Tag Archives: Charley Steiner

SportsCenter at 50,000 shows: The best of Charley Steiner on his early ESPN days, Robin Roberts, beards and meeting Carl Lewis

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ESPN invited Charley Steiner to participate in a recent teleconference noting the 50,000th show for SportsCenter. He was an anchor from 1988-2002.

“I feel like Marv Throneberry in that old light beer commercial,” Steiner said. “‘I still don’t know why they asked me to do that commercial.'”

Because he’s one of the best. Steiner, now an announcer for the Dodgers, was wildly entertaining then and still is today.

Here are some terrific soundbites from the teleconference, including his memories of meeting Carl Lewis. Check out the video to see why that was an uncomfortable moment for Steiner.

On joining ESPN:

In 1988 when suddenly out of nowhere I was asked to do this new SportsCenter show, Would you like to come up to Bristol?  I had two questions:  Why and where?  14 years later it changed only everything.

When we first got there, understand that ESPN was just this sports cable station, it was not the monolith it has become.  It was a mom and pop store that has turned into this four-letter icon.  To be a small part of it a million years ago and to watch its growth from afar has been thrilling.

More on joining ESPN:

I started out as a radio guy.  I never had any intention whatsoever of being on television.  I still consider myself a radio guy that just happened to have a 14-year diversion on TV.

When I was first offered the job, I didn’t seek it out.  My agent, Donald Buchwald, who is Howard Stern’s agent, who has done much better with Howard, said, Why do you want to go to Bristol to a cable station?  It seemed like sage advice, with all due respect, Ms. Steele.

I said to him, Let’s give it a shot.  If it doesn’t, let’s go back to radio.  I had no idea it would last 14 years and have the impact on my career that it did.  I don’t know.  All I know is when I was seven years old I wanted to be the announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers.  It took 15 years, 3,000 miles, a lot of stops in between.

On working with Bob Ley and Robin Roberts:

Again, the Christopher Lloyd portion of the program, when Bob and Robin and I were together.  We were on the air every day for seven years.  Bob and I were together for about 10 years.  This is going to sound like a bunch of hooey, but it’s the God’s honest truth.  Those meetings we had in the morning where the three of us would chime in, Mark Gross was part of that when you had different initials at the end of your name, we would talk about everything.  It wasn’t necessarily sports related, but how it would all come together as part of this soup that we would serve up at 6:00, 6:30, 7:00, depending on the hour we aired the show.

In those days, Bob is so damn smart.  Robin is, well, Robin.  I was thankfully the caboose on this wonderful train.  We would sit around and we would talk.  More times than not we would come out with the right news judgment.  Mercifully, Tim Tebow was four years old then.  There was not a lot of Tebow coverage at that point.

Again, we were at that point historically where we had the Tyson story, Pete Rose story, Magic Johnson story.  We had stories that were above and beyond just sports news.  Those are the things that thankfully gave some foundation to the SportsCenter project.  We just happened to be the ones who were there and then.

Keith, Dan doing the 11:00 show.  Ours was more a news-generated show.  We didn’t have the electronic wherewithal to bring in all the highlights at 7:00.  These days you get highlights in at any second with the social media and any other stuff.

On Robin Roberts:

Every one knows what Robin is going through. I mentioned earlier one of the joys of my entire career are morning and afternoon editorial meetings with Bob, Robin and I.  We used to jokingly call ourselves the Mod Squad.  Bob and Robin are dear friends to this day.  Everybody holds a special place in your heart, in your brain, in your soul, whatever it is for what Robin is going through.  That’s all I want to say.

On competition back then:

Again, when I got there in ’98, ESPN was just a sports channel on cable.  Our competition in 1988 was CNN, Nick and Hick, Nick Charles and Fred Hickman.  Within about a year CNN basically removed sports from its lineup.

Then we’re kind of on our own.  Most of the time we’re on our own because nobody had quite done what we were doing before.  They talked about SportsCenter attitude and all that.  We were a bunch of guys trying to figure this out.  We had no attitude.

Then Sports Channel for a time.  They didn’t put up much of a fight.  Then FOX came along.  For a time they at least made some noise, put up some competition.  But we knew they were dead the day they put their first FOX Sports commercial out, which was a direct knock-off of all the things we had done.

