Pardon the interruption, but ESPN’s “Around the Horn” was not some great show. Never was.
As it closes up shop Friday after nearly a quarter century, ATH’s longtime host Tony Reali is here, there and anywhere, commemorating the end of the program. One comment particularly stood out.
“I think the bones of the show is journalism,” Reali said on the Dan Patrick Show. “When this one goes away, there ain’t any more.”
Really? This ain’t “60 Minutes,” Tony. Never was.
Plus, ESPN still runs SportsCenter, last time I checked, which has always contained more journalism than ATH. I rang Reali to clarify his comments.
During the Patrick interview, Reali added ATH all-stars Tim Cowlishaw of The Dallas Morning News and Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times are both at games on deadline and on set.
“People who are writing a column for a newspaper are not on TV anymore,” Reali told The Athletic during a half-hour discussion.
Besides the fact that there are fewer sports columnists at newspapers and ATH cut back on the ones that are available, the show from its conception was about money and fame in exchange for takes, not reporting.
And, anyway, if it were in any way about journalism, it never would have lasted 23 years on TV.
(A little while after our conversation, Reali texted me, thanking me for hashing it out and saying it is a “very fair observation” and he wouldn’t “call our show journalism.” So a couple of points for a sports columnist who still occasionally appears in a newspaper!)
Reali is a passionate guy and is understandably disappointed the program is signing off Friday afternoon, but to equate this game show — where points are awarded for takes — in any way with journalism is one of the problems that has developed in media over the 23 years of ATH.
ATH, like most talk shows, has mostly been filled with big opinions from people with little to no firsthand knowledge about what they are talking about.
The show had value as it propelled many careers, including Reali’s, and its run should be considered a success. It was a strong innings-eater preceding its far more successful and engaging older sibling, “Pardon the Interruption,” featuring all-time pundits Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon.
The issue with all these general talk shows is that they largely play pretend. On many of the issues of the day, the “experts” are looking up their opinions, reading some information and then presenting it with authority.
While it is in vogue to jump on the idea that ATH became “too woke” or too diverse, that is not correct. It became a little too serious at times.
There are serious people on the program with serious thoughts about serious topics, but ESPN and ATH are not the place to go deep.
Politics, race and gender do intersect with sports and should be discussed, but a game show that doles out arbitrary points for arguments and mutes people for sport never felt quite right as a forum.
With Reali leading the show, it lost its way a little when it tried to be more than an escape from the world and wanted to hit the big cultural and sometimes political issues of the day. There are other channels for those subjects. Reali argued that it was a small handful of times over 50,000 topics.
“You are telling me in any show, is it the same as it was 23 years ago?” Reali told The Athletic. “Absolutely not, nor should it be. It evolved. It matured. If you say, matured means serious, then that is one word to describe it. I’m saying there was a thoughtfulness to ‘Around the Horn,’ there became an empathy and maturity to it that maybe was not first on the show. Was that good or bad? I don’t think it needs to be good or bad. It is a statement of reality.
“The connotation that serious is serious, which it may just be heartfelt. Is it more a heartfelt show because the host flexed that muscle over the last 10 years instead of the first 10 years? I have to agree with that.”
The early versions of “Around the Horn” (2006) often featured newspaper columnists from distinct regions of the country. (Lorenzo Bevilaqua / ESPN Images)
ATH maintained pretty good ratings. However, the fact that ESPN executives chose to cancel it without a replacement is pretty telling about how they looked at it.
Shannon Sharpe (before his ESPN hiatus) as part of a potential Stephen A. Smith project before Smith’s new contract was considered at one point for the 5 p.m. slot. ESPN approached Kornheiser, 76, and Wilbon, 66, about extending PTI another half hour, which never made complete sense given their ages.
Peter Schrager is the flavor of the month and could be a possibility for ESPN’s next incarnation at 5 p.m. or potentially a 2 p.m. daily program that has been bandied about.
At its inception, Reali is right that one of ATH’s ethos was putting newspaper columnists on TV.
The Denver Post’s Woody Paige, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Jay Mariotti and the late T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times were original cast members in late 2002.
During one of its first controversies, I did a story on Simers being kicked off the program by then-ESPN executive vice president Mark Shapiro. Simers said the show was “unwatchable,” and he was just cashing in, and Shapiro fired Simers from the program.
In that article, I spoke to Mariotti. He summed it up in a way that could earn him some points.
“It’s not ‘Meet the Press,’” Mariotti said. “It’s sports.”
(Top photo: Kelly Anne Backus / ESPN Images)
