NEW YORK — For the previous few years of its life, HBO’s “Real Sports” taped its episodes on the identical Manhattan block the place CBS’ “60 Minutes” resides. They shared a sensibility together with a neighborhood.
But whereas “60 Minutes” rolls alongside in its sixth decade, the month-to-month sports activities journal helmed by Bryant Gumbel is asking it quits in its twenty ninth 12 months. The last, 90-minute episode premieres Tuesday at 10 p.m. Eastern.
Sports was a lens by means of which the journal checked out all method of points, successful awards for items on corruption on the International Olympic Committee, labor abuses as Qatar ready for the World Cup, concussions in sports activities and youngsters compelled to be jockeys for camel races within the Middle East.
“Real Sports” instructed some inspirational tales, like Mary Carillo’s profile of the Hoyts, a father who ran marathons pushing the wheelchair of his son with cerebral palsy son, and flashed humor.
Who gained or misplaced? There have been different guys for that.
“I’m OK,” Gumbel mentioned earlier than taping the final episode. “I’m sad, but everything has to end at some point and this is the right time for this to end.”
Backstage, a cart crammed with champagne was wheeled down a hallway.
Correspondents, producers and their households wandered by means of workplaces, saying farewells. Gumbel’s spouse, Hilary, and his grandchildren settled into seats within the management room to look at the ultimate taping.
Gumbel is 75, on the finish of a contract, and HBO is now managed by an organization, Warner Bros. Discovery, on the hunt for price financial savings. While the present’s exit is smart, the concern is {that a} type of sports activities journalism is leaving for good, too.
“It has been the gold standard in sports journalism on TV for the last three decades and it really is quite a loss,” mentioned Mark Hyman, director of the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism on the University of Maryland. “It checked all the boxes — timely, ambitious, well-funded, independent.”
Increasingly, sports activities information comes from retailers owned by leagues, just like the NFL or MLB networks, or networks whose companies rely enormously on successful rights offers, he mentioned.
“The show tried to do some things in sports journalism that no one else was doing,” Gumbel mentioned. “I believe it was one of many few avenues that might truthfully discover points with out having to fret about rankings or sponsorships or relationships.
“I’ve been on the other side of that coin,” he mentioned. “I’ve worked for networks who were what they would call now the ‘broadcast partner’ of a sports entity. And you’d only be a fool to think you can follow any story wherever it wants if it collides with that relationship. Life doesn’t work that way.”
When athletes agreed to look on “Real Sports,” they knew they have been agreeing to a difficult interview, very similar to “60 Minutes” company knew what they have been signing up for, Carillo mentioned.
Now athletes can management their very own messages by means of social media or retailers like The Players’ Tribune, she mentioned.
“I wish we could have kept going,” she mentioned. “But times have changed.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”