Laura Rutledge, Ryan Clark: ‘NFL Live’ doesn’t do production meetings because we’re so in sync

Credit: ESPN's 'NFL Live'

The NFL Live cast has stopped doing production meetings altogether, according to Ryan Clark.

Clark, who co-hosts The Pivot alongside Channing Crowder and Fred Taylor, was joined on the podcast by NFL Live co-host Laura Rutledge. During the conversation, Clark revealed that the NFL Live cast — himself, Rutledge, Dan Orlovsky, Mina Kimes, Marcus Spears, and Peter Schrager — has gotten so comfortable with one another that production meetings have become a thing of the past.

“There’s so many times where I know Laura has a thought or she knows I have a thought, and it’s not something we — we don’t even do production meetings,” Clark said. “We just know each other so well, and we’ve already had these conversations that Laura knows to throw it to me at this point because she already heard that thought from me on Thursday.”

“We used to, and now we don’t have to,” Rutledge added.

For better or worse, production meetings are a staple of live television. They’re the mechanism by which producers and talent get aligned on what they’re covering, how they’re covering it, and who’s saying what before the cameras roll. When you already know what your co-host is going to say because you had that conversation on Thursday, there’s not much left to hash out before a 4 p.m. show, which is why that formal prep work for has seemingly become redundant.