Jemele and Mike

Here's what the Federalist article about Hill that YF linked says about the 6 p.m. SportsCenter. It kind of echoes what I've felt and said about her:

The SC6 branded show is not a good one, in part because you have two co-hosts who both are more serious and overly sincere than they are charismatic or quick with the snark. You don’t have the classic goofy/straight pairing, and they lack the tension of two co-hosts who disagree constantly. Neither is a particularly good interviewer, nor have they shown the ability to offer insight on sports that is deep, funny, or entertaining. The show is reduced to two fairly boring people sitting at a cramped table full of papers and laptops on a set that looks unchanged for the past twenty years talking about sports with less insight than a pair at the end of the neighborhood bar. Television is a visual medium, and visually, SC6 looks like local TV.

 

two fairly boring people sitting at a cramped table full of papers and laptops on a set that looks unchanged for the past twenty years talking about sports with less insight than a pair at the end of the neighborhood bar.


If they had added a description of empty desks from the layoffs, they could also be describing the news room I work in.

 

Espn responded so I guess this won't be a big deal

ESPN Has Addressed Jemele Hill Calling Donald Trump a White Supremacist on Twitter

 

Not sure what Hill wrote that is much different than what the New York Times states as settled fact in news ledes on a daily basis.

 

Travis lit her up this morning.

 

Gee whiz that's surprising.

Snowflake melts. Alt-right dudebro gets huffy at uppity black woman. Whoda thunk it.

 

Gotta promote the show somehow.

 

Jemele has no talent and if she was white and said remotely bad things about Obama, she'd be out on the street.

 

Josh Elliott says hello.

I've never thought she didn't work hard on the way up the ladder. She also didn't have to anchor weekends in Quincy, Illinois for two years.

She is simply right place at the right time and I don't blame her for that. Take advantage of the opportunities before you.

I, too, have two friends who've been in high-profile positions in Bristol over the last year. Both SC anchors. One got caught in the layoffs. The other survived is one of the more prominent anchors. We both worked our tails off in sports and I know there isn't an hour where he doesn't thank his good fortune that he is where he is.

Getting to ESPN as an anchor is really, really hard. I've often likened it to baseball. A whole bunch of us start in the minors. My friend is now an 8-time All-Star. I never got above what I call "double A". Now I'm in news and have been for a while. Pretty good living, weekends off but I often wonder "what if".

For the non-TV types, here is how competitive TV sports at least was:
1997. 450 tapes came in for a weekend sports job in a medium market where I was a producer.
1998. I beat our 120 tapes for a small market sports anchor job.
1999. Beat out another 100 tapes for another sports anchor job.
2003. Beat out 400 tapes for a sports reporter job in pro sports town with MLB/NFL. As far as I got before I left for news.

The higher up you go, the nastier the competition. For any top 20 market sports anchor job, every job also comes with a dozen agents greasing the news director to hire their client. If it's Chicago or St. Louis, you automatically lose if the applicant is a legacy.

It's that tough.

Yet I was also competing in the "Smirky Upscale White Guy Division" all those years. The SEC of competitive sports anchoring. I say this because TV news managers almost never hire the best qualified. They see their newsrooms like a baseball team. Different positions.

Why didn't I move up to Bristol? Looking back, I was probably 20 pounds too heavy. Seriously. That's the difference. Never bothered to lose it and that's what you saw on the demo reel. It's that superficial. That's on me. If I had the middle aged me 20 years ago, I would have run more and eaten fewer patty melts.

I've been in conference rooms where the boss would say "I need to hire anyone other than a white male". And we did - a young woman so unqualified that he fired her in six months because she had no business being in the market. It got so bad that I was assigned to anchor her sportscast on the days where I was also anchoring the news.

Yet we all have our slots.

Female sports anchors still face a glass ceiling. For every one who shoots from Market 135 into Detroit or Philly, she also "ages out" at 35 while, as a white guy, I can stay in this business until I'm 70, get fat or lose my hair.

We all have our roles. Jemele has her role. Be an instigator and have an opinion. In 2017, opinion is where the buzz is. Either she read the future right in 2002 or she had someone champion her to this prominent of a role. Probably a combo of the two.

 

And if she looked good in a halter top microskirt, she'd have her own show on Faux Fascist Noise in 15 minutes.

 

exmediahack writes the most interesting stuff. Always really fascinating.
Thanks.

 

And be a sideline reporter for any Fox Sports regional network a week after graduating college.