Pam Oliver Lays Out Fox

I can't quit watching this.

 

I won't say that women in TV sports have it rough.

It's just...different.

When I was 25 (and the main sports anchor in a small market), a woman at another station jumped from our tiny, Division II market as the weekend sports person to Washington D.C. I was floored as she simply wasn't very smooth nor knowledgeable. A year later, I watched another woman at a rival station, at age 22, go from zero experience to one small market job to - over the next 3 years - San Francisco to Boston to New York. They were attractive and that's what mattered.

Here is where the difference comes in. Attractive women in TV sports can make gigantic jumps in our business. Yet they also know they'll likely never be the main sports anchor or the main studio host. They get pigeon-holed into sideline reporting, being the "sports reporter/locker room eye-batter" position with the TV station's sports department.

While they make huge jumps, they are also likely out of the business by 40. However, they tend to have a soft "landing spot" as a female TV sports anchor/reporter in a large market likely has a significant other with a good job. Affluent and visible tends to marry well.

 

The biggest day of Chandler Harnisch's life.

 

Dude- If someone like Fart had said this I would have been crucified on this board.
Not saying I agree with you, but this is fairly sexist.

 

Sexist? Perhaps if you live in a fantasy world.

I've been in TV for 20 years, in sports for more than half of it. Saw this all the time.

Male sports anchors don't get to make dramatic jumps to large markets unless its nepotism. (Rich Eisen is the only famous example I can think of, going from Redding, CA to ESPN in 1996). However, guys can do this job until they're 55 or 60.

Female sports anchor/reporters often get to start in large/medium markets. However - and this is a big however - they have a shorter "shelf life" (not saying it's right, it just "is") and they likely will never be named the "main sports anchor" or the "main studio host". I think of a Hannah Storm who has achieved this through decades of being really good. Sage Steele is at the NBA pinnacle and that came from years of climbing the ladder -- that earns respect.

I've seen this even at stations I've worked with. Many moons ago, our boss said "we cannot hire a man for this sports position". Instead of really qualified guys from decent markets, she hired an inexperienced but attractive female sports anchor. Debacle from the first sportscast. It was so atrocious that I was asked to anchor sports AND news in the same shows for five months because she was so incompetent. It was not this particular woman's fault - she was put into a bad spot but also was more concerned about her hair than learning the teams in the conference of our BCS colleges -- seriously. She didn't know the difference between Big Ten, Big XII, CUSA -- she only knew ACC.

 

FWIW, Pam Oliver is on the sidelines of the Falcons-Saints game today.

 

Gayle Gardner?

 

A pioneer at ESPN. Then she went to NBC and, pretty much, disappeared -- like far too many people who took the money with the peacock.

 

Or they can get sexually harassed right out of the business, as Karie Ross was.

 

Agreed. I hope that ESPN has cleaned that crap up from the late 80's/early 90's. NOT a healthy environment in those days.

Now it's just a place that is miserable for most, male and female alike.

 

It can't have changed all that much if an idiot like Stephen A. Smith is making those kinds of comments on a show they stupidly gave him to begin with.
Something about that culture made Sean Salisbury think it might be OK to show women colleagues pictures of his penis.

 

The difference now is that they actually people like Salisbury. ESPN can create a weird mind-set for someone on-air, believing that they are better than they really are (Salisbury was the prime example of this). He was convinced he was an elite analyst but never was. Dilfer, on the other hand, doesn't come across as a miserable prick and by all accounts is a good guy (and a superb analyst).