strike and Donald Trump’s first presidential visit to Chicago.
Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein and general manager Jed Hoyer flanked their handpicked manager on stage, posing for photos as Ross held up a No. 3 jersey. Ross’ popularity as a backup catcher on the 2016 World Series team brought out executives from the business and baseball sides of the organization, everyone from board member Laura Ricketts to the clubhouse staffers who do laundry and run errands for the players.
“I was probably the only disappointed guy in the room, because he was going to be a big part of the booth,” McCarthy said. “We talked about him doing a lot of on-air work for us.”
McCarthy is a New Yorker, a big man with Irish roots who used to run MSG Network, a regional powerhouse that at one time broadcasted games not only for the Knicks and Rangers, but also the Yankees, Mets, Islanders, Devils and Nets. McCarthy’s eye for talent helped launch the careers of national broadcasters like Doris Burke, Mike Breen and Gus Johnson.
While Ross thanked “my ESPN family” during his first press conference as Cubs manager — and dismissed the “Grandpa Rossy” persona as overblown — he will still be a major TV presence.
“The guy is a natural,” McCarthy said. “But the truth is we couldn’t have a better advocate in that role for broadcast acumen and what fans want to hear and think are important. He’s got much bigger fish to fry there. But we’re pretty confident that this couldn’t have broken a better way for us in terms of a manager with media savvy and an understanding of what we’re trying to do with Marquee.”
In fewer than four months, Marquee will debut as a joint venture between the Cubs and Sinclair Broadcast Group. The cable channel has already announced a carriage agreement for AT&T platforms and advertised during the World Series. McCarthy has lured Mike Santini away from MLB Network to be Marquee’s head of programming and production, part of a hiring spree that is expected to include more than 60 employees plus a large freelance crew. Marquee will launch in 2020 with a broadcast of the Cubs’ first spring training game on Feb. 22.
As snow fell in Wrigleyville on Halloween, McCarthy sat at his desk in a corner office at the Cubs’ old headquarters on Clark St., which is being transformed into Marquee’s main studio and administrative building. After serving as the CEO of the St. Louis Blues and the chief operating officer for the Milwaukee Bucks, McCarthy is back in the TV business and joking about the arc of his long career.
“I like to tell people my first job at the Garden was sitting courtside next to Marv Albert handing him stats,” McCarthy said. “Every time I got promoted, my seat got worse. Like I was next to Spike Lee and now five years later, I’m in a parking lot somewhere.”
Pursuing ex-Cubs like Ross for on-air work is part of a broader strategy to differentiate Marquee from WGN, NBC Sports Chicago and ABC 7, the local stations that aired the bulk of Cubs games in recent years.
The bottom line is that the Cubs pushed for their own regional sports network to make more money, but team officials did sense some frustration among viewers who wanted one place to watch the games and get expanded coverage. Len Kasper and Jim Deshaies won’t have to pack polo shirts from three different networks for road trips anymore.
Marquee is still in the process of finalizing deals with Kasper and Deshaies, two smart, low-maintenance broadcasters who diligently prepare, maintain good relationships in the clubhouse, treat behind-the-scenes people well and never embarrass the organization with tone-deaf commentary about modern players and the modern game.
McCarthy echoed what Cubs president of business operations Crane Kenney said when the team announced the Sinclair partnership in February, emphasizing there is “no doubt” that Kasper and Deshaies will be in the Wrigley Field broadcast booth next year.
“They are coming back, for sure,” McCarthy said. “They are going to be the play-by-play and color guy here. And everything else we’re talking about is enhancing that reality.”
Santini, who helped MLB Network launch on New Year’s Day 2009 and later rose to become its vice president of production, described Kasper and Deshaies as a “huge part of the equation” for Marquee, which is planning to broadcast every Cactus League exhibition on the Cubs’ 2020 schedule, plus roughly 150 games during the regular season.
“I’m totally impressed with how the two Mikes — McCarthy and Santini — are attacking this,” Kasper said. “I have no doubt this is going to be, production-wise, as good as anything we’ve seen in Chicago in TV sports. It’s going to be big. It’s going to be well thought-out. Any Cub fan will be happy with how they go about it.”
Marquee is not expected to feature a regular three-man booth or a large cast of rotating analysts, sources said, but there will be opportunities to experiment and create different forms of content.
Even with Ross and Joe Girardi now gainfully employed in MLB dugouts, McCarthy guessed that “the Cubs might have the biggest roster of alumni who are legitimate broadcasters of any sports team.” Either way, McCarthy wants Marquee to tap into those resources.
