Since 2016, one of the faces that viewers have seen on FS1 as part of the morning/early afternoon lineup has been on Joy Taylor. During these last five years, she has been the moderator of Skip and Shannon: Undisputed and been a part of The HERD with Colin Cowherd.
On this week’s edition of the All The Smoke podcast with NBA veterans Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, Taylor was the guest and talked about her career journey. The FS1 host said that being able to do shows on-the road with Skip Baylees and Shannon Sharpe helped her develop in the business as she went from working at 790 AM The Ticket In Miami to where she is today.
“FOX has been great. It’s been a huge platform for me,” said Taylor. “I hadn’t done live national television. Working with Skip and Shannon was unbelievable. If you know Skip and Shannon, you know that’s an intense show to do.”
She understands that people think the opinions that Bayless and Sharpe give aren’t real takes, but that’s far from the truth and yes, they can agree on things.
“It’s just a well-produced show. They do topics they agree on sometimes because they have to do the topic, but they are going to come from their angle and that’s what makes the debate. It’s a question and then they naturally have other opinions.”
While she enjoyed working with Bayless and Sharpe, Taylor told Barnes and Jackson that she originally wanted to be an opinionist when she went to FS1. Taylor did do some fill-in work for Kristine Leahy while Leahy was Colin Cowherd’s sidekick, and when Leahy left The HERD, Taylor was able to fill in and make an easy transition to the show.
Taylor revealed on the podcast that she doesn’t deem a show to be successful solely on the ratings because she doesn’t worry about that. Instead, it’s all about the conversation that her and Cowherd have:
“If I feel like Colin was activated, that he has thought of something different or thinks about something different than the way he thought about it before doing the show, if we had good guests and the energy is flowing, that’s a good show for me.”
The key for Cowherd to doing a successful show, according to Taylor, is that he always wants to be prepared, which is why the daily show meetings can last two hours:
“We are going over every single topic, every single angle, all of the producers are weighing in, I’m weighing in, Colin is weighing in. It’s a completely different process to prep for the show. They are two different shows. He just preps so much. He doesn’t like having space where he is just rambling. He hates that.”
Joy Taylor called Shannon Sharpe one of the “biggest stars in sports media.” She says it is because the Hall of Fame knows not to take himself too seriously. As for Bayless, Taylor thinks that people don’t have a good understanding of who he is.
“A lot of people think Skip is very hard and mean. He’s a passionate person, so I think he’s misunderstood. They do a show where they give their opinion. Some people are going to like your opinion, some aren’t. I’ve seen Skip on the road. Don’t get it twisted. People love Skip and Skip loves the people. Skip is going to stand there after every show, shake everybody’s hand, take a picture with whoever is there, talk to them for as long as they want to talk to him. He understands the importance of people giving their time to us to watch the show.”
