ESPN has shed a discontented Al Michaels from his contract to call "Monday Night Football" for the next eight years and named Mike Tirico the play-by-play voice of the series for the foreseeable future.
The final break with Michaels came Tuesday, two days after he called the Super Bowl on ABC. The talks culminated with him cutting his ties to ESPN as well as his contract to call National Basketball Association games on ABC Sports.
ABC relinquished its rights to the Monday night games in favor of ESPN. Both networks are owned by the Walt Disney Company.
"Once it was clear he had reservations, we decided to move on," John Skipper, ESPN's executive vice president of content, said in an interview.
Michaels is expected to quickly announce his move to NBC to call Sunday night games with John Madden, his partner on "Monday Night" games at ABC.
A spokesman for NBC Universal Sports, Mike McCarley, had no comment on when Michaels will be hired. Michaels could not be reached for comment.
ESPN had previously announced that Joe Theismann will be the "Monday Night" analyst and the cable behemoth announced today that its newest hire for the series is Tony Kornheiser, co-host of ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption" and a columnist at The Washington Post since 1984.
Kornheiser auditioned in 2000 for the "Monday Night" position that went to the comedian Dennis Miller, who lasted two seasons before the show was revamped and Madden was hired.
"It's cool that as a sportswriter they came back and asked me," Kornheiser said on a media conference call. "It's isn't generally in the career path of a sportswriter to do this. So you've got to take it."
Since his television and radio careers have taken off over the past few years, Kornheiser has written less for The Post. Despite the "Monday Night" job, he said, "I would do anything I can to remain with The Post." He also is the host of a daily, four-hour program on WTEM Radio in Washington.
Kornheiser and his "P.T.I." co-host, Michael Wilbon, another Post columnist, will do the radio show each Monday from the site of that night's game.
Kornheiser joked that he had not stayed up past midnight, a time that "Monday Night" has traditionally gone past, since "my bar mitzvah." He added: "I live like a barnyard animal. I'm asleep at 9 and up by five."
Skipper said the network was not bound by the conventional wisdom of having a commentator who once played or coached, any more than ABC was when it hired Howard Cosell for "Monday Night" in 1970.
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Tirico said he was not sure until after Sunday night's Super Bowl that he had replaced Michaels. One of ESPN and ABC's most versatile voices, Tirico has moved easily between anchoring studio programs and calling college football and basketball and National Basketball Association games.
He called the new assignment "a humbling experience," putting him in a small group of "Monday Night's" previous play-by-play announcers: Keith Jackson, who called the first season, Frank Gifford and Michaels.
Michaels, who last July signed an eight-year contract worth $4 million annually, has refused to publicly discuss why he wanted to get out of the ESPN contract, or why he chose to follow "Monday Night" from ABC to ESPN, which will not have any post-season games. NBC, which had wooed him after it hired Madden, will carry playoff games and Super Bowls.
Michaels insisted that he did not go to ESPN for the money, which exceeded the $2.9 million annual salary NBC had offered, but said that after 20 years, the words "Monday Night Football" still made his spine tingle.
In agreeing to work for ESPN, he knew he was separating from Madden, but in the subsequent months, NBC hired Fred Gaudelli, ABC's "Monday Night" producer, and Drew Esocoff, the series' director.
Skipper said he became aware of Michaels's change of heart in the last few weeks.
"In November, he said it was the best job ever invented," he said on the conference call. "As long as Al was committed to us, we were committed to him." He declined to give any of the details of the terms of Michaels's leaving his contract, but said, "We reached a satisfactory resolution."
He said that he was certain that Tirico, Theismann and Kornheiser will "execute our vision" for "Monday Night," which includes a full day of programming on various networks and other ESPN businesses, leading up to each game. Each broadcast is intended to be a mini-Super Bowl.
In addition to being replaced by Tirico on "Monday Night," Michaels will be replaced, starting Sunday, by Mike Breen, as the No. 1 announcer for ABC's N.B.A. games, working with Hubie Brown. Breen, the TV voice of the Knicks on the MSG Network, has called the N.B.A. for ESPN and ABC since 2003.
In the months since Michaels spurned NBC's offer, the network has quietly groomed Cris Collinsworth for the play-by-play job. Collinsworth, one of football's toughest analysts, had been hired by NBC to be its top analyst on its Sunday night studio program. Collinsworth rehearsed his play-by-play calling during various games, and at least once at the Pleasanton, Calif., studio owned by Madden. With Michaels now expected to rejoin Madden, the Collinsworth experiment is presumably over.
