TV Talk: Dick’s Sporting Goods joins entertainment biz; WTAE hires Westmoreland reporter

Coraopolis-based Dick’s Sporting Goods launched its own entertainment studio, announcing the venture Cookie Jar & a Dream Studios last week ahead of Tuesday’s premiere of the 51-minute “Big Dreams: The Little League World Series 2024”, chronicling last year’s competition in Williamsport, Lycoming County. (The film will repeat on ESPN at 1 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 17, and stream on ESPN+.)

Mark Rooks, vice president of creative, entertainment and sponsorships at Dick’s Sporting Goods, said the company sees the studio as a marketing tool but also a way of “telling great stories, creating fans of sport and, along the way, with hopes of developing fans of Dick’s Sporting Goods as a brand.

“We believe that sports have the power to change lives and build community, and the studio lives [out] that belief through storytelling,” Rooks said Tuesday.

The studio’s name was inspired by the story of Dick’s founding when 18-year-old Dick Stack borrowed $300 from his grandmother — money she kept in a cookie jar — to open a bait-and-tackle shop in Binghamton, N.Y., in 1948. That store grew into the Dick’s chain consumers know today.

Cookie Jar, which soft-launched in 2024, is based at Dick’s Coraopolis corporate headquarters. Even before the studio started, Dick’s first got involved with filmmaking with the 2014 doc “We Could Be King” about rival Philadelphia football teams forced to join up due to budget cuts. The company has been involved in making five feature-length films and 10 shorts/docu-series in the past 10 years, including the 2024 Netflix doc “The Turnaround,” about a Phillies superfan, and recent three-part Peacock docu-series “Adaptive,” about paralympic athletes. Cookie Jar has won two sports Emmys, which Rooks said is a rarity for a Fortune 500 company.

Cookie Jar often partners with other production companies, including Higher Ground Media and Breakwater Studios, on their projects, initiating some films and joining others in progress.

“We try to approach this space with an open mind and not say no to things before we have the opportunity to try to digest them and jump in when it feels like the right project in a way we think we can add value,” Rooks said.

While several films have been set in Philly, Rooks said the studio expects to tackle Pittsburgh-set stories, too.

“There are powerful sports stories that are anchored in the Pittsburgh market that we absolutely have an interest in,” Rooks said, including “Clemente,” an upcoming documentary film on Pirates great Roberto Clemente that Cookie Jar invested in. That movie will get a limited theatrical release on Sept. 12, premiere at PNC Park on Sept. 15 and air on the History Channel on Sept. 23.

While Cookie Jar has mostly operated in the documentary space, Rooks said the company is also developing scripted series.

New hire at WTAE

Channel 4 has filled its vacant Westmoreland County reporter role with the hire of reporter Ed DiOrio, a Hunker Borough, Hempfield Township, native. His first on-air report will be Friday from the Westmoreland Fair.

DiOrio, a 2021 graduate of Waynesburg University’s communications/sports broadcasting program, joins WTAE after two years as a reporter at WLOS, the ABC affiliate in Asheville, N.C. Prior to that, he worked for two years at WTOV in Steubenville, Ohio, as a weekend news anchor/weekday reporter. He also worked for three summers as an on-field emcee for the Washington Wild Things in Washington, Pa. During college, DiOrio worked as a producer and assisted with Pirates game broadcasts at KDKA-AM.

A 2017 Hempfield Area High School grad, DiOrio said it was always a goal to work in the Pittsburgh TV market.

“When the listing came up for Westmoreland County reporter, my eyes lit up like a Christmas tree,” said DiOrio, who will work out of WTAE’s office in Greensburg near where his grandfather operated a barbershop for decades. “To have the DiOrio name still have a presence, that’s cool to me.”

‘Kingstown’ ending?

At a recent fan convention in Florida, Jeremy Renner, star of “Mayor of Kingstown,” said the show, returning for its fourth season sometime in October, will end “in two more” seasons, presumably meaning after the fifth season.

“We found a cool end, I’m not going to tell you, but we found a really cool end, I think, to the show,” Renner said, per Popverse.com.

Paramount+ has not yet announced a fifth season renewal or if a fifth season would be the final season. Representatives from the streaming service did not respond on the record.

‘Pitt’ premiere date?

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter last week, “The Pitt” executive producer John Wells seemed to suggest the show’s second season will premiere Jan. 8. Publicists for HBO Max did not respond to requests for confirmation.

Kept/canceled

Season two of “One Piece” won’t stream on Netflix until 2026, but already the live-action show has been renewed for a third season.

Disney+ canceled “Goosebumps” after two seasons.

Channel surfing

Next week, Fox launches “Lego Masters Jr.” (8 p.m. Aug. 18, WPGH), which features kids instead of adults competing in building with Lego. Fox bills one of the teams, Ajay and Zak, as brothers from Pittsburgh. It turns out they are from Pennsylvania but not from Southwestern Pa. Fox said the kids get that billing “to maintain some discretion given their young ages.” … Mt. Lebanon native Joe Manganiello hosts NBC’s “Inside the Worlds of Epic Universe” (9 p.m. Aug. 20, WPXI), a one-hour promotion for the new theme park that opened this year. The presence of “Wicked” director Jon Chu has theme park enthusiasts speculating that the company will use the special to announce that a new “Wicked”-themed land will be added to the park. … Upcoming streaming services ESPN ($30 monthly) and Fox One ($20 monthly) will be bundled at $40 monthly beginning Oct. 2. … In a $7.7 billion, seven-year deal, UFC will relocate from ESPN to Paramount+ beginning in 2026. All events will be included with a Paramount+ subscription, eliminating pay-per-view.