Last summer, Waterloo Radio got into the sports business in Austin, launching 102.7 ESPN. That gave the Texas capital three stations in the format. On Friday, the station announced via Facebook that Trey Elling would become the latest local voice to be heard on its airwaves.
Elling, a University of Texas grad, returned to Austin from Chicago in 2015. He was part of the lineup at 104.9 The Horn until August of last year. He produced the station’s afternoon show before eventually becoming a host himself in middays.
He will provide a local voice at night on 102.7 ESPN. His show is called The Night Talker.
“I will do me, as weird as that sounds coming out of my mouth,” Elling said in a video promoting his new gig. “That means taking a nuanced, satirical, and, let’s be honest, sometimes smart-assed look at the biggest stories in University of Texas athletics, the sports world, Austin and life.”
Listeners will hear Trey Elling at 10 pm each weeknight. The show debuts on March 27.
Are the days at ESPN numbered for Stephen A. Smith? Probably not, but on a recent episode of Dan Le Batard’s South Beach Sessions podcast, Smith did lay out a scenario where he could see himself stepping away from First Take.
Le Batard said that he got the impression from Smith’s book, Straight Shooter, that he is bored with the sports debate show that made him a star. Le Batard said that Smith seems to have outgrown the show.
Smith insisted that he is not bored, but ambitious.
“It’s not because of First Take,” he said. “It’s because of the other things I want to do and I don’t know if I can do it working for ESPN.”
Stephen A. Smith noted that he has been in movies as himself and he has a recurring role on General Hospital, but he is only now starting to take acting seriously. He also wants to grow his production company and his podcast.
“There’s also late night television that I want to do,” he added. “There’s a lot of things that I want to do that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with ESPN. Well, how receptive are they going to be to that? I don’t know the answer to that question.”
There is no problem with First Take according to Stephen A. Smith. He said that he is still very happy doing the show. His only complaint is that he wishes it aired a little later in the day.
“I’m open to doing that for years to come, just so long as it doesn’t limit me from doing other things that I want to do. If it’s gonna limit me, then in two years I’m gonna have decisions to make.”
Roger Clemens is part of the plans this year for Major League Baseball’s Opening Day on ESPN. Will he be involved more than that? The network’s VP of production doesn’t quite know yet.
“TBD. Not going to speculate,” Phil Orlins said on a conference call with the media. “Roger has been sort of a friend of ours for the last — well, at least the last year, so to speak.”
Orlins noted that the legendary pitcher made multiple appearances last season’s on the network’s KayRod Cast. He was impressed by how much Clemens wants to focus on the modern game in his appearances.
While Clemens will be on the opening night broadcast, Orlins reaffirmed the network’s commitment to David Cone as its top analyst. This year, Cone is contractually obligated to be on the YES Network on Opening Day. That creates a hole next to Karl Ravech and Eduardo Perez.
“We just thought under the circumstances, then — we don’t feel like we have to have the dynamic of Eduardo with the pitcher, but we certainly think that works,” Orlins said. “Then throw in the added factor of rule changes and things of that nature, so much the better to have a pitcher’s perspective on that batter/pitcher dynamic under the pitch clock.”
John Garrett has been on Sportsnet as part of the network’s coverage of the Vancouver Canucks since 2002. After more than 20 seasons, he is ready to leave the broadcast booth. He made the announcement in a Twitter video on Thursday night.
“This season will be my final time filling that role, even though I will appear on some other Sportsnet properties,” Garrett told Canadian hockey fans.
In his announcement, Garrett shouted out his colleagues on the broadcast. He promised that his play-by-play partner John Shorthouse, studio host Dan Murphy and producer Greg Shannon would always be his lifelong friends. He paid tribute to all of the people that make the broadcast possible, both in front of and behind the camera.
“Sportsnet Pacific crew doesn’t have an equal in the business,” he said. “No matter what the situation, no matter day or night, they make you feel like you are in the building.”
John Garrett made his professional hockey debut at age 20. He bounced around various minor leagues and then the old World Hockey Association before making his NHL debut as a goalie in 1979 for the Hartford Whalers. He played eight seasons in the NHL, including three in Vancouver.