Our collective thought at that time was, If they’re coming into our neighborhood, we’re pretty well-situated, they’ve got no shot.  FOX tried to put their studio show on immediately after all their live games, so they were never on at any specific time.  So in terms of ratings, we were there every night, same time, same bat channel, those guys were all over the place trying to do exactly what we were doing.

I think the battle was won the first time FOX attempted to do a funny commercial like ours and failed miserably.

On his memorable SportsCenter ads (Here’s the link from Sunday’s post):

Two things come immediately to mind.  The one we went and did, Melrose Place, Bobby the pool boy, Sydney.  We’d go out there.  We’re on this big Hollywood set.  All the women on the show didn’t know me from Adam.  They were scared to death that they might have their reputations sullied by being something on SportsCenter with the short, fat guy.

The guys, on the other hand, were all congregating around, talking sports.  This is pretty cool.  Then Sydney thought it would be a career-ender.  Little did she know she was so right, but that didn’t matter.  That spot had some pretty good wings to it.

The other one was the Follow Me to Freedom.  We did about four different lines at the end.  Follow Me to Freedom was just one of four that was selected by the producer and the director.  Others were something like I’ll Lead You to the Underground, All is Well, Brothers and Sisters, all that kind of crap.

It was the only time I wore a tank top.  Anybody who might remember the spot knows why.

On facial hair and his friendship with Wolf Blitzer:

Wolf and I are dear friends.  We’ve been friends for more than 20 years because we’re the only two bearded guys on TV.  He’s taken off a little more weight than I have over the years, but we still remain friends.

When I first got there, I’d done nothing but radio.  Facial hair was not even a consideration to me one way or the other.  When I first got there, one of the many consultants who were trying to force feed television into my radio brain asked me one day matter of factly, Would it bother you if you shaved your beard?  I’d never given it any thought one way or the other.

I go out on the air.  I was God awful in the beginning.  Anybody who was up at 11:30 on the West Coast would watch me learn how to do TV at night.  I was totally lost.

So a couple of weeks in, one of the producers walked over, Steve Anderson.  He said, We just finished having a meeting.  I said, Good.  He said, You can keep your beard.  I had no idea it had been up for discussion.  So that’s the long and short of the beard story.  About five years ago one day I just decided, you know, it’s time to shave.  I’ve been shaving every day since.

That’s a meaningful answer to a meaningful question.

On finally meeting Carl Lewis:

I met Carl Lewis once.  This is the God’s honest truth.  This is right around the time he did his magnificent rendition of the national anthem.  It was several weeks after.  Carl and his manager were really pissed off at me and ESPN for showing the thing.  Of course, they didn’t consider the fact that he sang the thing.

Having said that, it was a post Tyson fight party.  In those days the security was unbelievable, and they’re all so very friendly.  So we are kind of pushed through this police cordon, me, a producer, a couple other people.  We’re pushed through.  I am face to face with Carl Lewis.

He looks at me and I look at him.  He doesn’t know what to say.  I don’t know what to say.  I said finally, Carl, my man.  That was no response.  Now 20 something years later there still hasn’t been one.

Carl, my man.

 

 

 

 

 

SportsCenter at 50,000 shows: Immense impact; Is it less personality driven now?

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ESPN loves to mark milestones and anniversaries. I imagine they go through a lot of birthday cakes in Bristol.

Some, though, mean more than others. Thursday at 6 p.m. ET, ESPN will mark the 50,000th airing of SportsCenter.

That’s fairly significant. In this video, George Grande, who hosted the first show in 1979, looks back.

ESPN actually is going low-key with this milestone. It will mark the event with Chris Berman doing a tribute to late SportCenter anchor Tom Mees, who died much too young. Here is the link to Berman’s piece on ESPN Front Row.

SportsCenter definitely has been the franchise for ESPN. I remember in the late 80s, my apartment building in Chicago was extremely slow in getting wired for cable. When I finally got connected, I recall being thrilled at being able watch SportsCenter.

Imagine 30 minutes of nothing but sports and highlights. I was in heaven.

Now ESPN is wall-to-wall SportsCenter on the main outlet, and a 24/7 edition on ESPNNews.

Charley Steiner, a SportsCenter anchor from 1988-2002, said it best during a conference call:

“You’re talking about 18 hours of SportsCenter a day.  We didn’t have 18 hours a week.  We had three 30-minute shows, no re-airs.  The only thing we didn’t have were rabbit ears.  We had a 7:00, an 11:00 and a 2:30 a.m. show, which is where they stuck me in the beginning.  We would go home and tee it up again the next day.”

