Stung by the seedy sex scandal of baseball analyst Steve Phillips and a production assistant, ESPN has hauled in its top on-air talent to warn them of the perils of fooling around at the office, The Post has learned.
Anchors, reporters, analysts and play-by-play people last week attended a meeting at ESPN’s Bristol, Conn., headquarters — which was broadcast via conference call to other employees nationwide — where brass reiterated the sports network’s policies for workplace conduct and a concern about intra-office romances leading to problems.
Although “we don’t have a policy right now prohibiting relationships in the workplace . . . clearly, when those relationships do occur, they can present conflicts,” ESPN Executive Vice President of Production Norby Williamson told The Post yesterday.
“And when those relationships present a conflict or potential conflict, we’ll take appropriate action.”
Williamson, who spoke to employees during the conference call, said he also reminded on-air talent that their corporate e-mails are open to routine inspection by ESPN.
He added that he told them that if ESPN employees witness or suspect inappropriate workplace conduct, “there is the ability to [contact] human resources to bring things to human resources anonymously.”
“People need to step forward, and if there is a concern that they have, we certainly want them to step forward. We don’t want them to be passive, we want them to step forward and bring that to our attention,” he said.
Williamson said similar meetings are being held with other staff in ESPN’s production department.
The recent scandal involving the married Phillips and production assistant Brooke Hundley “was a driving reason we decided to set up” the meetings, the veep said.
“We took the opportunity based on the recent series of events . . . and talked about conduct,” he said.
Phillips, 46, and Hundley, 22, were both fired last week, days after The Post revealed they had a brief affair last summer that was followed by Hundley allegedly developing a “Fatal Attraction”-like fixation on him and his family.