Industry sources have identified MLB Network personalities Ryan Dempster, Mark DeRosa and Dan Plesac as logical fits somewhere on Marquee’s programming. Ex-Cub Doug Glanville has also gotten good reviews for his multimedia work (including with The Athletic), which blends his Ivy League education and nine years of experience as a big-league outfielder.
“Nothing’s off the table,” Santini said. “We’re looking at a lot of different things. I would say ‘stay tuned’ on that. We’re really lucky that we have Jim Deshaies and Len. But our booth’s going to be special. I think there’s going to be some fun little surprises that we’ll make people aware of in the next couple months.”
No matter what happens, expect Len and JD to go with the flow.
“Any time you’ve been doing something for a while,” Deshaies said, “I think it’s nice to have new people come in with some fresh ideas.”
After a formal press conference that lasted almost 34 minutes, Ross did one-on-one sessions with local outlets for roughly two hours, and then headed to Wrigley Field’s underground clubhouse for a sit-down interview with Dempster for Marquee, which is banking on unique, behind-the-scenes access to the team.
As part of Sinclair’s $9.6 billion purchase of the Fox Sports regional networks, Marquee will also have access to a national feed of programming. But the channel is betting on the fans’ huge appetite for Cubs content — biographies, classic games, highlights, list shows, live minor-league games and features on the organization’s top prospects.
Marquee has already lined up MLB Network to produce some of those shows. It has also hired Bob Vorwald, WGN’s longtime director of production, as a consultant to help sort through the team’s video archives. Vorwald, a link to the days of Jack Brickhouse and Harry Caray, has a ton of institutional knowledge. The channel also has the services of Cubs Productions, the team’s Emmy Award-winning in-house video team.
“You want to think of everything through a Cubs fan’s eyes,” Santini said. “What would they want? (It’s) the access to the players, getting to know them better, getting to know the coaches better, getting to know the organization better. Spending time with them in the offseason to do different things, going places where maybe you haven’t gone before.
“Maybe it’s working on their craft away from the cameras, wherever that may be. That’s a lot of the access. We’re looking forward to working with the players and seeing the things that they’re doing, and seeing how often we can go along with them and show people what their lives are like. Sometimes, the most interesting stuff has nothing to do with baseball.”
Are you ready for “At Home with Javier Báez?” Or “Javy Cam?” Or “Mic’d Up Javy?” Assuming star players like Báez — who already has close to 2 million followers between his Twitter and Instagram accounts and endorsements deals worth seven figures — are willing to cooperate with the team’s new network.
“We want to find out as much as we can about them and follow them wherever they’re going to let us go,” said Santini, who produced Yankees and Mets games and studio programming for MSG Network before transitioning to the MLB Network launch. “It also means during a game doing some different things. The team has an incredible shortstop. We want to put some cameras in the dirt in a couple of locations where we’re going to be able to see a different look of Javy making a play.
“The magic of something like that (is) mostly when they’re taking infield before the game and you go to that camera for two minutes while a couple guys are messing around and having fun. It’s just seeing how incredible they are. We’ll try to do some things with enhancing audio just to get people closer to the game. That’ll be access, too, and things that they haven’t done here before. I think we’re excited to get people a little bit closer to the action.”
McCarthy declined to discuss specifics, but industry sources have indicated that Marquee’s potential ideas also include simulcasting shows on 670 The Score, the Cubs’ flagship radio station, as well as content that involves the Bears.
The Score underwent a major studio renovation at Two Prudential Plaza during the summer. Under McCarthy’s leadership, MSG Network also helped catapult future TV stars Michael Strahan and Jay Glazer (who is now also a contributor to The Athletic). Marquee could produce a similar kind of magazine-style football show with a Chicago focus.
“All of that is in our playbook,” McCarthy said. “We’re aware, for example, of who plays NFL games here. We’re working on things there.”
The possibility of legalized sports gambling in Illinois — and the potential for a Cubs-owned Wrigleyville sportsbook that ESPN detailed in June — could also fit into Marquee’s vision.
“We’re dabbling,” McCarthy said. “We’re unbelievably positioned to take advantage of the latest technology, whenever it’s ready. We know that the teams and the leagues themselves have invested and supported this endeavor. We like that this is potentially down the road an idea of how to keep someone involved in an 8-1 game. We think it plays to — if it’s handled correctly, which it will be here — a younger demographic that may not necessarily sit and watch a game.
“We’re looking at all those things hard. What we do right out of the chute may not be precisely where we are when technology allows for things. That being said, I’d be surprised if we didn’t have a nod towards the gaming world in some way or another in our programming grid.”
