If you watch NFL football on CBS on Sunday afternoons, you are familiar with their show "The NFL Today." When it started in 1975, it broke new ground in a lot of aspects of sports broadcasting and this book is a terrific description of those early days of the show. Here is my review of "You Are Looking Live!", a book that will be released in October.
Title/Author: "You
Are Looking Live!: How the NFL Today Revolutionized Sports Broadcasting"
by Rich Podolsky
Rating: 5 of 5 stars (excellent)
Review: In 1975, CBS decided to do
something different for its pregame shows on Sundays when the network would be
telecasting professional football games.
Instead of a brief pregame show that informs viewers about the two teams
that are about to take the field, the programmers at CBS Sports decided to do
an hour-long live show from their New York studio with multiple hosts. This decision led to one of the most revolutionary
changes in televised sports and its genesis is described in this excellent book
by Rich Podolsky.
When this decision was made by the network, this was
something that was completely "out of the box" thinking. Not only did the show, titled "The NFL
Today", go to live coverage in a studio, it showed highlights of other
games in a "whip around" format and also had the first woman (Phyllis
George) and Black man (Irv Cross) as studio hosts of a sports program. The main anchor who drove the on-camera
performance was Brent Musburger and later, they were joined by well-know sports
bookmaker Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder.
Each of these four on-air personalities have a chapter on their
professional and personal lives which make for great reading and information. Not only these people, but others who were involved
in the ground breaking production such as Robert Wussler (president of CBS
Sports at the time) and Mike Pearl (producer) get good write-ups in the book as
well.
The book is not limited to short biographies of the personnel
– there is plenty of great writing about the ins and outs of sports broadcasting
as well as the specifics of the show. Some of the more notorious events during
the show's years on the air (and it's still going strong) are also described in
an objective manner. Two of them that
made headlines was the firing of Jayne Kennedy, who took over for Phyllis
George after she left for a few years (and returned when Kennedy was let go)
and the friction between Musberger and Snyder.
Snyder later was also fired for making racially insensitive comments and
Musberger was as well for other reasons.
The book then ends with how Musberger's replacements, Greg Gumble and
later Jim Nantz kept the show going.
This book reads at a very fast pace, much like the show has
when watching it. The stories and
personalities are fascinating and anyone who remembers when NFL Sundays had to
start with watching Brent, Irv, Phyllis and "The Greek" will want to
pick up this book.
I wish to thank the author and Lyons Press for providing a
copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
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