His broadcasting career began almost immediately after his retirement. He began as a color commentator for the CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada in 1986. He also served as the analyst on local coverage of the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers before landing at Sportsnet to cover the Canucks in 2002.
“Most of all, I’d like to thank the fans, whose unwavering support has lasted for these 20 years and beyond,” his announcement concluded. “Your enthusiasm for the game and this team will never be forgotten. We are all Canucks.”
Two new shows are coming to 101.7 The Truth. The Milwaukee talk station announced that Denise Thomas, Telly Hughes, and Melanie Ricks will be joining its weekday lineup.
Hughes and Thomas will partner for Truth Be Told. It will air weekday mornings from 7 until 9. The duo brings some serious influence to the airwaves. The Milwaukee Business Journal calls Thomas a “top 50 power broker” in the city while Hughes has two Emmy Awards to his name.
Ricks will be at the center of a one hour show called Nothing But the Truth. The show will air at noon. Ricks serves as the in-game host for the Milwaukee Bucks, who call WTMJ, a sister station of 101.7 The Truth, their radio flagship.
Both shows debut on April 3. Starting that day, the station’s daytime lineup will be as follows:
7 – 9 a.m. Truth Be Told with Denise Thomas & Telly Hughes
9 – Noon The Truth with Sherwin Hughes
Noon – 1 p.m. Nothin’ But the Truth with Melanie Ricks
1 p.m. – 4 p.m. The Tory Lowe Show
4 – 6 p.m. The Truth in the Afternoon with Ken Harris
“We’re excited to bring a new lineup of voices to our listeners,” Cherie Harris, the general manager of Good Karma Brands’ Milwaukee cluster, said in a press release. “Our new hosts are passionate and knowledgeable about the issues that matter most to the black community. We aim to provide a platform for authentic and unfiltered discussion, and we’re confident that our new lineup will deliver for our partners and fans.”
If you ever needed evidence that the NFL is primarily a TV sport, just consider the vote owners are taking next week. At the upcoming league meetings, they will be asked to consider adding Thursday Night Football to the list of TV packages with flex scheduling options.
John Ourand and Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal write that rarely does a resolution make it this far if they are not highly likely to pass. There is reason to believe things may no go so smoothly though. Coaches are present for the annual March meetings and could lobby against a rule that would likely create some competitive disadvantages for the league’s best teams.
On the table are two proposals. First, would be the ability to shift games scheduled for Sunday afternoon into the Thursday night window. Doing so would require at least 15 days notice to the two teams involved. The other proposal would allow teams to play a Thursday game following a Sunday game twice per year. Currently, teams are only allowed to do that once.
Roger Goodell first suggested that flex scheduling could come to Thursday Night Football on Prime Video earlier this year during his annual Super Bowl press conference. If adopted, the measure could go into effect this season.
Thursday Night Football is the national television package that has routinely struggled to put together compelling matchups. The aim of flex scheduling is to maximize the number of desirable matchups in primetime windows throughout the week.
No, not because I’m a morning show host who’s about to wrap up the week. I’m tired because it’s only March of 2023 and half of what I see on Twitter is Trump vs. DeSantis trolls going after each other.
Make. It. Stop.
OK, I can’t do that.
Although I guess I could stop following certain people on the platform, but that’s an option for another day.
But as it pertains to talk radio, before thinking this is a great Topic A or B for a show, let’s actually dissect whether or not this makes any sense to discuss at length.
First off, conservatives are usually the ones more likely to rightly point out that Twitter, and the rest of social media, is not real life. But for too many on Twitter, and elsewhere, they aren’t taking their own advice on this issue. It’s wildly hypocritical.
Granted, some of them are employed by either side, but most are not, and it’s exhausting to open up a social media app and see this back and forth with still one year to go until most primaries take place.
However, more importantly, as it pertains to local talk radio, there’s very little value in bringing any of this to your talk show in March of 2023. Walk around your community, do you really think the water cooler conversations are about Donald Trump vs. Ron DeSantis? I would guess that’s highly unlikely unless you work at the RNC or you’re a landscaper at Mar-A-Lago.
