Bowing to pressure from the NFL, ESPN has canceled its fictionalized TV series about pro football players, "Playmakers." But how about a fictionalized TV series about an ESPN personality?
Could happen.
CBS has shot a pilot for a sitcom based on Tony Kornheiser, real-life Washington Post sports columnist/host of ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption," which could end up on the network's fall schedule. (We'll find out next month.) I have no idea if it's any good or not, but you've got to love the title: "Shut Up and Listen."
(Which is what all print columnists and radio/TV hosts are really thinking, by the way.)
Whether such a show could succeed is highly questionable, however. We love our sports on TV, and we love our sitcoms (well, some of them), but we haven't loved many sitcoms about sports on TV.
"Good Sports," a Farrah Fawcett-Ryan O'Neal comedy about battling sportscasters, lasted only 15 episodes in 1991. "Sports Night" — a sitcom unabashedly patterned after ESPN — got great reviews, which helped keep it on the air for two seasons (1998-2000) even though ratings were dismal.
The most successful sports sitcom in TV history was "Coach" (centering on a fictional college and later pro football coach), which aired on ABC from 1989-97. The most successful sports drama in TV history was arguably "The White Shadow" (centering on a high-school basketball coach), which aired on CBS from 1978-81.
Viewers have not been kind to shows about baseball teams. The sitcom "Ball Four" lasted four episodes in 1976; the drama "Bay City Blues" lasted four episodes in 1983; and the sitcom "Hardball" lasted all the way through seven episodes in 1994.
You could argue that the pro football sitcom "1st & Ten" (1984-90) and the sports agent comedy "Arli$$" (1996-2002) were both successful, but they both aired on HBO, which doesn't have the same sort of ratings reach or expectations as do broadcast networks.
But, overall, viewers haven't shown much inclination to watch fictionalized sports on TV.
With the possible exception of major league baseball, which operates under the fictional premise that all the money the New York Yankees spend on players doesn't make the sport a competitive joke.
"Shut Up and Listen" casts Jason Alexander (best known as George Costanza on "Seinfeld") as the fictionalization of Kornheiser. He'll deal with both his print and TV jobs as well as raising two teenagers.
However, "Shut Up" has to battle more than just the lackluster history of fictional sports TV shows — it will have to overcome the Dreaded "Seinfeld" Curse, which quickly killed "The Michael Richards Show," Julia Louis-Dreyfus' "Watching Ellie" and Alexander's "Bob Patterson." Or maybe it was just a case that all of those shows really stunk.
Hey, didn't George Costanza used to work for the Yankees?
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com