For so long, a Cubs network sounded like a pie-in-the-sky idea, something that Kenney would talk about during his staff’s annual presentation to fans and reporters at Cubs Convention. A team that had to fight City Hall and rooftop owners just to put up a video board inside its own stadium now wanted to build a TV station from scratch? But like the $1 billion Wrigleyville development — which struggled to get off the ground initially — Marquee is becoming a reality.
The easier play for Kenney’s business operations department would have been taking the money from NBC/Comcast and continuing a short-term partnership with the Bulls, Blackhawks and White Sox. However, Cubs executives have repeatedly stressed the importance of controlling their own destiny, whether it’s in real estate or TV. This is a franchise now estimated to be worth $3.1 billion, according to Forbes’ annual franchise valuations released in April, a staggering increase from the $845 million sale price the Ricketts family paid in a 2009 deal with Tribune Co.
This TV venture is supposed to someday be a boon to the budget for Theo Epstein’s baseball operations department, but the full economic impact can’t be measured until Marquee gets widespread distribution on the region’s cable systems. Early indications are Marquee will not subsidize a major free-agent signing like Gerrit Cole this winter or fundamentally alter the 2020 payroll.
But Marquee’s inclusion in Sinclair’s recent multiyear carriage agreement across DirecTV, AT&T TV and U-verse is an encouraging sign that the Cubs could avoid the kind of long-running feud that has slowed SportsNet LA and left Dodger games blacked out across wide stretches of southern California.
“Crane’s vision that this would work — this partnership with Sinclair — has already proven itself here by way of that carriage deal,” said McCarthy, who began consulting for the Cubs in 2018. “It has nothing to do with the Dodgers or that market. I understand what’s gone on there. This is different. It’s a different fan base.”
A Cubs official estimated that AT&T’s accessible platforms already reach 25 percent of the Chicago market — plus the potential for more growth.
An industry source said there is momentum toward a Marquee deal with YouTube TV, which has been a presenting sponsor of the 2018 and 2019 World Series and a streaming partner for Major League Baseball. A Cubs spokesman declined to comment on the state of ongoing negotiations with any distributor. McCarthy also declined to comment on Marquee’s progress with Comcast, the region’s dominant cable provider, a former partner with the Cubs and the parent company of NBC Sports Chicago, a direct competitor.
“It’s a national deal, but for us to have that kind of concrete carriage (on AT&T) with four months to go is not necessarily what regionals enjoy,” McCarthy said. “Sometimes, you’re looking at pressure points like Opening Day, or when does the NFL season start, so to have a big percentage of the Chicago market already have access to this network is pretty comforting. And there’s many more announcements to come.”
Sinclair creates leverage with a portfolio that includes 191 TV stations in 89 markets across the United States plus ownership stakes in Stadium and the Tennis Channel. The newly acquired Fox regional sports networks serve as the TV home to more than half of all MLB, NHL and NBA teams based in the U.S., according to Sinclair’s corporate website. Heading into a polarizing election year, Sinclair’s growing media empire has also drawn scrutiny for its pro-Trump agenda. Will Cubs fans be subject to incessant political ads before the 2020 election?
“There’s no political input from anybody on our sports programming,” McCarthy said. “Whether or not we take advertising from campaigns is sort of to come. We’ve looked at it. It’s going to be pretty lucrative for whoever is selling their time. But we’re not really making those decisions front and center just yet. We’ve had chats and we’re speculating. We’re planning, not ruling anything out. I don’t know that we’ll do it or not do it. With a regional sports network, it’s a little bit of a different animal, what kind of messaging is appropriate or not. You go into those conversations. But as far as the news influence from anybody at Sinclair or the Cubs, no, that’s not happening. This is going to be about sports entertainment.”
The Cubs hired Ross because he knows many of the big personalities involved and has enough charisma and presence to survive while learning the other parts of the job. Marquee officials believe they are building a superstation for the 21st century, but they will find out what makes Wrigleyville such a unique place to work if Cubs fans can’t get the games on their TV.
“We’re ahead of the curve on a lot of aspects of this,” McCarthy said. “There’s going to be kinks, for sure. When you’re launching, there will be a curveball or two that we’re not ready for, or we don’t know when it’s coming. But I can’t imagine we’ve equipped ourselves incorrectly on the staff side to be able to react. We have programming. We have the control rooms being built. We’re in the market selling. We’ve got carriage. We’ve got billboards and spots telling people where we are. I don’t know. I think we’re in pretty good shape.”
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