Michael Settled TV Sports Frontier

It was at least 20 years ago, probably longer, when I nearly fell off the couch in my Dallas home upon seeing, quite unexpectedly, a familiar face on my TV screen. It was a sportscaster from my hometown of Washington D.C., doing the Sunday night highlight show he called Sports Final.

Only this night it wasn't called Sports Final. It didn't just feature Washington-area sports personalities either. It was called Sports Machine and it showed video clips of every big game around the country.

That was how big George Michael became. Even if you didn't know him from growing up in or living around metropolitan D.C., where he became the local NBC affiliate's main sports news anchor in 1980, you became acquainted with him. His show became the first nationally syndicated all-sports highlight program.

And even if you were in one of the few markets where his Sports Machine wound up not getting syndicated starting in 1986, you became familiar with his work on a little cable network dedicated to sports called ESPN. Its rapid-fire presentation of big plays from everywhere, with a dose of pyrotechnics, is pure Michael.

That is why George Michael's death on Christmas Eve at age 70, after what was revealed to be a two-year fight with leukemia, resonated far beyond D.C.'s Beltway. That is why The Los Angeles Times noted his death clear across the country and The New York Times couldn't avoid it. Michael was an innovator. His television reporting style of sports was emulated everywhere.

"He's the only guy in town," Norman Chad wrote of Michael in The Washington Post in 1985, "who can show you five minutes of tape in a four-minute sportscast."

The George Michael Sports Machine was a 30-minute show that seemed to pack in 45 minutes of highlights.

It was quirky. The opening one season was of a satellite emblazoned with the show's moniker flying through outer space and then beaming photographs and video clips of iconic sports moments, including a Hulk Hogan throw down, back to Earth through what appeared to be the innards of a computer. Then Michael would introduce himself standing in front of a bank of TV monitors and a reel-to-reel deck that he referenced as "the sports machine." Finally Michael would strike some oversized button on a table of controls in front of him and the next thing you saw was a replay of whatever he was talking about.
Today, Michael's shtick is commonplace, from local sportscasters to ESPN SportsCenter, histrionics and all. Imitation, as we've all heard, is indeed the highest form of flattery.
But 20 years ago, that was exciting and original stuff. You couldn't wait to watch it. Today, Michael's shtick is commonplace, from local sportscasters to ESPN SportsCenter, histrionics and all. Imitation, as we've all heard, is indeed the highest form of flattery. "It's not just sports; it's the way we do sports," was his Sports Machine's motto.

Michael wasn't the first sportscaster to employ video highlights with a little pizazz. Coincidentally, the first was a Washington sportscaster who preceded him in this market and became a national hit. He was Warner Wolf, who in the mid '60s and early '70s was the be-all and end-all in sports news anchoring at the CBS affiliate in the nation's capital.

Wolf became famous for his call, "Let's go to the videotape!" His fast-paced use of highlights was so entertaining that in 1975 he was brought to ABC Sports' Monday Night Baseball – that's right, baseball – and in 1976 moved to New York to be sports anchor at WABC-TV and then WCBS-TV. Seventy-two now, Wolf chats about sports every morning to Don Imus on Imus in the Morning.

Michael never made it to Broadway, but he's left more of a legacy than Wolf and not just in terms of the way he did his thing.

"Almost any time I wrote something naughty or nice about George Michael in the newspaper or on the Web site over the years, I'd receive several e-mail responses from around the country, all from people who had worked for Michael at WRC-TV," former longtime Post sportswriter and sports media critic Leonard Shapiro wrote about Michael for the Post on Thursday. "The notes were written mostly by former interns or production assistants, long-ago college kids from the local schools who showed up at the station at all hours of the day and night for a few extra course credits, usually without pay, for the chance to receive a hands-on education in the sports television business from a true master of the genre.

"Invariably, their e-mails would credit Michael for giving them their first real opportunity in the broadcasting business. They also gushed about how much they appreciated all the time he took with them, even if that also included occasionally being berated."

Personally, Michael is also as responsible as anyone for making this the golden era of sportswriters, if not sportswriting, to borrow a quote from platinum sportswriter Tony Kornheiser. Kornheiser was referring to the lucrative multimedia opportunities available these days to people like him and me who started out making a living solely by writing about what we witnessed.

Michael, you see, started a couple of other local sports shows in D.C. One was called Full Court Press and it aired once a week during the basketball season. The other was called Redskins Report and it aired as frequently during the football season.

What was most notable about both shows were that they featured D.C. sportswriters from the local newspapers, most notably The Washington Post. They included Kornheiser and my old college mate Michael Wilbon. Look at where they are now. Another TV personality who cut his teeth on Michael's show is NBA reporter David Aldridge, who once covered the Redskins and the Wizards for the Post.

"I want to make this clear," Aldridge said on his Twitter page Thursday, "I would not be in television if not for ... Michael, who gave me my first chance."

In a sense, all of us who've morphed from newspaper writers into television panelists and reporters owe a debt of gratitude to Michael. Unselfishly, he invited us along a swath he cut with fearlessness and paved with gold.