ESPN To Deploy An All-Female Broadcast Team For Tonight’s Timberwolves-Cavaliers Game
To celebrate International Women’s Day, ESPN is having an all-women-led broadcast of tonight’s NBC game between the Minnesota Timberwolves and Cleveland Cavaliers.
The team of Beth Mowins, Monica McNutt, and Katie George will be supported by an entirely female production staff led by ESPN producer Laurie Privitera.
This is the third year in a row that ESPN will be presenting an all-women NBA broadcast for International Women’s Day.
“It’s definitely not unique at ESPN just because we have so many women in all of these positions on a regular basis,” Privitera said. “On any given night you’re going to look around our control room, you will see and hear the voices on our games and they are very female-driven.”
This Will Be the Fifth “All-Women” Broadcast This Year
While ESPN is publically touting tonight’s broadcast, it is not the first all-women NBA broadcast team this year. In fact, it is the fifth time that ESPN has deployed such a team this season.
“I was part of an all-women broadcast team in Indiana last week,” said McNutt. “I think our company understands the importance of acknowledging and looking around not just on International Women’s Day, but just looking around and making sure the people that are creating content and serving a larger audience represent the folks who are watching.”
“Sports is a microcosm and a reflection of society, and unfortunately, in society, there’s still a lot of things that women are fighting for,” McNutt added. “A day where you are intentional about stopping to acknowledge the contributions and voices in the space…it’s beneficial.”
ESPN Has Fostered McNutt and Privitera’s Professional Development
According to both McNutt and Privitera, ESPN was important to their professional development.
“I grew up down the road from ESPN,” Privitera explained. She recounted watching the UConn Women’s National Championship run in 1995 on ESPN and “remembering there were female voices on that game,” which made it “the norm for me growing up as a kid to hear that.”
Privitera has worked at ESPN for over 18 years. The network, she says, is “never holding me back as a female and always providing opportunities. And that’s been since day one when I walked in on our Bristol campus.”
McNutt, meanwhile, was a former D1 college basketball player. According to her, seeing women on ESPN showed her that she could pursue sports, too.
“There were so many women that I got a chance to watch,” McNutt recounted. “Doris Burke comes to top of mind, but I remember when [Disney Legend] Robin Roberts was still at [ESPN] doing WNBA and Hannah Storm was part of WNBA coverage… I would not miss a WNBA game. And so that was a huge part of my future professional aspiration.”
Hoping For a Good Game
When cameras get rolling tonight, both Privitera and McNutt are just hoping for a good game.
“I just really hope we get a good game,” McNutt said of the contest. “A lot of teams are 20 game or less down the stretch of the season, so these games matter.”
“Getting the teams in the match-up we’re getting, for me, seemed like this great gift to show off what we do,” Privitera said. “When you show up and both teams in the last week are sitting in the two seed, that’s what we get excited about for these games. That should be competitive and a great game.”