When it comes to Sports Emmy Awards, Olympic Games coverage is a slam-dunk
honor.
The tradition continued Monday night, when NBC grabbed nine Sports Emmys for
its Winter Olympics programming last February from Salt Lake City --
incorporating the coverage offered over CNBC and MSNBC.
NBC's presentation -- the cable portion of which was overseen by coordinating
producer Molly Solomon -- was honored for live sports special, technical team
studio and remote production, editing, writing, graphic design, production
design and short feature.
Of the 36 nominations NBC collected for this year's Sports Emmys, which are
handled by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, 17 were for
Olympics work.
Cable Olympics coverage will expand by one channel next time around for the
2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece. Bravo -- which NBC acquired from
Cablevision Systems Corp. unit Rainbow Media Group --will join CNBC and MSNBC in
the fray.
And for the first time, extensive Olympics coverage will be featured on
Spanish-language TV through NBC-owned Telemundo.
Some familiar cable sports programs also picked up Emmys: Home Box Office's
Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel (edited sports series) and Inside the
NFL (weekly studio show); and ESPN's Baseball Tonight (daily studio
show) and Outside the Lines (sports journalism).
Among individual honors, Bob Costas was named studio host, in part for his
HBO On the Record series, while Cris Collinsworth received studio analyst
honors for Inside the NFL.
ESPN picked up six 2002 Sports Emmys, with sister channel ESPN2 earning four.
HBO received five awards.
Fox Sports Net was shut out Monday night, but it will cablecast the Sports
Emmy ceremony Sunday as a Best Damn Sports Show Period presentation. FSN
baseball/football announcer Joe Buck will host.