Sterling Sharpe, a former ESPN studio analyst, who currently works for the NFL Network, is expected to join Bob Costas and Collinsworth.
nytimes.com
The final break with Michaels came Tuesday, two days after he called the Super Bowl on ABC. The talks culminated with him cutting his ties to ESPN as well as his contract to call National Basketball Association games on ABC Sports.
ABC relinquished its rights to the Monday night games in favor of ESPN. Both networks are owned by the Walt Disney Company.
"Once it was clear he had reservations, we decided to move on," John Skipper, ESPN's executive vice president of content, said in an interview.
Michaels is expected to quickly announce his move to NBC to call Sunday night games with John Madden, his partner on "Monday Night" games at ABC.
A spokesman for NBC Universal Sports, Mike McCarley, had no comment on when Michaels will be hired. Michaels could not be reached for comment.
ESPN had previously announced that Joe Theismann will be the "Monday Night" analyst and the cable behemoth announced today that its newest hire for the series is Tony Kornheiser, co-host of ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption" and a columnist at The Washington Post since 1984.
Kornheiser auditioned in 2000 for the "Monday Night" position that went to the comedian Dennis Miller, who lasted two seasons before the show was revamped and Madden was hired.
"It's cool that as a sportswriter they came back and asked me," Kornheiser said on a media conference call. "It's isn't generally in the career path of a sportswriter to do this. So you've got to take it."
Since his television and radio careers have taken off over the past few years, Kornheiser has written less for The Post. Despite the "Monday Night" job, he said, "I would do anything I can to remain with The Post." He also is the host of a daily, four-hour program on WTEM Radio in Washington.
Kornheiser and his "P.T.I." co-host, Michael Wilbon, another Post columnist, will do the radio show each Monday from the site of that night's game.
Kornheiser joked that he had not stayed up past midnight, a time that "Monday Night" has traditionally gone past, since "my bar mitzvah." He added: "I live like a barnyard animal. I'm asleep at 9 and up by five."
Skipper said the network was not bound by the conventional wisdom of having a commentator who once played or coached, any more than ABC was when it hired Howard Cosell for "Monday Night" in 1970.
.
Tirico said he was not sure until after Sunday night's Super Bowl that he had replaced Michaels. One of ESPN and ABC's most versatile voices, Tirico has moved easily between anchoring studio programs and calling college football and basketball and National Basketball Association games.
He called the new assignment "a humbling experience," putting him in a small group of "Monday Night's" previous play-by-play announcers: Keith Jackson, who called the first season, Frank Gifford and Michaels.
Michaels, who last July signed an eight-year contract worth $4 million annually, has refused to publicly discuss why he wanted to get out of the ESPN contract, or why he chose to follow "Monday Night" from ABC to ESPN, which will not have any post-season games. NBC, which had wooed him after it hired Madden, will carry playoff games and Super Bowls.
Michaels insisted that he did not go to ESPN for the money, which exceeded the $2.9 million annual salary NBC had offered, but said that after 20 years, the words "Monday Night Football" still made his spine tingle.
In agreeing to work for ESPN, he knew he was separating from Madden, but in the subsequent months, NBC hired Fred Gaudelli, ABC's "Monday Night" producer, and Drew Esocoff, the series' director.
Skipper said he became aware of Michaels's change of heart in the last few weeks.
"In November, he said it was the best job ever invented," he said on the conference call. "As long as Al was committed to us, we were committed to him." He declined to give any of the details of the terms of Michaels's leaving his contract, but said, "We reached a satisfactory resolution."
He said that he was certain that Tirico, Theismann and Kornheiser will "execute our vision" for "Monday Night," which includes a full day of programming on various networks and other ESPN businesses, leading up to each game. Each broadcast is intended to be a mini-Super Bowl.
In addition to being replaced by Tirico on "Monday Night," Michaels will be replaced, starting Sunday, by Mike Breen, as the No. 1 announcer for ABC's N.B.A. games, working with Hubie Brown. Breen, the TV voice of the Knicks on the MSG Network, has called the N.B.A. for ESPN and ABC since 2003.
In the months since Michaels spurned NBC's offer, the network has quietly groomed Cris Collinsworth for the play-by-play job. Collinsworth, one of football's toughest analysts, had been hired by NBC to be its top analyst on its Sunday night studio program. Collinsworth rehearsed his play-by-play calling during various games, and at least once at the Pleasanton, Calif., studio owned by Madden. With Michaels now expected to rejoin Madden, the Collinsworth experiment is presumably over.
Sterling Sharpe, a former ESPN studio analyst, who currently works for the NFL Network, is expected to join Bob Costas and Collinsworth.
nytimes.com
