BobCostas-related stories
Posted Sep 24th 2009 4:45AM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Reality-Free, Jay Leno
A talk show can only be as good as its guest. That means
The Jay Leno Show can only get better than
Pee Wee Herman's tornado of suck.
Wednesday's episode was a big step up from the previous night, thanks in part to Vince Vaughn's entertaining sit-down with the big chinned one. Couple that with some entertaining features like "Jaywalking" and the second "Green Car Challenge," and you've got a much better show this time round the track.
Part of that success has to do with the show's choice of guest stars, but this show stuck to what makes it work by introducing new segments that fit the old show's style and building on old ones.
Continue reading The Jay Leno Show: Vince Vaughn
Posted Aug 21st 2009 9:29AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Sports, Industry, Programming, OpEd, Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free
If there's one night of television that NBC has a handle on, it's Sunday. At least during football season.
Football Night In America works, and you know the old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." That said,
NBC has renewed its NFL deal for two more years. The new deal – the extension – secures that NBC will be broadcasting NFL games through 2013, so there will be plenty of games for all those analysts to yap about.
NBC has nearly enough guys to field a team on the pre-game show: Bob Costas, Dan Patrick, Keith Olbermann, Tony Dungy, Tiki Barber, Rodney Harrison ... with Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth calling the games. Will we notice that
John Madden is gone? Probably not, especially if the games are good.
Continue reading NBC renews deal with the NFL
Posted Feb 3rd 2009 7:33PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Sports, Celebrities, Reality-Free
As anyone who follows sports on TV knows, Bob Costas is a baseball guy. He loves, loves, loves the National Pastime. Therefore, since NBC has not had major league baseball for years, it's been rough on Bob. He's managed to keep his love for the game alive with books and speeches and as part of his work for HBO. Well, now he's going to be doing a lot more baseball.
Bob Costas is upping his commitment to the MLB Network, and leaving HBO. When the new baseball channel launched on January 1, 2009, included in the charter line up
All Time Games, the rebroadcasting of vintage baseball games with Costas as the host.
Continue reading Costas drops HBO for more MLB Network
Posted Jan 31st 2009 12:05PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S07E13) NBC is broadcasting the Super Bowl on Sunday in case you didn't already know that, although I can't imagine how unless you've been living in a cave for the past couple of weeks. The promotion has been across the entire
NBC Universal network.
There have been little football reminders in most of its programming, like the NFL-themed cuisine on Bravo's
Top Chef. This Sunday there'll be an all-day USA Network Super Bowl Promotion including the characters from
Psych, Law and Order: CI, Burn Notice, In Plain Sight, The Starter Wife, and
Monk. Yeah,
Monk.
And yet, probably because of some "rights" thing, this episode of
Monk had to build the mystery at a playoff game around a fictional football team and that made this whole show pretty flimsy.
Continue reading Monk: Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs
Posted Sep 3rd 2008 12:24PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Sports, Programming, Casting, Reality-Free
For nearly 20 years, NFL football fans could feast on Sunday games and then flip on ESPN for a complete wrap up on
NFL Prime Time hosted primarily by Chris "Boomer" Berman and Tom Jackson. It was a staple. Then in 2005, ESPN dropped the show.
Now, it's coming back (sort of) and in addition to Boomer and Jackson, John Saunders will be rejoining them, re-creating the original troika from 1987. The essence of
NFL Prime Time will be found in the 7 p.m. ET edition of SportsCenter each Sunday during football season. Essentially, they'll be doing what they did on
NFL Prime Time, and in doing so, they'll be taking aim at
NBC's Football Night in America, that network's lead in show for the
Sunday Night Football game.
This should be really interesting because the NBC pre-game show is like Thanksgiving dinner -- loaded with stuffing. They have stars galore, including the recently
added, former ESPN stalwart, Dan Patrick.
Continue reading ESPN takes on NBC Sunday Night Football
Posted Aug 12th 2008 10:02AM by Brett Love
Filed under: Sports, Industry, Programming, OpEd, Reality-Free
Over the past few days it has once again become quite apparent that they have yet to invent an Olympic sport that I won't watch. Really. Fencing, Women's Air Rifle, Badminton... I'll watch it all. I spent my weekend traveling between the various channels, internet streams, and the occasional visit to my Slingbox in Boston. As far as the games go, they're as good as they've ever been. The coverage from NBC though, unfortunately, is still not nearly what it should be.
I'll admit, they got me. When I read about the plans for more live coverage, and how they were going to make use of all the other NBC/Universal properties, I thought this would be the year, the Olympic nirvana that always could have been. It's really not panning out that way. More than anything else, the word that keeps coming to mind for the NBC coverage is annoying. After the jump, some notes for NBC.
Continue reading Loving the Olympics. NBC... not so much
Posted Jul 22nd 2008 10:28PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Sports, TCA Press Tour, Chuck, Life, Lipstick Jungle, Reality-Free
Today was the very last day of the press tour here in Beverly Hills. It was "TCA Day," with members of the association (including me) going to the Warner Brothers lot to visit the sets of
ER, Pushing Daisies, and
Chuck, where we spoke to cast members and producers (Oh, we went to the set of
America's Best Dance Crew, but let's just forget I mentioned that one). Then we bused it over to the Fox lot, where Joss Whedon showed us around the set of
Dollhouse, and the entire cast of
King of the Hill gave a table read of their 250th episode. All this fun will be in upcoming posts later this summer.