I could scan local TV stations, newspaper websites and blogs and find more compelling stories with a more immediate and local impact in less than five minutes. It might be more work from a topic development standpoint, but it’s doing the service that your audience expects of you as a local host. Plus, who wants to spend the next 12 months debating this nonsense?
Count me out.
That day will come as the 2024 election draws near, the storylines build and it becomes of more interest to the audience. But this week we just hit the first day of spring… in 2023!
On top of that, this topic is very likely to divide much of your audience earlier than you need to. What’s the benefit of that? Once again, that day may come, although who really knows what the next several months could bring?
If there’s anything we should know living through and covering the last few years of news, it’s to expect the unexpected. What we think will happen 12 months from now is almost guaranteed to not actually be the case.
So let’s go down the three-point check-list here:
It’s not local or incredibly topical for most people right now
It’s an audience divider
The landscape isn’t guaranteed to look the same in 12 months
In this case, we can check off all three of those items with confidence.
So while national politics will likely always be blended into a multi-hour show, when appropriate, there’s absolutely no point in doing deep dives or taking multiple segments of callers on this topic at this point and time. It’s going to be a tune-out for most.
Plus, spare yourself the pain this early. And trust me, it will be painful when the time comes. At some point, you’ll be longing for the simpler days of March 2023.
In the moment when Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed in a Monday Night Football game against the Cincinnati Bengals, the focus immediately turned from the matchup with playoff implications to Hamlin’s well-being. Within 10 seconds of his collapse, medical personnel were on the field to give Hamlin CPR and other treatments pivotal to his health and safety. An ambulance then transported him to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center with his teammates, opponents and the sports world in a state of nervous anticipation. Joe Buck was narrating the moment on ESPN, making sure he did not speculate on the injury and remaining cognizant of this wholly unprecedented situation.
Amid his first season calling Monday Night Football on ESPN alongside his longtime broadcast partner Troy Aikman, Buck was challenged to clearly and concisely delineate the scenario as the world anxiously awaited updates. In the final hour of the broadcast when the injury occurred, 23.9 million people were watching the game, one of the highest figures the sports property posted all season. The National Football League ended up suspending the game, which shortly thereafter was canceled because of the circumstances, and an alternate plan was deviated regarding playoff scenarios.
ESPN has flipped the logos on Joe Buck and Troy Aikman’s mics upside down into 3s — a subtle tribute to Damar Hamlin. pic.twitter.com/aGwpvnyHgB
Usually, Buck is tasked with keeping viewers informed about game action and setting up his analyst to give his expertise. In moments of elevated grandeur and importance, he tries to call the game just as how he would want to see it if he were watching at home. He is part of a collaboration between the commentators, producers, directors, technical team and camerapeople, fostering the synergy needed to ensure their broadcast is at the highest level.
“I don’t want somebody just over-talking,” Buck said. “I want to be able to hear the crowd – good and bad. I want to be able to hear the natural sound of the quarterback at the line of scrimmage and the hitting with all the audio and microphones we have down there. That’s the way I do it.”
Buck knew he wanted to be a play-by-play announcer from a young age since he is the son of legendary broadcaster Jack Buck, who called St. Louis Cardinals baseball games and NFL games on radio. He admired his father and everything that went into his on-air performance, inspiring him to pursue a career in sports media. Buck, unlike most aspiring broadcasters, gained real-world experience in following his father and leaning into his nascent passion for sports and the industry as a whole.
“I came along at a time when my dad was ready to kind of take a kid with him to work, so I was on Cardinals’ road trips when I was a little kid,” Buck said. “[I was] flying on team charters and being around a broadcast and everything else that is involved with that. It lit a fire in me that really eliminated any other possibility of me doing anything else. This is all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
With his father as his mentor, Buck knows he had a distinct advantage over other people looking to work into the industry. He matriculated at Indiana University Bloomington where, prior to his enrollment, had accumulated vast esoteric knowledge and experience in the industry. In fact, Buck worked with an FM radio station as a high school senior to deliver early morning sports updates. He continued to hone his craft as a college student and helped out at KMOX radio in St. Louis during the summers.
