And Sports Emmys Winners Are ...

Two of sports broadcasting's most honored announcers picked up more hardware for their mantles Monday, while NBC's coverage of the NFL received the industry's stamp of approval.

That's the overview of Monday's Sports Emmy Awards, where NBC's Bob Costas captured his 15th statuette for Outstanding Studio Host for his work on "Football Night in America," as well as hosting the network's horse racing coverage. It was Costas' 19th Sports Emmy and his 20th overall.

CBS' Jim Nantz won a second straight Emmy as Outstanding Play-By-Play announcer. Nantz, who is the network's lead announcer on the NFL, golf and college basketball, will receive his fifth National Sportscaster of the Year Award next week from the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association.

Meanwhile, NBC received the Outstanding Live Sports Series Emmy for Sunday Night Football, as well as the Outstanding Live Sports Special award for its coverage of Super Bowl 43, as the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Arizona Cardinals.

HBO led all channels and networks with nine Emmys, highlighted by awards for Outstanding Edited Sports Special (24/7 Mayweather-Marquez), Outstanding Sports Documentary (Assault in the Ring), as well as a pair of Emmys for Hard Knocks, a behind-the-scenes look at the Cincinnati Bengals' training camp.

The ESPN family of channels received six broadcasting Emmys, headlined by wins for Outstanding Weekly Studio Show (College GameDay), Outstanding Daily Studio Show (Pardon The Interruption) and for Outstanding Sports Journalism (E:60).

TNT in a Cakewalk

Larry Bird once noted that, given his druthers, he would prefer to purchase and eat a wedding cake from a bakery on the theory that no one would mess up something so important.

If you think of the two entities that carry NBA games as bakers, NBA viewers should prefer TNT's three-tier product to ESPN's.

The tiers of game coverage and production are fairly even between the two. Both feature excellent play-by-play announcers (TNT's Marv Albert and Kevin Harlan vs. ESPN's Mike Breen, Mike Tirico and Dan Shulman) and terrific analysts (TNT's Doug Collins, Mike Fratello and Reggie Miller vs. ESPN's Jeff Van Gundy, Mark Jackson, Hubie Brown and Doris Burke).

And ESPN, which produces ABC's coverage, has streamlined and improved its look, particularly with its graphics package, to draw practically even with TNT, though ESPN/ABC's use of a roaming overhead camera for occasional live game action loses the ball and players in the corners.

Where TNT has an overwhelming edge is with its pregame/studio operation. The dynamic between host Ernie Johnson, Jr. and analysts Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith is as good as exists in the studio for any sport.

While Barkley's outrageous antics and occasionally profane utterances get the attention, it's Smith and Johnson who make things go. Johnson is a brilliant traffic cop, who is, from time to time, called upon to play exasperated dad to Barkley.

Smith's observations are almost always keen and his annual running "Gone Fishin" bit, where he welcomes losing teams into summer vacation through phony pictures of the coach and players fishing, is brilliant.

And then there's the ABC/ESPN studio model, which is, frankly, a bit schizophrenic. Though the game announcers appear on both networks, the studio crews are entirely different and significantly flawed.

The biggest flaw with both is with the hosts, as neither Stuart Scott (ABC) nor Mark Jones (ESPN) have the chops to be credible. Scott's approach of mixing extraneous stats with hipper-than-thou attitude has been grating for years, while Jones just looks lost.

That's not to say there aren't solid elements within the pregame/studio shows. Jon Barry is solid in his work on ABC, while Jalen Rose and Avery Johnson have solid chemistry together on ESPN. Add those three former NBA players with Tirico, and you'd have a worthy contender to TNT.

By the way, while Magic Johnson has interesting things to say, he should not be allowed on camera to talk about the Los Angeles Lakers unless ABC discloses up front his relationship with the team.

The network gives viewers the impression that he is appearing merely as a former Laker player and coach, when Johnson is, in fact, a team vice president. It's a clear conflict of interest and ensures that he will rarely, if ever, come on the air and articulate any policy differences he might have with owner Jerry Buss, general manager Mitch Kupchak or coach Phil Jackson. Viewers deserve better than that.

A Modest Proposal

Even before the NFL moved its draft into prime time, ratings for the event regularly clubbed NBA playoff and Major League Baseball games that aired in that Saturday time slot.

Now that the draft came in as the most watched among viewers and the second most watched among households in ESPN history, it's clear that it will stay in prime time for the foreseeable future.

And so, the NBA and NHL would be wise to schedule a postseason day off that nicely coincides with the draft's first round next year, since apparently no one is watching basketball and hockey on that night anyway.

Don't Bring Me No Bad News

Hey, New Yorkers, have you heard the good news today? If not, then you're not reading your local sports section.

Newsday reporters and columnists are under a directive to keep the tone of their words free from needless callousness, while readers of the Gannett chain's New Jersey papers are, in some cases, getting coverage of the NHL Devils team right from a team employee.

The New York Observer reported that a Newsday policy, apparently put in place at the beginning of the year, to tone down the language used in the sports section, has raised heightened scrutiny about the editorial independence of the paper, given that it is owned by James and Charles Dolan, who also own Cablevision as well as the New York Knicks and Rangers.

Potential stories have already been killed over the edict, according to the Observer, and columnist Wallace Matthews, a staple of New York newspapers, left Newsday in April for ESPN's new New York site, partly for more money, but also after the wording in a number of his columns were either directly changed or ordered to be altered.

In a statement to the Observer, Newsday editor Debby Krenek wrote, "Anyone reading our sports coverage this year will see that it has been tough and fair, thorough and award-winning," adding, "We want hard-hitting facts about the games and the people we cover, whether the news is good or bad."

Meanwhile, the Gannett newspapers in New Jersey have turned to the Devils and the team's website writer, Eric Marin, to write stories about the team for the papers.

Marin's byline appeared with the stories, as well as a note under each explaining to readers whom he worked for. The New York Times reported that Gannett did not pay for the articles and retained the freedom to edit the stories as its editors saw fit.

Hollis Towns, executive editor of the Asbury Park Press, the largest of Gannett's six New Jersey newspapers, told the Times that the arrangement served its readers who wanted more hockey coverage.

"As long it served our readers and we told them where that content was coming from, the readers were fine with it. I think journalists get hung up on certain lines of what's ethical more than the readers."

In these days of shrinking news holes and smaller newsroom staffs, more and more media outlets are rethinking how to allocate their resources. Gannett's decision with the Devils seems to be one of the worst approaches.