SportsCenter truly has become an iconic symbol of the network. Much like Saturday Night Live and culture, the program introduced catch-phrases and created new lingo for sports. And it basically sets the agenda, for better or worse (Tebow!).

“When you get through everything else, the most important thing SportsCenter does is document the day and night in sports just like a game telecast would document a game,” said Mark Gross, ESPN’s senior vice-president and executive producer.

Added Scott Van Pelt: “I always think when I’m out there, regardless of the hour of the day, how long you’ve been there, whatever the case may be, I never say I have to do SportsCenter, I say I get to do SportsCenter.”

The ESPN conference call, which also included Sage Steele, lasted more than an hour. Thanks to Steiner’s participation, it was enlightening and extremely entertaining.

When it finally became my turn to ask a question (much further back in the line than from my Chicago Tribune days, Josh), I asked if SportsCenter has become less personality driven in its current form?

I definitely think that’s the case. Heck, the ABC show SportsNite was based off the Dan Patrick-Keith Olbermann pairing. And it wasn’t just those two guys. You had Steiner, Robin Roberts, Bob Ley, Mees, Rich Eisen, Stuart Scott, a young Mike Tirico, among others. Then there also was Berman, who was wildly popular back when the majority of people thought his catch-phrases and nicknames were cutting edge.

Now there are so many SportCenter shows and anchors, they all seem to blend together. To me, it seems to be more about the content, and less about the person delivering the content. Maybe, that’s inevitable given the bulk of the shows.

Anyway, here are the responses I got to my question:

Steiner: In those days, remember, technologically we were cavemen compared to where it is now, number one.

Number two, when we were doing our show, the 7:00 eastern with Bob, Robin and I, because there weren’t highlights, by nature, how else do you convey information?  It became more of a writers’ show, more of a repertorial show.  I think that’s why they put Bob, Robin and I together.  Whatever strengths we had, those were them.

Now again, with the ability to get highlights from anywhere and everywhere, from a cell phone to whatever, the dynamic I think of all of the shows is considerably different.

Again, when I started back in the paleolithic era, there were three and a half hour shows.  Morning SportsCenter was a business show.  So comparing us and them, then and now, is a difficult task.

Those were the rules by which we had to play in those days because of what we had at our disposal.

Gross: It’s simple really.  We expect the anchors to be themselves.  We’re not asking Scott, Sage or anybody else to go and invent nicknames, home run calls.  We expect them to be themselves.  If they’re themselves, we’re going to be just fine.

Van Pelt: To that end, I wouldn’t speak for Sage, anybody that ends up on the set has some level of passion for sports, anybody that ends up on that set is in some way, because you’ve seen other people do it, you have some sense of how the show has been done.

But I also think it becomes almost a lazy criticism to say everybody is out there trying out for the Chuckle Hut.  I don’t think everybody treats their Brewer/Red’s highlights to say seven funny things.  If you do, my personal opinion is you’re failing because that’s not the goal.

If you can be organically funny, if a moment presents itself, by all means.  If you have certain things in the way you deliver things, people don’t mind.  I’ll drop a useful shot which is a note to Sam Torrance.  It’s a word and never more than that.  The personality, I always look at it like this, it’s like sugar, and a teaspoon might be enough, but three would want to make you puke.

If you’re authentic, it comes across that way, I think people appreciate that.  I don’t feel like anchors go out there and say, Where are the seven times I can try to be cute, because if they do, again, my own personal opinion is you’d be making a mistake.

Steele: I was going to say when I got the job here five and a half years ago, I was leaving the D.C. area, everybody said, What is going to be your thing?  What are you going to say?  I thought, gosh, I’m not smart enough to come up with something that clever, it’s too hard, forget it.

I am me. They know what they’re hiring. They know who they’re hiring.

Have times changed? Absolutely. The way the shows are formatted, there’s a lot more sponsored elements. It’s a business, and the shows have definitely changed.

Sometimes I even forget I’m on TV, God forbid.  That means you’re out there having fun, owning your highlight.  I don’t think of a cute moment to potentially put in there.  I’m more concerned about this highlight is important, why.  Why do we feel this highlight is important enough to show all the people watching and what’s the story behind it.  Sometimes it’s what you say, not what you see as well.  Too much to worry about out there to be cute.

Check back for more upcoming posts from the teleconference and about SportsCenter at 50,000 shows and counting.