Buck never made it to his college graduation though, as the industry came calling on him to serve as the new play-by-play announcer for the Louisville Redbirds. Yet he acknowledges that his early play-by-play tapes were “awful” and that he was likely hired to work in the role because of nepotism.
“I owe that all to my last name,” Buck said. “I owe everything else to my last name because I wouldn’t have been around it as a little kid and I wouldn’t have learned the business at my dad’s side without being Jack Buck’s son.”
During his early years working professionally, Buck remained captivated by baseball and also called college men’s basketball games for the University of Missouri Tigers. In 1994 at the age of 25, Buck received a fortuitous chance to establish himself on the national stage by calling NFL games on FOX. Despite following the league as a fan and never previously calling a game, Buck was offered one of the openings – in addition to others such as Kenny Albert (son of broadcaster Marv Albert), Thom Brennaman (son of broadcaster Marty Brennaman) and Kevin Harlan (son of former Green Bay Packers CEO Bob Harlan). The goal, he conjured, was to hire progeny of famed broadcasters and aim to develop them into bonafide stars in the industry.
Buck recalls feeling like he did well in the audition for the role, but quickly felt out of place before his first broadcast at Soldier Field in Chicago, Ill. He is thankful social media did not exist in those early years, estimating that it could have shattered his self-confidence and discouraged him from trying new things.
Thankfully for Buck, the only way for viewers to get in touch with him at that time was through letters. He was encouraged by industry pundits who thought he was doing a good job, but at the same time tried to muffle the outside noise and remain focused on what he could control. Buck broadcast football games with color commentator Tim Green, but put those duties on pause soon after being named lead play-by-play announcer for Major League Baseball games on FOX.
Buck was paired with former catcher Tim McCarver, forming a duo that proceeded to call 24 World Series and 22 Major League Baseball All-Star Games. In this role, Buck set a new record for the youngest person ever to call a World Series, bringing baseball fans Fall Classic action at the age of 27. McCarver, who recently passed away at the age of 81 due to heart failure, was a second father for Buck, giving him assurance that the broadcast would sound polished and professional because of his abilities as an analyst.
“I think there was a lot of mutual respect, but I had to earn his,” Buck said. “He had mine right away, but I had to earn his. He never made it hard on me, but I think as time went on, he realized that I could handle the job. We got into that first World Series and we felt like we did everything together. It wasn’t him or me; it was us, and that’s the only way to do it.”
Over the years, Buck called a plethora of indelible moments that live in baseball lore, providing a soundtrack to seminal moments in the game’s history. Most notably, Buck graced the microphone when St. Louis Cardinals third baseman David Freese crushed a walk-off home run in extra innings during Game 6 of the 2011 World Series. The impact of the hit, which continues to endure the test of time, was effectuated by taking a minimalistic approach in putting a script to the moment. Instead of an elaborate, detailed description, Buck took a line out of his father’s playbook, saying: “We will see you tomorrow night.” Then, the pictures and sounds of the moment take over..
“Don’t be afraid of dead air,” Buck said. “I think in young announcers’ minds, if you’re not saying something, the audience thinks you don’t know what to say. That’s not the case.”
In addition to the home run by Freese, Buck called World Series championships and the end of lengthy droughts for three franchises – the Boston Red Sox in 2004; the Chicago White Sox in 2005; and the Chicago Cubs in 2016.
The 2001 NFL season marked the conclusion of Pat Summerall’s broadcasting career, and also the last game John Madden called as a member of FOX Sports. To begin the next season, Buck returned to NFL on FOX broadcasts and was paired with Aikman, a three-time Super Bowl champion and Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback. From the beginning, Buck and Aikman were able to form a unique, on-air chemistry differentiating themselves from other broadcast booths around the NFL. Buck ascertains that it helps that he and Aikman have two daughters, an array of life experiences and ponder over things in similar manners.
“In a business where sometimes you have to worry about who’s trying to stick the knife in you, he and I have got each other’s back,” Buck said. “It’s so important, but we have fun. I’ve never walked into a meeting room or a broadcast booth with Troy and been like, ‘Oh my gosh, here we go again.’ It’s always exciting to be around a good friend and tackle the game that’s out in front of us.”
