BRITNEY Spears may just be getting over Justin Timberlake – now we’ll see if the NBA can survive a love affair with the former N*SYNC-er.
ABC Sports has made Timberlake a “special correspondent,” although nobody for the moment really knows what that means.
But his tenure officially starts tomorrow night with ABC’s first NBA telecast of the year.
“It’s a title that we gave for a position that we are still figuring out,” ABC Sports senior VP and executive producer Michael Pearl says.
Timberlake will file a number of short features from the perspective of a sports fan, according to Pearl. “He’s an average fan who happens to be a celebrity,” says Pearl.
He is not expected to appear on the telecast tomorrow – and his first piece won’t be for at least several weeks.
The deal inked last fall – just two days before the singer left for an extended European tour – calls for Timberlake to become an occasional reporter and sing the theme song to the NBA broadcast called “Can’t Get Enough.”
The idea was to give the NBA games a theme as recognizable as Hank Williams Jr.’s rendition of “Are You Ready for Some Football” for “Monday Night Football.”
“The key is that he doesn’t want – and was very firm on this – he doesn’t want to pretend to be a sports expert,” Pearl says. “Because he’s not. He’s just a very big sports fan.”
Timberlake will do features that put him in places fans might like to go, says Pearl – practicing with a team, for instance.
Hiring Justin is the latest twist in pro sports’ love affair with pop culture – a kiss-and-cuddle relationship that has included comedian Dennis Miller appearing on ‘Monday Night Football’ and conservative radio man Rush Limbaugh working the NFL pre-game show, amid some controversy.
Both relationships ended badly, but that’s not always the case.
Fox Sports flirted with Hollywood, too, granting comedian Jimmy Kimmel a short feature on “Fox NFL Sunday’s” pregame show for four seasons.
Kimmel left Fox last season to concentrate on his late night talk show.
“I would look at Justin Timberlake – and for that matter Dennis Miller and Rush Limbaugh – not as important parts of the color commentary, but as the half-time show entertainment that aren’t restricted to halftime,” says Dr. Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Center for the Study of Popular Television.
“If the expectation is that the core audience of Justin Timberlake’s recordings are now going to flock to NBA broadcasts thanks to Justin being on it, I think that’s asking a little more for Christmas than anybody, even Santa, could deliver,” says Thompson.
Pearl says that he first noticed Timberlake when the singer played in the annual NBA All-Star/Celebrity game. “He did very well,” says Pearl.
One of Timberlake’s agents, who used to represent Magic Johnson and had a prior relationship with Pearl, mentioned Timberlake’s obsession with sports and eventually landed the singer a gig with ABC Sports.