The job of calling any sporting event on television has changed. Bob Costas is experiencing that first hand as he handles play-by-play duty for the ALDS between the Cleveland Guardians and the New York Yankees.
Costas shared his observations with The Really Big Show on Thursday on ESPN Cleveland. Co-host Aaron Goldhammer asked what the broadcast legend thought of the promo TBS ran for HBO’s House of the Dragon, which included a fake report about a dragon flying over Yankee Stadium.
Costas said that he was handed a card to read and didn’t know what it would lead to.
“I read it in as detached a form as I could and then I see it with poor Lauren Shehadi, who is just a wonderful person who does a great job on the MLB Network and for TBS. And she’s gotta do this thing–some simulated report. Now I gotta think how do I distance myself from this without totally trashing it? So I said something which I hope that reasonable people understood was kinda like me rolling my eyes at the whole thing.”
Bob Costas wasn’t the only one rolling his eyes. The bit was met with near universal disapproval on social media.
“Here’s what’s changed just from a production standpoint–there’s a lot more stuff. The commercial imperatives are such that there’s more drop-ins during games including a dragon swooping into Yankee Stadium in simulated form in Game One.”
Promoting content on sister networks or airing in a completely different block has become ubiquitous across game coverage. Costas says the practice has absolutely changed the way he does his job. In fact, it has changed the industry to a point where in 2022, it may not be accommodating to some of the most iconic voices from broadcasting’s past.
“If Vin Scully, the greatest of the great, was doing network baseball today, he couldn’t be Vin Scully,” Bob Costas concluded.
