Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/080392/08039938.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 6KB | 123 lines

                                                                                OLYMPICS, Page 64

1992 SUMMER GAMES

America's Host


This week Bob Costas begins his own Olympic marathon, as NBC's
anchor for the Games

By DAVID ELLIS/CHICAGO


    As a child growing up in Commack, N.Y., Bob Costas fell
in love with the powerful notion of projection. Twisting the
radio dial in his father's parked car, the young baseball fan
was able to visit mysterious places, pulling in out-of-town
stations broadcasting games through the crackling static. "There
was a romance to the airwaves," Costas says, "a notion that
moving the dial just slightly enabled you to eavesdrop on what
people heard in Baltimore -- or, a little farther over,
Cincinnati, Philadelphia and, on a really clear night, St.
Louis."

    This month Costas himself will be doing the projecting --
to 190 million viewers. And this time the eavesdropping will be
global: he will be America's prime-time TV host for the 1992
Barcelona Olympics. Sure, he hopes to keep the romance of the
airwaves alive; but during his 90 hours on the air, the NBC
Sports broadcaster also has a more fundamental ambition:
nothing less than redefining the job.

    Jim McKay, who set the easy-does-it standard for Olympics
broadcasting, hung up his blazer in 1988, and his successors
haven't fared very well. CBS's Tim McCarver and Paula Zahn
shifted uncomfortably delivering over-rehearsed remarks in
Albertville last February. NBC tapped Bryant Gumbel for the
starring role at the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, but his
inability to meet the warm and fuzzy requirements of the job led
the network to dump him in favor of Costas. The irony is that
like Gumbel, Costas is determined to establish his journalistic
credentials from Day One. The avuncular bit comes second.

    Which is fortunate because, even at 40, Costas seems like
nobody's uncle. He is smooth and smart, fixing the camera with
a laser stare that gives his boyish face a cocky authority.
Eight years of experience as a host of the NFL Live show and
appearances on the N.B.A. Showtime program have trained him to
master what is both the easiest and toughest task in TV: keeping
a sports show rolling in 3-min. 15-sec. segments. It's easy
because the segments are short, but tough because their brevity
only heightens the pressure.

    Pressure seems to have brought out the best in Costas
throughout a charmed career. As a senior at Syracuse University,
he won a job as the voice of the Syracuse Blazers hockey club
after having attended only two hockey games in his life. Costas
insouciantly sent the station a tape of his broadcast of a
Syracuse basketball game with the explanation that he "didn't
have any hockey tapes available." Later, the same tape, this
time re-recorded with the bass up to make his voice sound
richer, caught the attention of KMOX in St. Louis, one of the
exotic stations Costas had picked up in his father's car. The
22-year-old was signed and became the voice of the now defunct
Spirits of St. Louis basketball team. He still lives in the city
with wife Randy and their two children.

    After a stint on CBS doing regional football, Costas moved
to NBC in 1980, eventually joining the baseball Game of the
Week. Here was the dream complete. "You can put a personal stamp
on a baseball broadcast, be a reporter, something of a
historian, a storyteller, conversationalist, dispenser of
opinion," says Costas. Alas, NBC was unexpectedly outbid for the
rights to televise baseball. "My career's in a four-year rain
delay," he says ruefully.

    Costas' tightly formatted half time shows often allow
sports figures to get away with bitter cant and shameless
self-promotion. It's a gig Costas is eager to outgrow. During
the Games he is determined to curtail Olympic hype, and he
intends to refrain pointedly from calling every upcoming event
"exciting" and every confrontation "critical." Even with the
tape delays necessitated by time differences, Costas will cover
events as they happen, a high-wire act that will show off his
considerable ad-lib talents.

    A handful of viewers already know Costas as the best
sit-down interviewer on television -- as host of Later with Bob
Costas, the one network "talk" show where conversation takes
place on a regular basis. Tucked away in the time slot behind
David Letterman from Monday to Thursday, the half-hour show is
a literate oasis among the infomercial emetics of late-night TV.
Three million insomniacs regularly catch Costas with many
celebrities who Don't Do TV -- talking acting with Robert
Duvall, say, or camera angles with Lawrence Kasdan. Costas can
also be a gentle nudge, drawing a controlled performer like Mike
Wallace into revelations of his bout with depression.

    Costas' commitment to Later (and to remaining in St.
Louis) is striking. When the Today show was still reeling from
the Deborah Norville fiasco and Gumbel was haggling over his
contract, NBC executives reportedly let Costas know that the
hosting slot was his for the asking. He wasn't interested. He
hopes to develop prime-time specials based on Later, and he is
also toying with the idea of creating a 60 Minutes-type show
about sports. However, such is his devotion to baseball that
despite his estimated $2 million-a-year salary, he has just
about decided to leave NBC if it doesn't win back baseball next
year.

    But for now, Costas must draw upon a year of memorizing
Olympic facts and cramming history to meet his greatest
professional challenge. As Olympics ringmaster, Costas has the
best -- and hottest -- seat in the house. Characteristically,
he deflects the pressure with a joke. The Barcelona assignment,
he says, is just the "payoff for three years of saying, `We'll
be right back after these messages.' "