« You can't teach with a gun in your truck | Main | CNN producer axed for blogging »
Sideline reporters sidelined by ESPN
Posted on February 14, 2008 4:38 PM
Depending on who you listen to, Michele Tafoya and Suzy Kolber have either been fired from Monday Night Football, or given new roles at the sports network. Andrea Kremer is ticked off...
Says Kremer, who worked at ESPN for 17 years before joining NBC: "They were doing the role that ESPN asked them to do — more feature-ish stuff — and they were fired for it? If you don't like them in that role, change their role. Don't humiliate them like that. The way (ESPN) handled it was terrible, just disrespectful. … They treated two professionals in a completely non-professional way."Hello, it's show business, not show friends. Lesley Visser got replaced by Melissa Stark once upon a time. It wasn't very nice of ABC to do that, but skewing younger meant screwing Lesley over, and they did it in a heartbeat.
The real lameoid is the ombudsperson at ESPN. She had all of this to say about Suzy and Michele...
ESPN confirmed reports that the mid-game role of sideline reporters will be reduced next year.Fired? Reassigned? Stuck watching the game from a sports bar eight miles from the stadium? What's going on?
Ombudsperson also said boo hoo, but ESPN simply can't be expected to make Monday Night Football a viewing experience for the *sniff* purists...
These viewers offered a hard knot of resistance to MNF from first game to last, and I imagine they are ESPN's nightmare -- they are football's true faithful, purists important to please, and yet perhaps impossible to please while MNF seeks an audience large enough to justify its eight-year, $8.8 billion rights contract with the NFL.As a football purist who thinks anything beyond the occasional cheerleader or crowd shot after a score borders on excessive overindulgence, Monday Night Football is nearly unwatchable. There is so much going on that the game takes a back seat to the chatter, the guests, the millions of little things ESPN pukes onto the screen.
I'd like to see Roger Goddell fire ESPN. Just call ESPN into NFL HQ and tell them their services are no longer required, here's a pro-rated refund of the contract, now get out before I have some linebackers pummel you.
Then Roger could hire Suzy and Michele to do the Monday night games.