The Procrastination Economy. Ethan Tussey

to engage sports fans on the Monday after a busy sports weekend and encourage them to check in with Fox Sports properties as they prepared for the next weekend’s games. Each day of the week featured a new episode of a web series. Each web series was a different genre and style, covering the spectrum from interview talk shows to scripted workplace comedy to comedy clip show to sports strategy show. Each day at noon, the web series of the day would be featured on the MSN.com landing page and on the various Fox Sports apps. Monday’s The After Party with Jay Glazer and Tuesday’s Coach Speak with Brian Billick were both shows dedicated to providing wrap-up and analysis of the previous weekend’s football games. The College Experiment and Cubed aired on Wednesday and Thursday to provide humorous commentary about the sports world. Friday’s The Inside Call previewed upcoming games and featured the hosts of Fox’s NFL Sunday TV show preparing for the weekend’s broadcast. Each webisode lasted about half an hour and had its own sponsor.

      Lunch with Benefits ended production after a three-year run, beginning with heavy promotion in 2009 and ending as a featured section of the Fox Sports app that launched in 2012. Though the series did not last long, the programming logic and labor practices associated with it are often replicated by digital departments across the media industries. The enthusiastic launch of Lunch with Benefits and the effort to connect traditional production practices and digital distribution are emblematic of a pervasive desire that shapes the culture of the procrastination economy.

      The Fox Sports press release launching Lunch with Benefits positioned it as the flagship creation of the newly created Fox Sports Digital Entertainment division. The new unit was charged with making “lunchtime the new primetime” by offering the workplace audience a weekday web series programming block.47 The announcement’s use of the term “primetime” is indicative of how Fox Sports understood digital content and the importance of establishing a digital day part. This terminology and strategy connected the procrastination economy with traditional television production. The story of Fox Sports Digital Entertainment is emblematic of many efforts to create content for the procrastination economy. Specifically targeting the workplace audience, the network reused processes and insight gained from years creating television programming in its effort to provide snackable content that could elevate the conglomerate’s brands and franchises.