This week, ESPN aired a one-hour documentary about Pardon The Interruption that chronicled the 20-year history of PTI and how Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon went from journalists to debating the hot topics of the sports world on television.
Of course, Kornheiser talked about the documentary on The Tony Kornheiser Show on Wednesday, but he has not actually watched the one-hour special yet and doesn’t plan on watching it.
“My feeling all along about this was it feels like a memorial to me, not like a celebration,” he said. “I didn’t want to get involved in it, that’s just me. I did get involved in it. I sat down. I was interviewed by Pablo Torre, who I love. I am happy that I did it, but I didn’t really want to watch it. In my DNA is this: 6 months from now, they’ll just say get off the show, we’re bringing somebody new in if we keep the show at all. We gave you the celebration, so what’s your problem?”
He does think he will see the show eventually and that he will probably cry when he sits down and watches it because after accomplishing his childhood goal of being a sportswriter, everything else is a bonus.
Tony Kornheiser believes that the ability that he and Wilbon have of being “generalists” in sports helped them to be good at debating on TV and it was a big part in why the show has succeeded for so many years.
“We know a little bit about a lot of things. It enables us to do this show. We have this stamped on our brains over 40 years of working, my case 50 years about sports and loving sports. I can do this. I didn’t know that I could, but it doesn’t surprise me that I could do it. It doesn’t surprise me that Mike can do it.”
Over the years, the relationship between Kornheiser and Wilbon has not changed and according to Kornheiser, neither of them are “hot take artists” because of their experience in journalism and looking at stories from every angle.
“When you do that, it sort of mitigates being a hot-take artist because those people are sort of screaming about their opinions. When you write a column, it may sound like your decibel level is high, but you have considered all of the angles of it and you have enough intellectual firepower to diffuse those things which people will come at you with because you thought about it. I want the show to be entertaining. Entertainment is everything…but the whole of it is we present ourselves as people with a certain amount of credentials in this area. I actually think it is a great show for what it is.”
While Tony Kornheiser did not expect that he would go down the path of doing this show, he enjoys entertaining people and people have enjoyed both him and Wilbon debating every weekday at 5:30 PM ET on ESPN over the last two decades. It is a feat in which Kornheiser is enormously proud of, particularly because of the work the staff has done since the beginning.
