How to fill up an hour-long LeBron James special

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Stacey Vanek-Smith: It has been a long and dramatic build up, but NBA star Lebron James will take part in an hour-long special tonight to finally announce whether he’s staying with the Cleveland Cavaliers, or moving on. Marketplace’s Jeremy Hobson reports.

Jeremy Hobson: How do you fill an hour long special with information that only takes a few seconds to say? Maybe bring all the team owners on stage at the same time, Survivor-style.

Survivor: The nine votes inside this urn are about to make one of you a millionaire. But you’re going to have to wait just a little bit longer.

As long as the good stuff is saved till the end, Neal Pilson says it doesn’t matter how the special is produced. He’s a sports media consultant and the former president of CBS sports.

Neal Pilson: You want to fill the hour perhaps with shots of Lebron playing as a 4-year-old and then as a 5-year-old and then as a 10-year-old. Maybe a little travelogue of his home town. Obviously I’m being a little facetious here, but you have to fill the hour.

And Pilson says ESPN wouldn’t be doing it if viewers didn’t want it.

Pilson: I’ll almost guarantee you it’s going to get a very large rating.

And it can’t hurt that two of the teams courting Lebron — the New Jersey Nets and the New York Knicks — are in the nation’s largest media market.

In New York, I’m Jeremy Hobson for Marketplace.