“It’s not unlike when the Olympics goes to a place like China, and you want to fully capture everything that is part and parcel of that culture”.

“Jed Drake was milling around before an industry dinner in New York City late last month when he spied NBC Universal’s Dick Ebersol across the room.

Drake, ESPN’s senior vice president and executive producer, made a quick dash for Ebersol, remarking on the way, “I have to commiserate with him.”

Drake could sympathize with Ebersol because he is basing much of ESPN’s coverage of next year’s FIFA World Cup on Ebersol’s wildly successful planning for the Summer Olympics in Beijing last year.

Much like Ebersol spent years meticulously planning every bit of NBC’s coverage around the Beijing Games, Drake will be all consumed with South Africa for the next eight months. ESPN tapped Drake to plan for next year’s World Cup, taking him away from his regular duties as the executive producer for ESPN’s nonstudio events through the World Cup tournament that ends in July.

For the past 13 years, Drake has earned a good reputation in Bristol as an executive producer, where he has overseen everything from “Monday Night Football” to the Winter X Games. In April, when ESPN President George Bodenheimer named the World Cup one of the company’s priorities, Drake kidded with Norby Williamson, executive vice president of production, that he should take the lead on World Cup production. Three weeks later, Williamson asked Drake to do it.

“I didn’t think that it would happen in my career anymore, where I could just focus on one single project,” Drake said. “It took the World Cup to do that.”

Drake already has traveled to South Africa three times and plans at least another three to five trips to the country before the tournament starts. He already knows that he wants to approach South Africa the same way NBC Sports approached Beijing during last year’s Summer Games.

“It’s not unlike when the Olympics goes to a place like China, and you want to fully capture everything that is part and parcel of that culture,” Drake said. “But the remarkable thing about South Africa is that this is a country that came out of apartheid only 15 years ago.”

Viewers will notice Drake’s strategy in many ways, particularly with the musical score being planned around the event. ESPN hired South African musician Hugh Masekela to help develop the score for the event’s production. Masekela is the father of ESPN’s X Games host, Sal.

“The whole music thing is like a full-time job in itself,” Drake said. “Our plan is to use only African music, other than maybe a couple of signature pieces.”

Drake also plans to spend a lot of time around the World Cup telling stories about the South African culture.

“This is not going to turn into a public service announcement. This is not about a direct reach out for solicitation,” Drake said. “This is about exposing people to a greater level of understanding. We’ll do that through music and a lot of video that we’ve already shot and a lot of video that we will shoot. We will tell stories of individuals that speak to a far greater population.”

Drake has also spent a lot of time picking announcers. ESPN made a big splash last month when it hired British soccer announcer Martin Tyler as the lead play-by-play voice for the World Cup. In the past week, Drake has flown to England to interview eight announcers with the intention of hiring three. Other than Tyler, ESPN has not revealed other announcers who will work on the World Cup broadcasts.

ESPN was criticized in 2006 when it used American Dave O’Brien as its lead announcer. O’Brien has not been involved with ESPN’s soccer telecasts for the past two years.

“We’re going to be live, in essence, 12 to 14 hours per day, so we need a large number of announcers,” Drake said. “We’re going in a direction for announcers who are highly credible in the world of soccer, along with some of our announcers who have a long history with us.””

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