Two NESN Men = One NESN Woman

By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

• The new NESN.com “Personalities” page is live and as we had surmised, there are two omissions from the NESN roster: Both NESN veterans, Mike Perlow and Paul Devlin, have been dropped.

As recently as last week, both men’s bios were still posted (and, are as of Thursday, still available for viewing here and here).

However, as one NESN insider told Shots late last week: “Many folks at NESN. . . are surprised there hasn’t been any mention. . . of the recent departure of Perlow and Devlin from NESN SportsDesk. Mike was part of the show for four years and Paul for three. They were let go for all the wrong reasons but that’s showbiz I guess.”

True enough. It seems that Perlow (who Shots tried unsuccessfully to contact through his Get A TV Job website) and Devlin were dumped from their part-time duties in favor of the younger, prettier (and likely more cost-effective) Kathryn Tappen, who was brought on in August.

Those who work for the Red Sox TV Network (aka NESN) indicate this kind of cost-cutting and dollar shifting is par for the course at your notoriously stingy “Ticket to New England Sports.”

Changes like this occur all the time in the broadcast world and we appreciate that fact. We also like to point out what is likely occurring as NESN continues its Joel Feld-led trend of pretty, female talking heads replacing the male talking heads.

It makes perfect business sense for a company’s who core audience is young and male, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the end result is the best coverage possible for NESN viewers – whether they know it or even care about it.

And really, who’s going to complain about more attractive women on TV? Not us.

• The exodus of major newspaper talent to major Internet sites has been picking up in recent months and has been highlighted by the burgeoning Yahoo! Sports site, under the direction of former Los Angeles Times sports No. 2, Dave Morgan.

This week, Shots has learned, that Adrian Wojnarowski of The (Bergen) Record (and also a regular ESPN.com contributor) has been hired by Morgan and Yahoo! as the site’s first true NBA Columnist (sorry Steve Kerr, you’re no Woj).

“I’m thrilled to be a part of what Dave Morgan and Yahoo! is building,” Wojnarowski, 37, told Shots in an email confirming his imminent departure from The Record. “I’ve been really patient waiting for what my move would be, and this was a no-brainer. There’s such an opportunity to produce great work (t)here.

“[Yahoo!'s first columnist hire] Dan Wetzel has been selling me on the possibilities at Yahoo! since he started there a couple of years ago, and it’s just tremendous to be a part of the staff that Dave is putting together. There is an energy and commitment at Yahoo! sports that is really off the charts.”

Wojnarowski (who served as a general columnist at The Record) will, of course, need to stop his ESPN contributions which were averaging about 50 per year and where he ALWAYS delivered with his original ESPN offerings, so the hiring is actually a two-front win for Yahoo!: They get a quality, cajones-of-steel columnist AND they take away one of ESPN’s best freelancers.

. . . While Yahoo!’s arch rival, Google, scoops up billion dollar properties like YouTube, the Y! Sports department is busy assembling a young, hungry staff of writers and columnists to continue its expansion of its original content offerings.

It all comes at a time when Morgan’s desk is coming off its best month ever, in terms of mass media exposure, after an eight month investigation in the L’Affaire Reggie Bush at USC. No longer is the site dominated by partner and AP content and the expectation is that Yahoo! will only get more involved in snagging some of the newspaper world’s best candidates from various beats. (Let’s hope they, and others, also look to some fo the Internet’s grassroots writers.)

The addition of Wojnarowski solidifies an already impressive roster of bulldog information gatherers and opinion-shapers under Morgan’s umbrella, who have been brought on over the past 12 months.

In addition to Yahoo!’s recent snagging some of the nation’s fastest-rising FORMER NEWSPAPER writing and reporting stars (like Jason Cole from the Miami Herald, Charles Robinson from the Orlando Sentinel and Jeff Passan from the Kansas City Star), ESPN.com made a recent splash with the hiring of stud scribe, Wright Thompson, who they also plucked from the KC Star. Thompson has already proven his worth in a very short time with several excellent, centerpiece columns for ESPN.com.

