When it comes to the Sports Emmy Awards, coverage of the Olympic Games is always a strong contender.
So it was no surprise last week when NBC Sports grabbed nine Sports Emmys for its February 2002 Winter Olympics programming from Salt Lake City, incorporating coverage offered via CNBC and MSNBC.
NBC's multichannel presentation, the cable portion of which was supervised by coordinating producer Molly Solomon, was honored for live sports special, technical team studio/event 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.
Another channel will take part in cable coverage of the 2002 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. Bravo, which NBC bought last fall from Cablevision Systems Corp.'s Rainbow Media Holdings, will join CNBC and MSNBC in the fray. As currently plotted, Bravo will run four hours a day starting at 4 p.m. Eastern, and replay MSNBC coverage overnight.
For the first time, extensive Olympics coverage will be on Spanish-language TV, through NBC-owned Telemundo, which has 134 coverage hours on its Athens agenda, none in primetime.
Other familiar cable-sports programs 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. Costas joined the Inside
on-air team last fall.
ESPN picked up six 2002 Sports Emmys, with sister channel ESPN2 earning four.
HBO received five awards.
Fox Sports Net was shut out, but expected to televise the Sports Emmy ceremony last night (April 27) as part of Best Damn Sports Show Period, hosted by Fox Sports baseball and football announcer Joe Buck.
