Legendary broadcaster Bob Costas isn’t worried about the hot take era in broadcasting.
In an interview on The Michael Kay Show on Friday, Costas was asked about successful people in the business who’ve made a name for themselves shouting the loudest and not caring about being wrong.
Costas said he’s not worried about hot take artists and that what’s important is that truth and credibility.
“I don’t know if I worry about it, but I don’t approve of it,” he said. “You know, I think that there should be certain timeless elements. You and I may prefer, because of our age, to hold a newspaper in our hand with a cup of coffee in the morning. But it doesn’t really matter whether you get it on a laptop, your iPhone or on some device that they’ll invent in the next 10 minutes.”
“What does matter, though, is it truthful, is it credible, is it fair and is the quality of it something that appeals to someone with a sensibility beyond that of the dumbest kid in the back of the room in the sixth grade,” Costas added. “Those things should always matter no matter how the technology changes, no matter how the marketplace and the media landscape changes. Quality and credibility should matter.”
Costas went on to say that there’s a difference between someone who fires off uninformed hot takes and someone like co-host Don La Greca, who occasionally gets fired up and speaks passionately from an educated perspective. The latter helps the industry.
“You can be entertaining and loose and humorous and anecdotal,” he said. “And, you know, fire off an opinion. I love a good Don La Greca rant! I love it. But it comes from a base of knowledge. You can agree with it or disagree, and those who deal in ad hominem attacks – or those who can’t grasp the difference between irreverence and mean-spirited snark – I don’t think that in the big picture helps us out very much.”
Bob Costas spoke recently with BSM’s Derek Futterman and shared his opinion on a number of topics regarding the modern sports media. That included his opinions on the way sports conversations have changed and what the minimum standard should be.
“The essentials of the craft remain the same,” Costas said. “If you’re talking about sports talk radio; if you’re talking about the internet’s coverage of sports, that in some cases bears no resemblance to the notions that people of my generation had about credibility and quality of presentation. No one’s saying that sports coverage is masterpiece theater or something that should be taught at a Ph.D. class at Princeton [University], but it can be done more or less thoughtfully. It can be done more or less credibly, and we see wide variations now in how it’s done.”