Buck and Aikman have called 18 NFC Championships and six Super Bowls together.. Whether it is calling the New York Giants’ win over the undefeated New England Patriots or the Patriots’ comeback win over the Atlanta Falcons, calling the Super Bowl is not comparable to most other sporting events.
“There’s so much buildup and there’s so much hype,” Buck said. “You’re sitting around talking about the same game for two weeks before they have it. You have this build during the month of January, and everybody’s waiting. It’s like, ‘Can they just kick this thing off?’ because you’re tired of thinking about it [and] talking about it.”
Buck will not be calling another Super Bowl until LXI (February 2027), as he departed FOX Sports prior to the start of last season to join Aikman on Monday Night Football on ESPN. Upon Aikman’s departure, Buck was faced with the decision of either pairing with a new color commentator (and potentially inking a contract extension) or leaving FOX Sports to join Aikman at ESPN. He chose the latter and is grateful to FOX Sports for letting him get out of his contract one year early.
“I think everybody got what they wanted,” Buck said. “I think FOX got a reset – they have two new booths that I’m sure they really like – and I have the same partner at a new place on a new night with a property [that] I grew up knowing how special it was: Monday Night Football. It’s like one of those great sports trades that works out for everybody.”
Coincidentally, FOX Sports had the rights to the Super Bowl this year and approached the game with its new booth of Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen dealing with speculation regarding Tom Brady’s future involvement.
Before what turned out to be his final NFL regular season game, Buck and Aikman were having a conversation with Brady to prepare for the playoff tilt between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Dallas Cowboys. Towards the end of the conversation, Buck asked Brady if he would be excited being on the other side of the conference calls, as he is expected to slot into FOX Sports’ lead broadcast booth in 2024. Brady replied that he wanted to talk to him and Aikman about broadcasting, affirming that he would need help determining how to perform the job.
“I would do [that] in a heartbeat with all the help he’s given us over the years,” Buck said of Brady. “….There’s going to be a bit of a learning curve for Tom. I expect him to do it and do it well, but it’s a weird kind of thing to do. There’s a bit of acting involved. It’s a presentation as much as just knowing football. I’m sure he’ll be great, but I’m anxious to see.”
In essence, Buck knows “anybody would be an idiot to bet against him” despite it being something new, and is excited to see how the situation turns out. As it pertains to this past season though, FOX Sports aimed to cultivate a new sound. By assimilating a broadcast booth with minimal experience working together into a Super Bowl to conclude their first season, the network took a calculated risk that ended up paying dividends in the ratings.
“They were in a great spot, and then they had to just go do it and they did,” Buck said. “They started out great; they were already working together; and they’re longtime friends. I thought they really nailed what they needed to nail, and that is the big moments, especially in a Super Bowl.”
Burkhardt had been calling NFL games on FOX Sports since 2013, and was offered advice from Buck in being elevated to the lead broadcast booth. He did the same for Joe Davis, the new lead broadcaster for MLB games on FOX, including the All-Star Game and the World Series, ensuring he is available while not coercing them to listen to his advice. It aligns with the tactic his father took with him as a kid.
“My dad was never the guy who was pushing advice or saying, ‘I’ve done it, so here’s the way I would do that,’” Buck said. “If [they] asked me, I’d give [them] all I got. That, to me, is the right thing to do; you pay it forward.”
ESPN recently made changes to Buck’s Monday Night Football team, naming Steve Ackels as the broadcast’s new producer and Derek Mobley as its new director, replacing Phil Dean and Jimmy Platt, respectively.
“I’ve never worked with either one of them just like I hadn’t worked with Phil Dean and Jimmy Platt prior to last year,” Buck said of the move. “It comes with some unknowns, but it comes with a hell of a lot of excitement too.”
Preparing for a typical Monday night game contrasts with the kind of preparation he would amass while at FOX Sports since all of the Sunday games are completed before kickoff. Throughout the week, Buck receives emails containing all published articles about both teams and reads to familiarize himself with both teams and determine the key storylines. He then puts together basic information about each player on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, prints it out and writes additional notes by hand about each player. Even if he does not end up using the information on the air, having the dexterity to compendiously elocute information and think quickly makes the art of broadcasting much easier.
