Pardon the Interruption turns 25 on Thursday. Tony Kornheiser credits the ESPN show’s staying power to one simple thing: it never changed.
What We Know: Pardon the Interruption debuted on ESPN on October 22, 2001. Since then, Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon have anchored the rapid-fire debate show together. Both men built their careers as longtime columnists at The Washington Post. Recently, the pair reflected on the milestone of the program’s 25th anniversary during an appearance on The Real Deal with Tony Reali.
What They Said: (All quotes via The Real Deal with Tony Reali):
Tony Kornheiser believes the power of Pardon the Interruption is it’s never truly changed: “You can look at our show when it started. Ten years in, twenty years in, right now, and see the same spine of the show all the time. Mike [Wilbon] has gotten angrier lately, but the show is the show. When we are together in studio, and it’s not all the time. We can make each other laugh. I can’t tell you how many people now, granted it’s mostly older people because my life is built around and lived around mostly older people. They say they watch all the time, and they continue to like it [Pardon the Interruption] if not love it.”
Tony Kornheiser believes he and Michael Wilbon should never be considered television hosts: “I’m a newspaper sports writer. He’s a newspaper sports writer. This thing is great. This is not who we are. We are newspaper sports writers. That’s who we are.”
Tony Kornheiser regrets the death of the newspaper industry: “I thought I had the best job in the world. I didn’t know it [till] very recently. Within the last five, six, eight years that I realized that newspapers were done. I was very slow to it. Also, I am divorced from it… This is one of the things that I say all the time to my son. Your children, my grandsons, will never understand what I did for a living. They’ll never understand it and never have a newspaper to live at their house. They’ll never understand picking the newspaper up and reading it and knowing the pleasure of it.”
Michael Wilbon on how ‘hot takes’ have taken over sports debate: “I fear the worst. I think that the word hot take has ruined the expressing of opinion. I think that this show [Pardon the Interruption] has remained overwhelmingly, not entirely, what it started as. It’s because we hold each other accountable.”
What Remains Unclear: Still, the pair did not say how long they plan to continue the show. Both Kornheiser and Wilbon noted in their appearance that they hope to continue the show for a couple of more years. However, any confirmation of that remains unclear.
What It Means: Ultimately, PTI’s unchanged formula remains a rarity in sports television. Meanwhile, Wilbon fears that hot takes stemming from PTI’s success have hurt how opinion is expressed in sports. Even so, he believes PTI has largely avoided that trap because the hosts hold each other accountable. As a result, the show enters its second quarter-century with its identity intact.
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