Over at CBS’s Sportsline.com, the web folks snagged, in the past year, former Florida Times-Union (and Boston Globe) writer, Mike Freeman as well as ex-Memphis Commercial Appeal employee, Gary Parrish.

And let’s not forget the NBCsports.com swoop and snag of former ProJo rabble-rouser and current Bump ‘n’ Run blogger, Tom Curran.

If you’re sensing a trend, you’re not alone.

This isn’t to say there aren’t inherent risks involved in switching from the print side to the web side. Well, maybe it is to say just that: Who the hell wants to be stuck at a place that isn’t moving to the Internet with the proper speed and execution? Guys like Wojnarowski and Curran had good gigs at respectable papers. Woj, in particular, is a national-level guy riding the success of his first solo book (as he works on a second about the character of all charcters, Jim Valvano). The Bristol, Connecticut-native (and St. Bonaventure alum) has been at the Bergen Record for just shy of nine years, and he could have stayed with the North Jersey group till his hair was gray and his fastball was a knuckleball.

But he – and the others discussed – didn’t like what they were seeing from the Old Media people. Even the newspapers that ARE paying attention to web development are still hamstrung by cutbacks, layoffs, ad declines, paper stock price increases and buyouts. “Few” is the current number of truly viable print operations that are transitioning effectively to Web outfits.

Those who can get while the getting is good are leaping at opportunities.

. . . Here’s one of my favorite stories that summarizes the whole thing. It comes from a Yahoo! company get-together a while back – even before they truly started to emphasize original content (the Kevin Sites Phenomenon).

A whole bunch of the Yahoo! “team” was assembled in Las Vegas for a retreat and some brainstorming. There might have even been some meetings involved. It wasn’t complete goofing off, but it was Vegas after all. Morale was high and the future was bright.

Anyway, one of the nights after the “formal” sessions had broken up, the Yahoo! Suits hand each of the assembled “team” a little something for each of them to start off their night in Vegas: $100 in casino cash. Nothing much, but a nice gesture.

You can survey every newspaper sports writer and editor in the nation and not one of them will be able to tell you of any such “retreat” they have ever experienced. And believe me, none of them have received as much as a wooden nickel from their papers’ Suits.

Will some of the Internet crossovers wind up regretting their moves from the sinking ships? Doubtful – although NBCsports.com, for instance, needs to ride the heck out of the NFL and pray it never loses the package again. Likewise, Yahoo! or Google could someday wind up being the Enron of Internet 2.0. History tells us that at least one of these giants is going to tumble and probably in a high-profile manner.

But if your choice is the tumbling tower that MIGHT crumble in five, ten or 20 years or the falling façade that IS raining down now, I think we all know which building we’d rather be inside.

. . . On a local angle from one of the above-mentioned, here’s a Nice Richard Seymour Q&A here from Yahoo!’s Cole, where Richard Seymour talks about the intensity of playing in Metro Boston.

• The ESPN crew that worked Thursday night’s BC-Virginia Tech game from Chestnut Hill – Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit and Erin Andrews – could be the very best all-around team that the Worldwide Leader assembles week in, and week out. The game presentation does not miss Lee Corso in the booth at all. Corso is now being used as he should have been all along – as an on-set analyst.

Herbstreit was merciless (and dead-on) about the lack of discipline Va. Tech displayed, especially in the fourth quarter and give credit to ESPN for showing the sideline shenanigans (and on-field dancing) of some of the Hokie hot heads. Too often, the college players get treated with kid gloves for explosions that would dominate an NFL boradcast. It was nice to ESPN depict the emotion and in-fighting of a team being embarrassed on national TV in what was supposed to be its night (despite BC having now given the Hokies its only two Thursday night losses in 14 mid-week appearances).

