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ESPN announced a bunch of major changes and additions today:

SportsCenter Right Now Expands Brand’s Digital, TV Presence

SportsCenter, ESPN’s flagship since 1979, will launch a series of enhancements beginning next month and continuing through early 2018.

The new SportsCenter Right Now initiative will bring news updates to both digital and television platforms during daytime hours as well as during halftime of televised prime-time sporting events. And with ESPN re-signing many popular SportsCenter anchors to new, multiyear deals, the television lineup also will be revised.

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New SportsCenter Updates Daily in ESPN/ESPN2 Daytime and in Prime Time Games

Beginning in late August, SportsCenter will start producing up-to-the-minute news updates that will be seen on both digital and television platforms. SportsCenter Right Now will appear multiple times per hour on ESPN.com and in the new home-screen video player on the ESPN App. Content will be produced specifically for the digital platforms, with the content topics determined by the use of real-time analytics to ensure that the updates are centered on the questions and conversations in which sports fans are most passionately engaged.

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SportsCenter on TV Expands Emphasis on Personality-Driven Programs

Following the launches of SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt (midnight ET) in 2015 and SC6 with Michael and Jemele (6 p.m. ET with Michael Smith and Jemele Hill) earlier this year, SportsCenter continues its emphasis on personality-driven programs with some lineup changes.

Pretty smart move. SportsCenter Right Now means different versions of SportsCenter segments will be produced, cut and edited for mobile. It’s kind of shocking ESPN wasn’t doing this already, especially when you consider that they have a Snapchat channel that does this quite well. Even more curious that ESPN wasn’t doing this already is that unlike most small publishers (myself included) ESPN is big enough to monetize these social media efforts. It’s not just publicity and promotion– they can actually sell sponsorships. They’re uniquely positioned to seamlessly move their offerings to social media. It doesn’t help solve their losing subscribers issue… but it does help their ad sales ventures.

The rest of this is kind of obvious and generally lame. That line about use of real-time analytics is so jargon-y and means so little that it actually blows me away that they would include it. Every web publisher, tweeter or YouTube creator has the ability to measure what people view and click online. I just tweeted a video showing a new heat map I use for the site that shows not only where people click, but also RECORDED REPLAYS of their – you’re – visits. I can see you. How much does it cost? $29 per month. So ESPN sending out a press release about using real-time analytics is like if Nike held a press conference to announce that they can count the number of shoes they sell in a day, something even a small guy LaVar Ball can do.

The personality-driven SportsCenters are fine, if the personalities are good. The Scott Ven Pelt show is unique and pretty good, but SC6 sucks. Further, ESPN is determined to turn career teleprompter readers into off-the-cuff stars. Easier said than done.