Bronx33
02-13-2008, 09:30 PM
It just wasn't working ok Andrea....
Link (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/hiestand-tv/2008-02-12-SportsonTV_N.htm)
NBC's Andrea Kremer is in a shrinking club — NFL sideline reporters — and doesn't like the contraction.
With CBS having already dropped its NFL sideline reports, ESPN this week said that its Monday Night Football sideliners —Suzy Kolber and Michele Tafoya— will continue to go to game sites and likely appear in pregame and postgame coverage — but might not appear at all on games.
Says Kremer, who worked at ESPN for 17 years before joining NBC: "They were doing the role that ESPN asked them to do — more feature-ish stuff — and they were fired for it? If you don't like them in that role, change their role. Don't humiliate them like that. The way (ESPN) handled it was terrible, just disrespectful. … They treated two professionals in a completely non-professional way."
Responds ESPN's Mike Soltys: "Kolber and Tafoya remain an important part of Monday Night Football."
ESPN deploys various women — such as Pam Ward on football play-by-play and Doris Burke as a men's basketball game analyst — in on-air roles rarely, if ever, staffed by women anywhere else.
But Kremer suggests she's "offended" by ESPN's move because "it sets back women." Referring to herself, Kolber, Tafoya and Fox sideline reporter Pam Oliver, she says "no one accused the four of us for being on television for our looks or figures. … This isn't five years ago, with eye candy on the sidelines. We established ourselves as reporters, professionals. Now, you've completely minimized that. These women don't have to prove themselves anymore."
Fred Gaudelli, who now produces NBC's Sunday Night Football and worked with Kolber and Tafoya when he produced Monday Night Football when it was on ABC, suggests this is just ESPN's latest "mismanagement" of MNF. He says ESPN "could have" kept announcers Al Michaels and John Madden when MNF left ABC. But, he says, "I just don't think the people there making these decisions know how a live event gets put on television. They know studio shows. But the people making the decisions just don't understand live events. They're not equipped to make these decisions. If they left things to (producer) Jay Rothman, they'd be better off." (Rothman replaced Gaudelli as ESPN's NFL game producer, although Gaudelli was offered continued work at ESPN before leaving for NBC.)
With its three-man booth —Ron Jaworski, Tony Kornheiser and Mike Tirico— and the often-used Kolber and Tafoya as, well, celebs dropping by the booth to chat, MNF often got gabby. In her latest column, ESPN ombudsman Le Anne Schreiber writes, "it seems to me that all the complaints I received about MNF have one root: There is too much going on for viewers to feel they are experiencing a game."
But Kremer suggests trimming MNF's chorus shouldn't mean muting Kolber and Tafoya — "don't you think some people would be more interested in hearing what they have to say than some other people on that telecast?" — while Gaudelli puts it this way: "If you ranked MNF's five announcers on ability, Kolber and Tafoya would be in the top three. … But ESPN has a big bet on Kornheiser."
But if NFL TV sideliners are endangered, they don't appear headed for extinction. Fox Sports Chairman David Hill says reporter Oliver and Chris Myers are "absolutely" necessary — "you need up-to-the-moment information that can only be gotten by a journalist who digs" — and he "has no plans to drop either. Nor do I have any plans to put any personalities in the booth."
Fun to see TV sports divisions speak (occasionally) without resorting to bland corporatespeak.
Gophers on Fox: On Sunday, Fox for the first time will plant cameras in the track at a Daytona 500. The four so-called Gopher Cams, says Fox's Hill, will also get their own animated scrambling gopher to pop up onscreen to alert viewers. But don't bother writing protest letters to Fox: Hill hastens to add "no gophers will be harmed in the actual production."
Buried cameras, meant to shoot up, have been put in basketball courts, football fields, baseball diamonds, in ski-jump ramps — and on NASCAR tracks. But Fox's Gopher Cams, located inches inside the yellow boundary line, will be high-def and wired for sound. With a lens less than a half-inch in diameter, they'll have a protective cover rising less than a quarter-inch above the track surface. (Overall, Fox will use at least 77 cameras Sunday, including 24 manned cameras.) Also Sunday, Fox will debut a new theme song, NASCAR Love, whose lyrics include a "love" for "when they're making lots and lots of noise." Romantic.
Spice rack: CBS-owned CSTV, a college-sports channel in about 25 million households, is rechristened with the surprising new name: CBS College Sports Network. Go figure. … Before Roger Clemens was named as a steroid user in the Mitchell Report — a charge he denies — Disney-owned ESPN named him as an "athlete host" — and spokesman in TV ads — for "ESPN The Weekend" fan fest at Walt Disney World, held Feb. 29-March 2. ESPN pulled Clemens' TV ad, but he's still scheduled for the event. Will ESPN's marketing tie-in affect future news coverage of Clemens? Says ESPN's Soltys: "We're a multifaceted company with business relationships with leagues and individuals we cover aggressively every day. The news operation is in no way impacted." … During TNT's NBA All-Star Game on Sunday, its online TNT Overtime on nba.com will offer additional live video shots from cameras on backboards, the overhead scoreboard as well as from the Cable Cam zipping along sidelines. Also new this year: letting users vote online for players that will get cameras focused on them continually.