“I would say 90% of your preparation falls by the wayside because the games don’t go the way you think every time; rarely do they go anywhere close to how I expect them to go,” Buck said. “….You go into the booth and open your eyes and watch the game. If something fits with your preparation, say it; and if it doesn’t, don’t force it.”
Throughout his time both as a consumer of sports media and industry professional, Buck has understood the magnitude of broadcasting Monday night NFL games. As a child, he remembers watching his father call Monday night games on the CBS Radio Network with Hank Stram, but frequently found himself thinking about what was going on just a few booths down the press level. Of course, situated in that booth was the trio of Howard Cosell, Don Meredith and Frank Gifford calling Monday Night Football on ABC, presenting the matchup to an audience of millions of viewers across the country.
Even though annual NFL television ratings were down by 3%, Monday Night Football performed strong compared to the competition, especially by pairing the primary telecast with the alternate broadcast with Hall of Fame quarterbacks Peyton and Eli Manning. Even though Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli (dubbed the “ManningCast”) diminishes viewership of the traditional broadcast, Buck is not bothered by it and instead encouraged by the innovation and commitment ESPN has made to the league.
“For ESPN to make the investment to bring those guys and have them on ESPN2 while we do ESPN, I think [it is] a major statement to the NFL that they’re going to throw everything they can at Monday night,” Buck said. “I think there is a future for it. I do think that they captured lightning in a bottle with Peyton and Eli being brothers.”
As part of the new $110 billion media rights deal announced by the NFL in March 2021, ESPN got flex scheduling for Monday Night Football beginning at the start of the upcoming season, which will allow the broadcast to present games with the potential to impact playoff positioning in the prime time slot.
“When you’re doing 5-win teams in Week 13; 14; 15, that’s not a good thing for a standalone night,” Buck said. “It’s not a good thing for anybody. Having the ability to flex out of that game will be nice. I don’t think that the league will go crazy and just flex out game after game after game, but if there’s one there that just isn’t competitive and has nothing to do with anything in the standings, at least you have the chance to switch that game.
“I think we’re going to have a better schedule this year, which I think leads to better ratings which leads to happy people at ESPN, but that remains to be seen,” Buck added. “I’m not planning on doing anything other than what I’ve done for the last 30 years broadcasting the NFL.”
Joel Yerkie, who has cerebral palsy, has goals of doing play-by-play when he gets older.
Earlier this year, Joel’s favorite announcer, @Buck, invited him and his twin brother Jackson to a Monday Night Football game ❤️ pic.twitter.com/PLBjwPpfyk
Outside of broadcasting football games, Buck holds a golf tournament each year to benefit the St. Louis Children’s Hospital and fund its imaging center, named in his honor. The inspiration to begin this event came when one of his daughters had to take a sweat test to be checked for cystic fibrosis. When he was sitting in the lobby and watching nurses, doctors and volunteers work in high-stakes situations involving the lives of children, Buck told his wife that he would help the hospital if he was ever in the position to be able to.
Hale Irwin, a former professional golfer, used to hold a tournament benefiting the hospital but retired after 25 years, meaning that they needed to find someone else to keep the tradition alive. When Buck was asked, he did not hesitate to agree to take the reins of holding the event. He looks forward to Monday, June 5 and raising money to make sure the hospital can continue carrying out its duties and be there for those in need of its services.
“We’ve gone in and made the imaging center kind of interactive for kids at a nervous time for kids and parents going in for MRIs, CAT scans or whatever,” Buck said. “We’ve kind of turned it into a sports stadium-looking waiting room that kind of distracts the kids and the parents…. My part of it is small; I’m just honored to have my name on it. It’s an important day personally, but it’s a much bigger day than that practically speaking for the hospital.”
Sports broadcasting is very much a niche craft, and the fundamentals become more recondite when narrowing it down to specific sports. When building a career in the industry though, Buck implores aspiring broadcasters to do more than just solely focus on the craft, instead urging them to amass a knowledge extending beyond sports. Additionally, it is essential to discover people one can trust for feedback and critique oneself at the same time while refraining from listening to critics on social media.
