For help on their return to the studio for the first time in a decade, Buckingham drafted producer Mitchell Froom, who made lauded albums with Crowded House, Los Lobos, the Latin Playboys, Richard Thompson and others in the 1980s and 1990s, and who collected the 1993 Grammy Award as producer of the year.
"This is the start time we were given," said Jay Rothman, ESPN's draft producer for the 16th time.
"I don't think Mel knows how to power up a cellphone," said Jay Rothman, ESPN's draft producer.
Odd then that the top-name producers drafted in to sprinkle stardust on the Strictly Come Dancing winner's comeback couldn't have mustered some better tunes.
MacFarlane was drafted in by Oscar producers last autumn, following a particularly duff couple of years.
To play Mama Rose, producers have drafted a surefire box office draw who nonetheless may surprise some "Gypsy" aficionados: Bernadette Peters.
NBC drafted the veteran sports producer Michael Weisman away from the Olympics to serve as the executive producer of "The Jane Pauley Show".
For their fourth album, Holiday (1974), the band drafted in George Martin as producer, who helped frame their songs in clever arrangements and give them a glossy studio punch.
But whatever she is, she is not, at heart, a songwriter: Hey QT, filled with the fizzing energy of UK garage classics like Sweet Like Chocolate, was drafted by SOPHIE (a producer associated with, but not officially on, the label) and AG Cook, the boss.
Toward that end, his firm has enlisted a series of high-profile characters of its own, including jazz greats Quincy Jones and Wynton Marsalis, that zany lefty Al Franken considered by many to be the mirror of News Corp.'s Fox TV star, Bill O'Reilly emotive supermodel Tyra Banks and, drafted as an executive producer, rapper Snoop Dogg.