. . . Word is trickling out from The Heights that ESPN will be again be outside Conte Forum for a college basketball Gameday presentation. It will most likely be centered around the 9 p.m. tip from Conte on Saturday, February 17 against North Carolina (three days after the home re-match against Duke, also on ESPN.) That means there could be a four day stay for Dickie V in Beantown and will result in an open invitation to Vitale from Shots for breakfast at the Shots equivalent of the Broken Egg – a little joint in Hull with just a touch of class.

• Lots of talk about cross-platform programming and advertising sales in this interesting piece about ESPN’s evolution from Shapirowood to Skipperville.

It is Shots’ Recommended Reading for both the Herald and Globe sports departments.

• You’ll hate me for saying this, but there are definitely some intriguing parts to this 2006-07 edition of the Celtics. When Rajon Rondo was going mondo begongo on Wednesday night, it started feeling a lot like April at the Shanty.

You can catch ‘em yourself tonight (Friday) and again Tuesday and Wednesday on FSNNE, where everyone but Dana Barros has returned to their pre and post game positions, including sophomore FSNNE broadcaster Donny Marshall, who was already stellar last season and still ascending.

• I don’t claim to understand UFC’s popularity but I do stand amazed at numbers like these - especially when viewed in contrast to what MLB was doing. I know numbers are often manipulated for a particular network’s own agenda (in this case, Spike TV), but anyway you slice this data, you’d have to call the UFC on Spike, a “legit buy.”

• Ed Bradley and “60 Minutes” have a Duke lacrosse package on Sunday night.

We’d suggest watching or, at the very least, DVRing.

• The Hartford Courant’s sports editor, Jeff Otterbein, announced on Sunday that seven-year Red Sox beat man, Dave Heuschkel, will be switching over to the UConn’s women’s basketball beat. Filling Heuschkel’s beat on the Sox will be the five-year veteran of the Geno Beat, Jeff Goldberg.

Otterbein, in his Sunday “From the Sports Editor” column, explained that “. . .Both reporters had asked for new assignments.”

This doesn’t qualify as earth-shattering news but it does show a sharp contrast to the manner in which changes are handled at, say, the Joe Sullivan Boston Globe sports desk. Where Otterbein openly explains the beat change for his desk, Sullivan’s readers are left to guess who’s covering whom (unless, of course, some pest like Shots reports on the changes ala the Bruins beat switch between Nancy Marrapese-Burrell and Fluto Shinzawa).

Transparency, as we’ve noted before, and things like forthrightness and communication between editors and readers goes a long way in establishing (and maintaining) readers/consumers. Otterbein even goes as far as to include the tag at the end of his space which reads: “More questions on what we’re doing and why? Contact Jeff Otterbein at jotterbeinATcourant.com”

‘What they’re doing and why.’ What a novel concept. And one that Shots whole-heartedly applauds.

• Joe Amorosino handled his NBC Football Night in America duties with aplomb on Sunday in conducting an on-field, post-game interview with Zach Thomas. It’s taken a while, but Shots is coming around on BU Alum, Amo. (The NBCSports.com video doesn’t seem Mac-friendly, and is quite infuriating, actually, but you might be able to pull up JoeAm’s wrap-up on your own at the site’s “media center.”)

• I’ve got to remember to make time for XM 143, especially the Dave Sims/Coach K show, “Basketball and Beyond w/ Coach K.” Not sure of the times yet, but I’ll be sure to catch a few and report back to you.

• Former Dallas Morning News and Around the Horn contributor, Kevin Blackistone, appeared on CN8’s 11 p.m. “Out of Bounds” this week. (His vague tag read: “CN8 Sports, Baltimore”). Not sure yet if he’ll be a regular for OOB, but he does bring solid name cache with him from his “Horn” days.