Despite some of the griping you may have seen from me, it's been lots of fun. It's just a very tiring experience. Case in point: On Monday, NBC decided to close out the press conference portion of the tour by having us sit through ten panels, five of them after lunch. Here's a wrap-up post that goes over some of what went on yesterday that I haven't already covered.
Continue reading NBC wrap-up: Slater's split personality, and Selma Blair's a wise-ass - TCA Report
Posted Jul 7th 2008 8:01PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Sports, Casting, Reality-Free
NBC's
Football Night in America is something like too much of a good thing. The network seems intent on stuffing the Sunday night broadcast with everything but the kitchen sink.
When Tiki Barber retired from the New York Giants, he joined their broadcast. Same thing with Jerome Bettis of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Then
Keith Olbermann, a sports guy before becoming the host of MSNBC's
Countdown, was inserted into the show. And that was on top of the three mainstays Bob Costas, Cris Collinsworth and Peter King.
Now, you can add one more star to the constellation.
Dan Patrick is joining Football Night in America. Patrick, formerly the main man at ESPN -- and Keith's longtime partner on
Sports Center as well as Dan's radio show -- will be paired up with Olbermann again and will be slotted in as pre-game show's co-host.
There's no question that Patrick will be an asset. His 18 years at ESPN proved that, and I admired his maverick spirit when he bolted the comforts of Bristol, Connecticut and set up a new deal with his radio show.
Continue reading Dan Patrick reteams with Olbermann on NBC's Football Night in America
Posted Jun 7th 2008 1:45PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: TV Sports, Obituaries, Reality-Free
Long before ESPN was the worldwide leader in sports, ABC sportscaster and newsman Jim McKay was the voice of American sports.
ABC sports legend Jim McKay died today at the age of 86; the cause of death was not revealed. In the annals of television history, Jim McKay is among the giants in sports broadcasting: a twelve-time Emmy winner, an iconic presence on
The Wide World of Sports, the man who said the words, "the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat." He was the moderator of twelve Olympics and a broadcaster who gave the best he had in every television show in which he was involved, be it the Kentucky Derby, the British Open, or any of the other hundreds of events he covered.
If Jim McKay had just done that, he'd have a great legacy. However, when he was confronted with the task of anchoring the events that unfolded at the 1972 Munich Olympics, when the Israeli athletes were taken hostage by terrorist and killed in a commando raid, Jim McKay rose to the occasion.
Continue reading ABC sportscaster Jim McKay dead at 86
Posted Jun 4th 2008 8:22AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Sports, Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free
As
Bob Sassone wrote in his report about Inside the NFL ending its HBO run last February, the NFL was reporting that the show would find a home on another network. It has. And I can tell you now that
Inside the NFL will be appearing weekly on Showtime. It'll be a collaboration with CBS Sports and NFL Films. That said, I think we can expect to see CBS talent on the show.
In its most recent edition on HBO,
Inside the NFL was hosted by Bob Costas, with expert input by former players and current broadcast analysts Dan Marino, Cris Collinsworth and Cris Carter. Costas and Collinsworth are NBC employees, and Carter is part of ESPN. That leaves Danny Boy. And yes, he is a CBS guy, a regular commentator on
The NFL Today every Sunday during football season. I'll bet you right now that Dan will be on the show.
Inside the NFL is a unique weekly highlight show -- one of the best ever -- because shows the games up close from the viewpoint of NFL Films. Those cameras get inside of the game more than TV cameras. They're films, not TV and the production values are like a documentary film. As a longtime football fan, I'm really glad that
Inside the NFL will go on. This year will be its 32nd on the air.
Continue reading Showtime picks up Inside the NFL
Posted Jan 11th 2006 8:26AM by Anna Johns
Filed under: Sports, NBC, Cable, Programming
That's 17.3 days of Olympics coverage, people. And most of it is going to be focused on figure skating. The Olympics
run for 17 days (from February 10-26), but NBC will not be playing the events around-the-clock. Instead, it will spread
its coverage out during daytime, primetime, and late night viewing hours on six stations: NBC, USA, MSNBC, CNBC, NBC HD,
and Universal HD. In comparison, NBC had 375.5 hours of coverage during the Salt Lake City winter games four years
ago.
Bob Costas will return as primetime host for the winter games, his seventh year with NBC Sports. And,
to feed the needs of all those ice skating fans, Dick Buttons will host
Olympic Ice, a daily report on the
games' most popular sport. NBC is also prominently featuring David Pelletier and Jamie Sale in their coverage. The
Canadian couple, who just got married, were a crowd favorite in 2002 when they ended up tying for gold with the Russian
pairs skaters.
Posted Jun 8th 2005 4:38PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Cable, News
It comes from CNN president Jon Klein, who talked to the AP about his hire of Bob Costas to be a regular guest host for Larry King:
"Larry King is far and away the superstar of CNN and if you list any of the areas we need to address at CNN, 9 o'clock Sunday through Thursday is not on the list."
Not sure why he leaves Friday off that list, since King is new that night too. And Sunday's are usually a repeat, so why include that, and if you do, why not include Saturday, when there's another repeat? Whatever. If the president of CNN thinks that Larry King is the best thing they have at the station, lineup confusion is the least of his problems.
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