Keith Dawkins, president of Harlem Globetrotters & Herschend Entertainment Studios, joined Cheddar News to discuss the world-famous team’s return to television in an NBC weekly series, ‘Play it Forward,’ an educational show covering a wide variety of topics.

It's been 40 years since the beloved Harlem Globetrotters have been on television. Keith Dawkins, president of Harlem Globetrotters &amp; Herschend Entertainment Studios, joined Cheddar News to discuss the world-famous team’s return to television in an NBC weekly series, ‘Play it Forward,’ an educational show covering a wide variety of topics.

Harlem Globetrotters Return to TV for First Time in 40 Years

Welcome back to closing bell on Cheddar news. The Harlem Globetrotters are back on T. V. The world's famous exhibition basketball team known for its ball handling four point shots and high flying antics star in a weekly show on NBC called Play it forward and it's hosted by the office actor Craig Robinson. It's part of the nearly 100 year old team's effort to reach a new generation of fans and today I'm joined by keith Dawkins, he's the president of the Harlem Globetrotter so keith so glad you could join us here today. Tell us more about the series. Yeah listen we're super excited to be back on tv for the first time in 40 years Globetrotters beloved brand. Everyone all over the globe knows them, everyone loves them and it's really exciting to be able to be um bring the show bring the players, bring all the goodwill ambassador nature of the Globetrotters out to an audience um all across the nation Now globetrotter games have always been about including kids in the experience and on the show you're reaching them on a different level. So can you tell us how you got kids involved in this version of the series? Yeah you know for me it was really important to listen we traveled some 250 tour dates around the country. Another 100 plus tour dates around outside of north America around the globe but what if you're not able to go to Harlem Globetrotters. How do you how do you touch and feel and experience the awesomeness of the globe charters are right so play it forward in partnership with hers is the way one of the ways in which we do that, we have many other things up our sleeves in terms of a strategy, but being able to show up on a platform like NBC, a powerful platform that that is each week every saturday at 11 o'clock and reach an audience, a kid and family audience who is really the kind of like the groundswell of what the Globetrotters are, right? We touch kids age 678 years old and then make them lifelong fans when they're an old guy like me and stuff and you do that um by reaching them in all the places that kids and families are today. So that's social media, that's big, powerful linear platform, that's licensing and merchandizing deals, that's consumer products, that's gaming, that's all the ways in which are important for us to reach the audience and doing so for successful, it actually elevates our tour, makes that bigger and more magical than ever. Now. You hinted at this earlier that the Harlem Globetrotters, our Goodwill Ambassador. So what are some of the positive initiatives that they're focusing on at this time? Well, so as a as a overall initiative for the our Goodwill Ambassador initiative, we focus really on three things health and wellness, community empowerment and education. So those are three strategic pillars they show up in the show, play it forward. So you'll see everything from, I mean, aside from the tricks and aside from the magical stunts that people know the Globetrotters for, you'll see them showing community gardens around the nation, you see them doing food bank work, you'll see them doing um philanthropic efforts with other foundations and doing things that just make the community thrive stem empowering young girls. These are all the things are important to our players and so we made sure that those things are important to our players that tie into our strategic initiatives, also play itself out in the show. So you really get the feeling and the essence of that goodwill ambassador work um permeates everything we do in the show in particular. Now the Globetrotters are known for combining entertainment and comedy with athleticism. So what are we going to see in this series? That shows cases all three, oh my gosh, I mean listen, you'll see Hammer and in season one, episode one, you saw Hammer, one of our phenomenal players jump out of an airplane at 13,000 ft. I said to him, I was like, I would never do that in a zillion years, but that's what he does, that's why you're the president. Right, right. Um, so you'll see, just, I mean their athleticism is really off the charts. Um, but I think it just is really magical to me about the Globetrotters. They can spin balls, they can dunk, they can do things when you see them with um someone 80 years old or with little kids who were eight years old um and everything in between the way they light up, You know, we did an event at the Empire State Building a couple of days ago to kind of showcase the premiere of the show coming up and there are people there, you hold all the different languages from all over the world and they're like Harlem Globetrotters and they stay there, that's really the magic of them um just the way they impact people and just like people's faces up is really a powerful thing, It makes me proud to just be a part of the journey with them. Now, this isn't the first time the Globetrotters have been on tv, They actually were in popular cartoons in the 19 seventies, so how is the history of the team influenced current members? So what I would say about the seventies when I was a kid is that that's when people talk about like, I love the Harlem Globetrotters, I love curly neal, I love meadowlark, lemon, right, they go on, right, where do they see them? Some of them saw them on tour globally, and then many of them saw them on a Scooby doo or while we were sports of those different things. So the power of tv is a platform, right? Power of media and platform was like instrumental to the growth of the Globetrotters, so we're just getting back to the basics in that sense, right? Um using all of these linear, streaming, nonlinear gaming, the list goes on to reach an audience in New Day, but it was, it was always an instrumental part of the Globetrotters and that's why it's important for us to bring that back. Now, I heard a rumor that Nasa might be a partner in a future episode. So are we going to see a Duncan space, wow, look at you doing your homework. I also heard a rumor that you were a hooper yourself back in the day. My career is over, right. I'm now I'm now working here, but but what about this? Yes. Yes. Yes, Yes. So we we definitely have a segment with Nasa involved as part of kind of the, the, what I call it, like the relationship, the bridge between sports and science, right? And there's a stem component to that. Um again, lining up to our strategic pillars of, of, of, of education being one of them. Um it's just great to have partners like a Nasa and others who just, they have their own fandom and affinity for the Globetrotters, so they welcome this right in the hood and we're excited about that. So we'll definitely see that footage in an upcoming episode. We will not see footage of me playing basketball that we'll talk later after the show. Well, let's thanks to keith Dawkins, he's the president of the Harlem Globetrotters, you can watch the team's new show, play it forward on NBC Saturdays at 11 a.m. Eastern time.