. . . The local-origination of the 11 p.m. OOB is starting to get its feet underneath it, but it’s still very much a work in progress. The foreign talking heads from CN8’s other studios along the eastern seaboard are still very much that: foreign. A well-intentioned soul like Seth Everett from MLB Radio doesn’t exactly make us want to stick around and neither do many of the other B (or C)-Listers. And truth be told, we’re still not conditioned (or comfortable with) going off-channel from the 11 p.m. news (or the 11 p.m. SportsCenter) to catch the beginning of OOB from Boston. Furthermore, by 11:30, we’re a lot more likely to stick with Letterman, Leno or Nightline.

But the CN8ers knew what they were getting into with their new line-up and approach and they’re forging ahead and gaining some traction. It’s still going to take some tweaking and twirling, but there are glimpses of good TV.

• ESPN Radio Boston’s PR people checked in this week to inform us of some in-season programming: “‘The Troy Brown Show’ is airing Tuesday nights live from 7 p.m. – 8 p.m. on 890 AM. . . with 890 ESPN reporter Mike Salk (as) co-host. Troy and Mike will chat about a variety of topics including the previous and upcoming Pats games and other NFL news. It will be a great chance for fans to really get to know Troy.”

• It’s been quite a while since we typed these call letters: WWZN 1510 AM, but this week’s announcement that The (Dead) Zone will be carrying No. 1 ranked Boston College Hockey this season, seems to be a legitimate reason to once again mention the Little Station That (Barely) Could.

According to Zone Program Director,Jon Anik (a holdover from the days when ‘WZN had a local, afternoon presence in this market), the 32-game slate will be called by John Rish with Ken Hodge handling color commentary. “BC Hockey will be our signature winter product and we are expectant and hopeful that this will lead to a long-term relationship with Boston College and its athletic programs,” said Anik in the release, who also co-hosts a two hour Monday night show, the “Sportsbeat”, at the station beginning at 6 p.m.

The BC broadcasts are, according to the release, a “partnership with ISP Sports and Boston College,” which means Rish – who draws paychecks from Entercom for his Red Sox radio network pre- and post-game work – is now, in a sense, “sleeping with the enemy.” Although calling The Zone a competitor – much less an enemy – to almighty WEEI and Entercom, would be a stretch.

The release also states that “BC Hockey games will. . .be streamed online at www.bceagles.com and www.1510thezone.com. 1510 the Zone is also home to Harvard Football, North Shore Spirit Baseball, and NASCAR.”

• It was good to see Tuesday’s Patriots Football Weekly show on NECN drop the banquet hall blue drape background and roll in some flat screens for the background. Now, if host Chris Collins can find a seat to sit on during the roundtable with PFW’s Fearsome Foursome, we might be onto something.

• Time to get excited about college hoops, with this from the ESPN PR Dept.: “ESPNU MIDNIGHT MADNESS SPECIALS TO FEATURE NORTH CAROLINA, INDIANA AND GEORGE MASON THIS FRIDAY For a second year, ESPNU will tip off the college basketball with three one-hour specials of Midnight Madness coverage beginning at 10:30 p.m. Friday, October 13. Doug Bell will be joined by college basketball analyst Jay Bilas for SportsCenterU segments throughout the night, while a pair of ESPN commentators will be at each campus site – North Carolina, Indiana, and George Mason — providing practice coverage, analysis, and courtside interviews with the head coach and key players from each team. In addition, bonus coverage of the University of Cincinnati’s “Bearcats Madness” will be featured.

. . . Speaking of college hoops. . . A Scott’s Shots Programming Alert:

Shots will be on a sporadic schedule the next couple of weeks as we begin some travels into the heart of college basketball for CSTV.com. In addition to asking you to check out the CSTV.com content I’ll be providing next week from Memphis (and the following week form Vegas), we’d also ask that you check in regularly here at Shots for what will be a reduced posting (and content) schedule.

Thanks for your indulgence in some other Shots work and we should be back on normal Friday postings for the first week of November.

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, Mass. And can be reached at shotsATbostonsportsmedDOTcom

Shots welcomes recorded messages – up to two minutes – by clicking below. Go ahead – you know you want to try it!