Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports media…
Pam Oliver: Bob Raissman writes that Pam Oliver’s situation is uncertain at Fox after Sunday’s Super Bowl. Her contract is up.
All season long, Oliver, who has been with Fox for 19 years, 12 working as sideline reporter with the No. 1 team of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, watched the Foxies continue treating Erin Andrews like a queen, giving her a major push on college football and NFL telecasts. Andrews has joined Oliver on the sidelines during the postseason. The Foxies all but fit Oliver for a second-team jersey.
Or were they just greasing the skids for her exit?
For as the countdown to Super Bowl XLVIII winds down, so do the days on the final year of Oliver’s Fox contract. She said she fully expects to have a “nice” negotiation, revealing there already have been some talks. Still, her focus remains solely on Sunday’s game.
“Look, it (that Sunday could be her last game for Fox) has entered my mind. I’m a realist,” she said. “My husband cautioned me, admonished me really, not to treat this as a farewell tour.”
Easier said than done.
Terry and Howie: Richard Deitsch in SI has a Q/A with Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long. They have spent 20 years together at Fox.
Why does the relationship work?
Long: It’s like that phrase catching lightning in a bottle, because I really don’t know. We do come from different backgrounds, and there’s an age difference, but for whatever reason, from Day One we just gravitated toward each other. I am lucky to call him my friend.
Bradshaw: That is what’s so great about this. It’s kind of like true love. People can’t define it, like when you look at an old ugly guy with a beautiful young woman, and she’s happy and totally in love. It’s just chemistry. He represents a lot of the things that I wish I were. He’s a good-looking man. He has a great marriage. He’s a great dad. He’s intelligent. He’s a smart businessman. He’s all of those things. I’m a 180 from that.
Erin Andrews: Brad Gagnon of Awful Announcing does a Q/A.
BG: Do you read what critics write about you?
EA: Yeah.
BG: What do you take from it?
EA: Some of it really upsets me and some of it I think to myself, ‘There’s always going to be the naysayers, there’s always going to be the haters.’ Even the best of the best get criticized.
BG: Do you think you handled the Richard Sherman interview well?
EA: I have gone over it in my head 8,000 times. I think after it happened I’m more so worried about if I asked the right thing. I’m my biggest critic. Regardless of whatever these other people that say things think that they are with me. I’m the one that judges myself the hardest. I don’t know, there’s parts of it I wish I had done different. I wish I had thrown it to Joe differently. I didn’t realize that we were going to cut out of my question that quickly so I think I was stunned and kind of just said, ‘Joe, back to you,’ where I wish I had just said, ‘Joe, 90 seconds after he made the play of his life, a very emotional Richard Sherman.’ I wish I had handled it like that.
Erin Andrews 2: Gwen Knapp at Sports on Earth looks at the fallout from her interview with Richard Sherman.
For some reason, instead of engaging in a more thoughtful conversation, it ends up being easier to unload on Andrews, as if she has created a bad template for women in sports media, defining them all as personalities rather than journalists, willing to date athletes rather than keep a professional distance and available for modeling gigs and “Dancing with the Stars” slots. I understand the concern, but I’m not sure it’s entirely fair. No one has a problem with Michael Strahan crossing over from his mornings with Kelly Ripa to do analysis with Fox, and certain ex-player commentators have visibly struggled with the concept of objectivity. They have the playing credentials, but they do not conform to journalism standards. Yet we don’t think they damage the reputations of the Scotts, Bucks or Bermans, who have more traditional credentials.
Regardless of the larger debate about Andrews’ place in the business, she did not deserve flak for the Sherman interview. I have no idea whether she is good at her job on a regular basis. I don’t pay enough attention to postgame interviews, and I would have missed this one if the clip hadn’t become the Zapruder film of its genre.
NFL TV: Mike McCarthy in Advertising Age has a piece on the possible network bidding if the NFL expands the playoffs.
“If we expanded the playoffs, nobody has contractual rights to those games,” said Mr. Rolapp, chief operating officer of NFL Media, here at league headquarters in Manhattan. “So our steps are, first, to figure out: Does it work from a football standpoint? Second, if it does, how do you schedule to maximize not only your television exposure, so fans can watch it at home, but also fans who are traveling to the game. Then, third, you figure out who the best broadcast partner is to package those and distribute those (games). We’re still on that first part for how to make it work.”
Michael Wilbon: The first installment in the Povich Center for Sports Journalism series “Still No Cheering in the Press Box” features the kid from Chicago. Didn’t know his cousin is Carole Simpson.
I finally met Shirley Povich for the first time as a rookie reporter for The Post when we drove together to cover a boxing match. He was such a helpful mentor who not only spoke words of advice, but also showed it with his actions every day. Some of the best advice he ever gave me was that you only have about three paragraphs to grab the reader’s attention; a lot of times it’s only two. And he knew how to do this in his writing, which would appeal to the audience but not pander to them. From day one, he wanted me treat him as an equal, but I could not help but be in awe of him when he would talk about covering the Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney, long-count fight in 1927, or Babe Ruth or Walter Johnson or Sammy Baugh. I once asked him if he had any idea how much that amazed me. He simply said, “It’s only time. In 50 years some young fellow is going to point at you and say, ‘See that old guy over there? He knew Michael Jordan.’ And you’re going to think, ‘What’s the big deal?’” And he was right.
PTI: Speaking of Wilbon, Chad Finn of the Boston Globe writes about the enduring popularity of Pardon the Interruption. I agree.
“PTI” is a mixture of the companionable and the outraged. On a recent episode, Wilbon was furious with football fans who had whined about the lack of tackling in previous Pro Bowls, and then complained again about the hard hits in this year’s game. The potential for weather disruptions at the Super Bowl, held for the first time this year at an outdoor cold-weather site, also propelled Kornheiser to suggest fixing a camera on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, to catch him when he retreats from his seat to an indoor luxury box: “This is a potential William Henry Harrison situation.”
NBC and Olympics: Richard Deitsch provides an extensive guide to the infinite hours of Olympics coverage.
NBCUniversal, naturally, has attempted to present Sochi in the best possible light because they have a lot invested in the product. The company shelled out about $775 million for the U.S. television rights for these games and the Olympics are always an essential driver to promote NBC’s morning, primetime and late-night programming as well NBC’s cable networks. How much Olympics will NBC air? The networks of NBC — and its online offerings — will telecast 1,539 hours of programming from Sochi, more than the total for Vancouver and Torino combined
“Our plan is pretty straightforward: We’re going to deliver the most comprehensive coverage the Winter Olympics have ever had,” said NBC Sports Group chairman Mark Lazarus.
Changing media: Michael Bradley of the National Sports Journalism Center writes about the continuing evolution in media.
Five years ago, SB Nation did not exist. Today, it enjoys more than 50 million unique visitors per month and has more than 70,000 Twitter followers. Its focus is less on creating objective content along the lines of traditional journalism and more on providing fans with a point of view that matches their passion and perspective. As you can see by the numbers, SB Nation’s model has been wildly successful. More importantly, Vox, through SB Nation and its other sites, The Verge, Polygon, etc., has been face-forward on setting the standard for how journalism should operate in a connected world. It’s one thing for a newspaper to have an on-line presence and another for a company to blend the most modern technology with content people want to consume.
According to Carr, “digital publishing is its own thing, not an additional platform for established news companies”. That’s where the showdown is likely to come in the next decade: the start-ups, which base a large part of their existence on their technological superiority, versus the holdovers that are trying to adapt.