Brothers in Studio: How the Relationship Between Producer Tim Kiely and Host Ernie Johnson Reshaped Modern Sports TV Casual approach to production has brought success to Turner By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Friday, March 30, 2018 - 1:53 pm
Print This Story
Story Highlights
I could do the Resurrection of Christ in a minute and a half!!
Those were the words that one of Tim Kiely's bosses screamed at him one afternoon very early in his career when he had the gall to ask for 15 extra seconds on a story he was working on for the 6:00 news at a station in Pittsburgh.
Turner's studio cast of (from left) Clarke Kellogg, Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, and Charles Barkley will anchor TBS's pre/postgame coverage of this weekend's Final Four. Coverage begins at 3 p.m. ET Saturday.
A young Kiely - who today is the heralded VP, production/executive producer, Turner Sports - undoubtedly had a love of working in television, but he also had a sincere distaste for just how rigid it could be in those days. Those draconian words stuck with him and only strengthened his desire to implement his vision of what he thought television, particularly sports studio television, could be.
From the first day, you learned about prompters, scripts, and tight editing, says Kiely. Everything was down to the second. I just didn't enjoy it. It was very formulaic. That early experience made me want to look for something different.
He envisioned television with the restraints off. He wanted to produce a show that was less about a suit robotically reading a series of 30-second scripts into a camera and more like a team bus with multiple personalities sharing captivating conversation and good-natured ribbing. It became the foundation for what would become arguably sports television's most successful studio show in history, Inside the NBA.
But every Wes Anderson needs his Bill Murray. Enter Ernie Johnson.
E.J. and Tim were united in the early 1990s after Kiely moved over from ESPN to join the Turner Sports team in Atlanta. In 1989, Turner had become the latest cable-television company to make a bold splash into live sports production, acquiring the rights to begin broadcasting NBA games. Johnson, an Atlanta native, had been working as a sports anchor in the area at WSB-TV when he got the chance to make the leap to the national scene in his own backyard.
In 1990, Turner debuted a pre/postgame show to surround its on-court coverage. That show was Inside the NBA, and together Kiely and Johnson helped make it the industry gold standard for live studio shows.
[Kiely] knows his guys really well and what certainly analysts are comfortable doing or not, Johnson says. He knows how to adapt and understands that you can't be rigid in a style. He's the Coach K [Krzyzewski] of producers.
Turner's approach - and the chemistry between Kiely and Johnson - has been an unequivocal hit, garnering Inside the NBA nine Sports Emmy Awards since 2001, including Best Studio Show - Daily in 2001, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2013 and Best Studio Show - Weekly in 2011 and 2013 (it's nominated in that category again this year). The buy-in has also paved a golden road of success for Johnson personally: he has thrice received a Sports Emmy as Outstanding Studio Host and is nominated in the category this year.
Turner Sports' Tim Kiely
The greatest thing about Tim as a producer is that he's never been married to the stopwatch, says Johnson. He's never been a guy who will say to you, This conversation needs to be 25 seconds long' and You've got to hit this break right at this point.' Tim has always been the type to say, If you go over, I'll make up the time somewhere else.' I think he realizes the value of really good conversation and debate.
That's not to say it was love at first sight between Kiely and Johnson. Inside the NBA was a very different show in the early '90s: it was more strictly a highlights-based show, and Johnson was a one-man band. There was no Shaquille O'Neill, Kenny Smith, or Charles Barkley bantering about games and laughing over goofy Photoshops late into the night.
In Kiely and Johnson's first couple of weeks together, Kiely saw exactly what he had hoped wouldn't play out unfold before him: Johnson was reading the prompter and methodically rolling through highlights. You couldn't blame him; that was how sports TV worked. Kiely decided to do something bold: he shut off Johnson's teleprompter.
When I got [to Turner Sports], I saw in Ernie two different guys, says Kiely. Off camera, he had a biting sense of humor and was very funny. When he got on camera, he sounded like a guy reading a prompter. A high percentage of the best speeches you've ever heard are off-the-cuff. That's what I was looking for.
Johnson fought his way through the rest of the show (for the record: Kiely thinks that show went pretty well), but, when the lights went down, Johnson was fuming. The halls at Turner Studios were filled with the two yelling at each other. The argument made its made into the bathroom, where a frustrated Johnson fired his coffee mug into the wall, leaving shattered pieces everywhere. He went to his office, gathered his things, and went home.
Now, Johnson is widely regarded as one of the nicest people in the business, so it was a rare moment of rage from a level-headed guy. Kiely, in an attempt to smooth things over, went out and bought a new coffee mug and left it on Johnson's desk. When Johnson arrived the next day, he opened the mug, which displayed the design of a generic newspaper want ad. Circled on the side was a listing reading Postal Worker Wanted, a jab at how Johnson had gone postal the night before.
It made me laugh, he says (he has the mug on his desk to this day), and i
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Brothers in Studio: How the Relationship Between Producer Tim Kiely and Host Ernie Johnson Reshaped Modern Sports TV Casual approach to production has brought success to Turner By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