Ultimately, it boils down to developing a unique style that appeals to viewers and bringing them the game while recognizing your place in the grand scheme of things. Not all the viewers particularly care about the broadcasters themselves and sports media, meaning it is crucial to perform the role appropriately and be distinctive.
“‘When you get into this, you’ve got to realize that if you get hit by a bus going into a stadium, they’re still going to play the game,’” Buck recalls his father telling him. “‘They’re not going to stop it because the announcer got run over. Broadcast accordingly.’ I feel the same way with all that movement that happened last year. I think everybody does a good job at the upper levels and people have a little bit different styles from one another.”
Kevin Harlan made headlines for his reaction to the viral video of him calling the end of the Furman/Virginia game last week and got people wondering why the veteran broadcaster didn’t want to embrace how popular his call of the first round upset has become.
“If they asked me my preference, I would have said, ‘Please don’t put that up there,'” Harlan told Richard Deitsch in a podcast interview this week. Harlan revealed that he was unaware CBS had a camera on the broadcasters for the game.
Harlan’s comments came up in discussion on Boomer & Gio on WFAN on Thursday, and host Boomer Esiason said it’s not in Harlan’s nature to make himself the focus of attention.
“The only reason he doesn’t like it is because he doesn’t want it to be about him,” Esiason said. “But he’s the perfect guy to be there to make that call.”
For those wondering if Harlan planned that sort of reaction with the intent being to go viral, Boomer said Harlan was authentically himself.
“He is passionate about what he does, and he loves it. He does every game the same way whether it’s on radio, whether it’s on TV, whatever,” Esiason said. “He is the same guy and he is one of the nicest, kindest, most professional people I’ve ever been around.”
“The guy is so much fun to work with,” Esiason added. “He’s got to do his thing, and you got to let him do his thing which you should because he is animated. He doesn’t do it on purpose.”
On Wednesday, the judge overseeing Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation case against Fox News expressed interest in the responsibilities of executives like Rupert Murdoch to prevent known deceivers from appearing on their network.
According to CNN, the judge, Eric Davis of Delaware Superior Court, indicated he might compel Murdoch to testify. Dominion alleges that Murdoch knowingly allowed Fox News hosts to invite guests who would spread falsehoods about the 2020 election. Judge Davis repeatedly questioned a Fox News lawyer about the role of top executives in the editorial process, explicitly asking if Murdoch and others had the authority to prevent TV hosts from inviting guests who had a history of spreading election-related lies and were deemed “problematic.”
Erin Murphy, the representative for Fox News and its parent company, has argued that the Murdochs were not involved in the broadcasts where Dominion was potentially defamed. She maintained that the voting machine company had not provided sufficient evidence to prove that the Murdochs had a direct role in the matter. Therefore they cannot be held responsible.
Murphy emphasized to the judge that merely demonstrating the executives’ ability to intervene is insufficient. Instead, it is necessary to prove that the person who made the final decision acted maliciously.
The voting systems company is seeking a court order to compel Murdoch and his son, Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch, to testify in the trial scheduled for next month. Fox is opposed to this request.
Although Judge Davis has not yet decided on witnesses, he acknowledged that Rupert Murdoch’s unique position at Fox Corporation could make him a required presence. He also stated that he might allow certain out-of-state witnesses to give live video-conferencing testimony, although he prefers live in-person testimony if possible.
After two days of pretrial hearings, the next stage is for Davis to rule on “summary judgment,” where both sides have argued that they should be declared the winner without a trial. Davis may issue his decision at any time, and jury selection is set to begin on April 13.
Dominion has filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, seeking $1.6 billion in damages, alleging that they damaged its reputation by promoting the falsehood that it rigged the 2020 election to prevent Donald Trump from winning a second term. The Fox entities have denied any wrongdoing, expressed pride in their 2020 election coverage, and dismissed the $1.6 billion figure as grossly exaggerated.
Fox News has asserted that it is proud of its 2020 coverage and has suggested that Dominion’s lawsuit could undermine the First Amendment. Fox Corporation maintains that Dominion overstated its influence on Fox News’ editorial coverage and has sought to be removed from the case, but Davis rejected this motion.
