Bill Hofheimer wanted to give Taylor Tannebaum a pat on the back publicly. Instead, his November 8 post gave people a reason to check the spelling on their screens.
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The ESPN vice president praised the reporter for moving from the ACC Network’s football coverage to the new WTGL women’s golf league. The screenshot attached to his message showed her working with a microphone.
It also showed the name “Taylor Tannenbaum” on the broadcast graphic. There was just one problem: Tannebaum has only two “n” s in the middle of her last name. The mistake was small, but the timing made it difficult to miss.
“A day after hosting ACC Huddle in Syracuse, @TaylorTannebaum is back at work, making her debut on @WTGLgolf,” Hofheimer wrote on X. “As the league hosts its inaugural match, now on ESPN. Kudos to Taylor, who continues to expand her on-air roles.”
Hofheimer is not just another ESPN employee sharing a colleague’s work. He is the network’s vice president of communications, a position he took up in February 2024.
His responsibilities include publicity and public relations for several major ESPN programming areas, including college sports and golf. He has also spent more than two decades with The Walt Disney Company.
That made the screenshot an especially awkward addition to the post. The person responsible for celebrating the network’s coverage had inadvertently drawn attention to a mistake in that very coverage.
While Hofheimer certainly did not intend to make light of the error, the typo in the graphic quickly became the focus.
One X user picked up on it and replied, “Try spelling her last name correct next time.”
This isn’t the first time ESPN has made a graphic error in its broadcasts. What’s new is the network’s VP sharing one while ignoring the mistake in his own reporter’s name.
ESPN’s previous broadcasting errors gone relatively unnoticed
ESPN’s broadcast of the UCLA-Cal game had an embarrassing graphic error after UCLA receiver Logan Loya hauled in a five-yard touchdown pass. The graphic never made it past the template stage.
As Loya celebrated his touchdown, ESPN viewers were left looking at the words “first name last name” and “xx-yd rush” instead of the receiver’s details.
Three years earlier, after Vladimir Guerrero Jr. won the 2023 Home Run Derby, the network’s graphic labeled the Toronto Blue Jays star a “Cuban-born HR derby champion.”
The description was wrong on both counts of his background: Guerrero was born in Montreal while his father played for the Expos, and his family is Dominican. Beyond that error, though, the broadcast was a relatively calmer affair.
Those earlier broadcast mistakes did not overshadow the WTGL debut, and the network’s coverage of the new league carried on with a familiar team in place.
Tannebaum, for her part, was part of the ESPN broadcast team alongside play-by-play announcer Justin Kutcher and on-field analyst Emilia Doran. The league also has a separate broadcast arrangement with ION, where Addie Parker handles sideline duties.
The launch gives ESPN another platform for women’s sports coverage, with the network scheduling further WTGL matches on ABC and ESPN2 before the playoffs in December. The opening match was also part of ESPN’s Women’s Sports Sundays programming.
Tannebaum had been busy that weekend. She hosted ACC Huddle in Syracuse on Saturday, November 7, then was back on ESPN the next day for her debut on the network’s WTGL coverage.
Taylor Tannebaum is taking on a new assignment
Tannebaum has been with ACC Network since August 2022. She hosts ACC Huddle, the network’s weekly college football studio show, and co-hosts ACC PM. Before joining ESPN, she worked as a sports anchor and reporter at WTHR in Indianapolis, where she became the station’s first female sports anchor in 2018.
The WTGL assignment adds another sport to her broadcasting portfolio. ESPN announced in October that Tannebaum would handle sideline reporting for seven broadcasts during the league’s inaugural season, appearing across ESPN, ABC and ESPN2.
She is expected to interview players between holes and help guide viewers through the matches. It is, of course, a very different job from hosting a college football studio show.
Instead of breaking down a Saturday afternoon game with Jimbo Fisher, Eric Mac Lain, and Eddie Royal, she is now working around professional golfers competing in an indoor team format.