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It’s
Hit or Miss When Jocks Jockey for the Mic One of the goofiest comedies on national television employs no scriptwriters and doesn't play before a studio audience. The program is TNT's Thursday night "Inside the NBA," and the ostensible purpose of its three regulars -- Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley -- is to talk knowledgeably from an the Atlanta studio about the National Basketball Assn. doubleheader playing on TNT that night. Barkley has emerged at the star of the show, bursting forth throughout the program with steady streams of politically incorrect observations that have made him so popular TNT has awarded him a separate weekly half-hour series called "Listen Up!" The rise of Barkley, a former star player in the NBA, embodies two ongoing trends: the remorseless blurring of the lines between showbiz and sports, and the explosion in the number of professional athletes who strive to become on-air analysts when they retire from the game. "I look on some of the remarks by color commentators during a game as entertainment masquerading as sports analysis," says David Carter, a principal in the Sports Business Group. The main problem is that the retired athlete has to be able to successfully handle those entertainment burdens that media companies keep piling on their shoulders. When the former player is not up to the task, disaster may ensue. Twentieth TV executives still cringe at the mention of "The Magic Hour," a 1998 syndicated latenight talkshow hosted by Magic Johnson, a great player with a terrific personality but totally miscast in the role of ringmaster to guest celebrities plugging their latest projects. Twentieth put the show out of its misery after only two months. "It's not always the biggest stars on the field that make the best broadcasters," says Jim Ornstein, an agent at William Morris who represents a number of sports figures. But "there's a huge need for sports analysts in the marketplace, and the demand is only going to get bigger," says Wendy Burch, who runs a company that helps players learn to communicate with an audience through television. At least four new 24-hour all-sports cable networks are planning to start operations in the next year or so. That's why even average players who are articulate, personable and passionate about their sport start knocking on the doors of talent agents and media gurus while they're still in the middle of their playing career. Two retired basketball players who have most recently found themselves thrust into the national cable arena, Sean Elliott and Tim Hardaway, got their jobs through ESPN, which outbid NBC to carry NBA games for the first time in more than a decade. ESPN had to staff up fairly quickly because it had locked in a schedule of up to four NBA games a week, starting early last month. The network began by hiring two analysts who had worked at NBC, Bill Walton and Tom Tolbert. "Then we looked at the people we already have on the air as possible upgrades to our NBA coverage," says John Walsh, senior VP and executive editor of ESPN Inc. "We went through the list of players who had just retired, and we studied the work of color commentators on TV and radio throughout the country." Walsh says ESPN bounced names off just about all of its executives with an interest in basketball. ESPN winnowed a list of 20 names down to eight and invited them to sit down for lengthy, intense interviews. The ones who made the cut had to audition for the job by pretending that the taped game they were watching in a studio was live and that they were calling it in real time. Elliott, who spent most of his NBA career as a forward for the San Antonio Spurs, had a leg up for the job of color commentator because he had already done color for local cablecasts of Spurs' games. ESPN took a chance on Hardaway "because of his candor and his willingness to be forthcoming with his opinions," even though he didn't have Elliott's on-air experience, Walsh says. Hardaway got the studio-analyst job, delivering his thoughts at halftime and during the postgame as sidekick to Kevin Frazier. By consensus, Elliott's experience has allowed him to make a smooth transition to the national stage, whereas Hardaway is a rough work in progress. "Hardaway still has to find his comfort zone," Walsh says, adding that ESPN has a big advantage because it can book Hardaway on ESPN Radio and ESPN News, among other, less pressure-packed, inhouse outlets. With less at stake, Hardaway can iron out the kinks while gaining on-air experience. But
the pressure of being glib and poised on camera never really goes
away. When she talks with her clients, Babette Perry, an agent with
ICM who represents athletes, reminds them of the astronomical odds
of even a highly skilled basketball player ever making it the NBA.
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