Charles Barkley rebooted his media mogul era in a dramatic fashion. His new label, Round Mound Media has been around since 2018. But former Turner exec, Jeff Zucker attached his name to it restart Round Mound Media 2.0. They already have a dozen projects in development and Barkley has major plans to bring diversity on TV. He wanted to do this five years ago, preferably through TNT. However, it didn’t work out until Turner had the NBA vacuum to fill. So Chuck abruptly accused TNT of stunting his production ambitions. But while he couldn’t get his studio off the ground, Shaquille O’Neal was thriving.

Shaq’s Jersey Legend Productions was not reliant on TNT to run. Under the Authentic Brands Group umbrella, O’Neal was successful in the producer role and even branched out to directing. So what did Shaq do right over Chuck?

Shaq has a bigger library than Charles Barkley’s studio

Jersey Legends Productions is technically younger than Round Mound Media since it was founded in 2020. But Shaquille O’Neal’s media experience goes back to 1992. From Blue Chips and Kazaam, to directing an episode of Cousin Skeeter, and producing multiple reality shows and his LA connections gave Shaq an edge over Chuck. The most we know about Charles Barkley’s creative venture is pitching the legendary ‘I’m not a Role Model‘ campaign for Nike in 1993 and that Space Jam gig.

It sounds like Chuck wanted to do a lot more but was restricted by his TNT commitments. “I’ve been disappointed at Turner for a long time.. because this should have been done three years ago when I had more television production stuff out there,” he said on Jim Jackson’s show. “As far as my television production…it should have happened probably five years ago.”

Round Mound Media’s previous credits include American Race and The Great Debate with Charles Barkley. He however says, “I should have probably 20, 30 projects.”

Authentic acquired licenses to the Shaq brand and O’Neal is the second-largest shareholder of the group. So when they use their licenses on Elvis Presley’s brand for the Netflix documentary, Shaq stands to benefit. He, in turn, grows ABG’s production portfolio.

Among Jersey Legends’ stacked library is The Queen of Basketball, an Oscar-winning short, and Shaq’s HBO docuseries. Recently, it co-produced Lucky 13 hosted by O’Neal, the Prime Video documentary, Money Game including Angel Reese, and has an Allen Iverson documentary in the works.

Most of Shaq’s commercials were produced under his label too. He directed the IcyHot commercials last year and collaborated with Gabrielle Union for JCPenney (also an Authentic brand) and Amazon’s Thursday Night Football campaign. Jersey Legends even created an entire tourism campaign for Abu Dhabi, Shaq’s favorite overseas city.

Most of it has nothing to do with TNT. Jersey Legends has shopped documentaries to Amazon, to whom TNT lost the NBA to. Lucky13 is on ABC under the Disney umbrella. That’s not to say Shaq ignored TNT.

Shaquille O’Neal brought his podcast out of the TNT shadow

The Big Podcast with Shaq was one of O’Neal’s independent ventures initially. He rebooted it in 2023 in collaboration with Playmaker HQ, Authentic, Jersey Legends, and the formerly defunct The Big Podcast Network. But the new season ran on NBA on TNT’s channels and featured replaced the previous co-hosts with Adam Lefkoe, the TNT Tuesdays host.

As the NBA season concluded, O’Neal and Lefkoe expressed doubts about the show’s future since TNT lost the NBA. However, both were immediately back on the exclusive Big Podcast Network. He very smoothly got his podcast out of the Turner crisis and kept it going.

At the same time, The Big Podcast Network launched Unapolegitcally Angel, Angel Reese’s own podcast. And, yeah, Jersey Legends and Playmaker HQ are involved in this too.

Barkley implies that he wanted to develop more content under TNT. It’s probably why he kept retracting his retirement declarations every time. However, it appears Shaq separating his production house from Turner is a better business model. Maybe Barkley could’ve had his 20 projects sooner if he looked outside TNT.