BillsFever
06-27-2003, 04:44 PM
We've been pondering for the past couple of days the wisdom of ABC's decision to hire Lisa Guerrero as Monday Night Football's new sideline reporter.
At first, we shrugged our shoulders at the move. After all, it wasn't the first time that the boys at MNF have added to the sideline mix a member of the fairer sex who wasn't "KKK" (i.e., Kremer, Kolber, Kohn) ugly. (We know it's "Cohn," but "KKC" didn't sound as good.)
But when we saw MNF producer Fred Gaudelli's explanation for the decision to hire Guerrero in Thursday's USA Today, our opinion changed. Dramatically.
Said Gaudelli, "[S]ince 40% of our Monday Night Football audience is women, our preference was to select a woman."
Apart from the fact that Gaudelli's admission gives the man who got rejected for the gig all he would need for a viable claim of reverse gender discrimination, Gaudelli's straight-faced suggestion that the Guerrero hire wasn't for the 60 percent of the audience who'd be ogling her makes the whole thing, in our view, a joke.
Of course Guerrero was hired because Gaudelli and others believe that the men will like to look at her. And the fact that Gaudelli feels compelled to justify the move by saying that it was for the women who watch the show suggests to us that, deep down, Gaudelli recognizes that the decision to go with Guerrero cheapens and demeans ABC's broadcasts of the greatest game in the world.
We're not alone in our views. Per the New York Times, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann suggested that Al Michaels and John Madden "resign in protest" over the Guerrero hire.
Gaudelli's response: "Keith Olbermann's history speaks for itself. Any opinion rendered by him is the opinion of a troubled man."
C'mon, Fred. Everyone knows that Keith is a childish malcontent. But stupid and unskilled he isn't, and Olbermann is hitting the nail squarely on the head here. The sideline reporting job should be reserved for a real journalist, not for an aspiring actress who didn't make it so she searched for any way she could to get herself on camera.
http://profootballtalk.com/rumormill.htm
At first, we shrugged our shoulders at the move. After all, it wasn't the first time that the boys at MNF have added to the sideline mix a member of the fairer sex who wasn't "KKK" (i.e., Kremer, Kolber, Kohn) ugly. (We know it's "Cohn," but "KKC" didn't sound as good.)
But when we saw MNF producer Fred Gaudelli's explanation for the decision to hire Guerrero in Thursday's USA Today, our opinion changed. Dramatically.
Said Gaudelli, "[S]ince 40% of our Monday Night Football audience is women, our preference was to select a woman."
Apart from the fact that Gaudelli's admission gives the man who got rejected for the gig all he would need for a viable claim of reverse gender discrimination, Gaudelli's straight-faced suggestion that the Guerrero hire wasn't for the 60 percent of the audience who'd be ogling her makes the whole thing, in our view, a joke.
Of course Guerrero was hired because Gaudelli and others believe that the men will like to look at her. And the fact that Gaudelli feels compelled to justify the move by saying that it was for the women who watch the show suggests to us that, deep down, Gaudelli recognizes that the decision to go with Guerrero cheapens and demeans ABC's broadcasts of the greatest game in the world.
We're not alone in our views. Per the New York Times, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann suggested that Al Michaels and John Madden "resign in protest" over the Guerrero hire.
Gaudelli's response: "Keith Olbermann's history speaks for itself. Any opinion rendered by him is the opinion of a troubled man."
C'mon, Fred. Everyone knows that Keith is a childish malcontent. But stupid and unskilled he isn't, and Olbermann is hitting the nail squarely on the head here. The sideline reporting job should be reserved for a real journalist, not for an aspiring actress who didn't make it so she searched for any way she could to get herself on camera.
http://profootballtalk.com/rumormill.htm