RIP CNN/SI's Fred Hickman

Lou Scally just kicked his dog.

RIP to my appointment viewing during summer nights when I was off from school.

 

I know CBS’ Russ Mitchell is in Cleveland now.

 

We didn’t get ESPN north of the 49th, so Fred and Nick were the best option for those of us who wanted a US based national show. It was appointment viewing for me at the time.

 

Spot on, it was light years ahead of what TSN was doing at the time.

 

I thought Hickman and Charles were the best team until Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann came along.

But what killed their show was the move to specialized channels. They were sports guys on a news channel. Viewers started to watch specialized channels and a sports show stopped working on a newschannel. The same thing happened in AM radio when all sports stations were created.

 

About 10 years ago, I was covering an NFL game in New Orleans and literally bumped into Fred Hickman in the press box. He still had that big smile and we chatted for a few minutes, and I was grateful for the opportunity to tell him that I loved the CNN show.

 

It was when he was working in Detroit

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Patrick, of course, worked with both at CNN

 

Nobody quits cocaine. You try not to do it again but you never quit.

 

Fred was also a national sports anchor in an era where the money was plentiful and the cocaine was flowing, if one wanted. Not unusual for sports anchors to be clearing $300k at the local level in 1985 if they had high ratings.

That path of CNN/ESPN -> New Orleans -> Baton Rouge -> Hagerstown, Maryland probably, as PCLL noted, suggested the back half of his career may have been a sports version of Dirk Diggler's 1980s. Reading about some of the "feel good" articles about his cocaine battles. Feels like this would have been real tough for him to conquer, even decades later.

He was very smooth on the air but I often found his anchoring tone insincere. CNN did have one advantage on the ESPN product by the early-90s. Once ESPN got MLB in 1990 (or with college hoops before that), one didn't always know when SportsCenter would start. CNN started at the same time every night. That did matter.

RIP.

 

The Gulf War killed CNN Sports Tonight. Once the shooting started, CNN went all-Gulf War and there was no time for a sports newscast, which in the early days of the network was the most sophisticated half-hour on it. CNN frequently didn't have video of a big news event, but the sports highlights were always there.