Link (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/hiestand-tv/2008-02-12-SportsonTV_N.htm)
NBC's Andrea Kremer is in a shrinking club — NFL sideline reporters — and doesn't like the contraction.
With CBS having already dropped its NFL sideline reports, ESPN this week said that its Monday Night Football sideliners —Suzy Kolber and Michele Tafoya— will continue to go to game sites and likely appear in pregame and postgame coverage — but might not appear at all on games.
Says Kremer, who worked at ESPN for 17 years before joining NBC: "They were doing the role that ESPN asked them to do — more feature-ish stuff — and they were fired for it? If you don't like them in that role, change their role. Don't humiliate them like that. The way (ESPN) handled it was terrible, just disrespectful. … They treated two professionals in a completely non-professional way."
Responds ESPN's Mike Soltys: "Kolber and Tafoya remain an important part of Monday Night Football."
ESPN deploys various women — such as Pam Ward on football play-by-play and Doris Burke as a men's basketball game analyst — in on-air roles rarely, if ever, staffed by women anywhere else.
But Kremer suggests she's "offended" by ESPN's move because "it sets back women." Referring to herself, Kolber, Tafoya and Fox sideline reporter Pam Oliver, she says "no one accused the four of us for being on television for our looks or figures. … This isn't five years ago, with eye candy on the sidelines. We established ourselves as reporters, professionals. Now, you've completely minimized that. These women don't have to prove themselves anymore."
Fred Gaudelli, who now produces NBC's Sunday Night Football and worked with Kolber and Tafoya when he produced Monday Night Football when it was on ABC, suggests this is just ESPN's latest "mismanagement" of MNF. He says ESPN "could have" kept announcers Al Michaels and John Madden when MNF left ABC. But, he says, "I just don't think the people there making these decisions know how a live event gets put on television. They know studio shows. But the people making the decisions just don't understand live events. They're not equipped to make these decisions. If they left things to (producer) Jay Rothman, they'd be better off." (Rothman replaced Gaudelli as ESPN's NFL game producer, although Gaudelli was offered continued work at ESPN before leaving for NBC.)
With its three-man booth —Ron Jaworski, Tony Kornheiser and Mike Tirico— and the often-used Kolber and Tafoya as, well, celebs dropping by the booth to chat, MNF often got gabby. In her latest column, ESPN ombudsman Le Anne Schreiber writes, "it seems to me that all the complaints I received about MNF have one root: There is too much going on for viewers to feel they are experiencing a game."
But Kremer suggests trimming MNF's chorus shouldn't mean muting Kolber and Tafoya — "don't you think some people would be more interested in hearing what they have to say than some other people on that telecast?" — while Gaudelli puts it this way: "If you ranked MNF's five announcers on ability, Kolber and Tafoya would be in the top three. … But ESPN has a big bet on Kornheiser."
But if NFL TV sideliners are endangered, they don't appear headed for extinction. Fox Sports Chairman David Hill says reporter Oliver and Chris Myers are "absolutely" necessary — "you need up-to-the-moment information that can only be gotten by a journalist who digs" — and he "has no plans to drop either. Nor do I have any plans to put any personalities in the booth."
Fun to see TV sports divisions speak (occasionally) without resorting to bland corporatespeak.
Gophers on Fox: On Sunday, Fox for the first time will plant cameras in the track at a Daytona 500. The four so-called Gopher Cams, says Fox's Hill, will also get their own animated scrambling gopher to pop up onscreen to alert viewers. But don't bother writing protest letters to Fox: Hill hastens to add "no gophers will be harmed in the actual production."
Buried cameras, meant to shoot up, have been put in basketball courts, football fields, baseball diamonds, in ski-jump ramps — and on NASCAR tracks. But Fox's Gopher Cams, located inches inside the yellow boundary line, will be high-def and wired for sound. With a lens less than a half-inch in diameter, they'll have a protective cover rising less than a quarter-inch above the track surface. (Overall, Fox will use at least 77 cameras Sunday, including 24 manned cameras.) Also Sunday, Fox will debut a new theme song, NASCAR Love, whose lyrics include a "love" for "when they're making lots and lots of noise." Romantic.
Spice rack: CBS-owned CSTV, a college-sports channel in about 25 million households, is rechristened with the surprising new name: CBS College Sports Network. Go figure. … Before Roger Clemens was named as a steroid user in the Mitchell Report — a charge he denies — Disney-owned ESPN named him as an "athlete host" — and spokesman in TV ads — for "ESPN The Weekend" fan fest at Walt Disney World, held Feb. 29-March 2. ESPN pulled Clemens' TV ad, but he's still scheduled for the event. Will ESPN's marketing tie-in affect future news coverage of Clemens? Says ESPN's Soltys: "We're a multifaceted company with business relationships with leagues and individuals we cover aggressively every day. The news operation is in no way impacted." … During TNT's NBA All-Star Game on Sunday, its online TNT Overtime on nba.com will offer additional live video shots from cameras on backboards, the overhead scoreboard as well as from the Cable Cam zipping along sidelines. Also new this year: letting users vote online for players that will get cameras focused on them continually.