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    Howie Schwab, ESPN Researcher and Trivia Star, Dies at 63

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    He stepped out of his behind-the-scenes role in 2004 when he was cast as the ultimate sports know-it-all on the game show “Stump the Schwab.”Howie Schwab, a sports nerd who parlayed his love of statistics into a long stint at ESPN that was most notable for his starring role as the ultimate trivia expert on the game show “Stump the Schwab,” died on Saturday in Aventura, Fla. He was 63.His death was announced on social media by his wife, Suzie Davie-Schwab. His mother, Dona (Bressner) Schwab, said he was in a hospital being treated for an infection when he died, apparently of a heart attack.Mr. Schwab had been at ESPN for 17 years in behind-the-scenes roles as a researcher and producer when he was tapped in 2004 to star in his own show.On “Stump the Schwab,” three challengers vied to outdo Mr. Schwab in answering questions posed by the host, Stuart Scott, in the opening rounds. In the final round — called the Schwab Showdown — the best of the three went head to head against him for a $25,000 grand prize. Mr. Schwab almost always won.In the episode that decided the 2005 season’s champion, Mr. Schwab entered the studio at the start of the show wearing a red boxing robe, with a woman on each arm; he then doffed the robe, revealing a Derek Jeter jersey, and shadowboxed.“I am ready to rumble,” he told Mr. Scott.Mr. Schwab did not look like a typical television star: He was overweight, wore glasses and sported a goatee.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ESPN, Fox and Others to Launch Sports Streaming Service: What to Know

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      The joint venture announced by Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery will offer a lot, but it may not be enough on its own for serious fans.Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Tuesday that they would join together and sell access to all of the sports they televise through a new streaming service. It will be available this fall, but many other details, like price or who would run the service, are not yet known.The subtext of the agreement — and of most decisions media companies make — is that the cable bundle is collapsing. A decade ago, about 100 million homes in the United States subscribed to a package of cable or satellite television channels. Today, that number is around 70 million, and dropping.Media companies know that young adults no longer sign up for cable, and that their best customers are also their oldest. They know people no longer think of “television,” but are instead used to “content” that can be watched on a television, a phone or some other device.Cable’s days seem numbered but right now it is still a profitable business — streaming, for most companies, is not — and the biggest audiences for shows, especially sports, still exist on traditional television. So how do media companies get from where they are today to where they are going to be?With, they hope, deals like the one announced this week.How does it work?Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery have bundled 14 of their channels that show sports — the full list includes ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPNews, Fox, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, Big Ten Network, TNT, TBS and truTV — and the ESPN+ streaming service, and will sell them as a single package.How much will it cost?That was not announced. But you can expect it to cost more than the $15 or so a month that most streaming companies charge, and less than the $100 or so it costs each month to subscribe to a pay television package. Ads will be shown on the new service.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu Crack Down on Password Sharing

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      The parent company of the streaming services Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu announced the change in updated service agreements this week.Fans of “The Bear” won’t be able to use a friend’s Hulu account to watch Season 3.The Walt Disney Company, which owns Hulu, joined Netflix this week in banning password sharing in an effort to boost the company’s subscriber numbers and make its streaming services business profitable.In an email to its subscribers on Wednesday, Hulu said it would start “adding limitations on sharing your account outside of your household,” beginning March 14.The company added that it would analyze account use, and that it could suspend or terminate accounts that shared login details beyond their households.On Jan. 25, Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu, all services owned by Disney, updated their terms of service agreements to prohibit viewers from “using another person’s username, password or other account information” to access their content.Disney, whose streaming catalog includes Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel movies, aims to turn a profit on its streaming services this year, according to earnings reports.Disney’s chief executive, Bob Iger, foreshadowed the password crackdown in a third-quarter earnings call last August in which the company reported losses of $512 million on its three streaming services.In the call, Mr. Iger said that the company believed there was a “significant” amount of password sharing among its users, and that a crackdown would result in some growth in subscriber numbers.“We certainly have established this as a real priority,” he said. “And we actually think that there’s an opportunity here to help us grow our business.”In its quest to push its streaming services business into the black, Disney took full control of Hulu, which was already profitable, in November.On its password crackdown, Disney has taken a lead from Netflix, which last May announced that it would begin kicking people off its service if it detected use from a different I.P. address than the one registered with the subscription.For households willing to pay for an additional person to have access to their account, Netflix said it would charge an extra $7.99 per person.It was not immediately clear whether Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ subscribers would have an option to purchase additional account access.Some Disney+ subscribers took to social media on Thursday to express confusion over the new rules.“I wonder what this means if it’s actually me using my subscription at two different houses?” one person wrote on Reddit. “My mom watches my kid so I have my Disney+ on her TV. Is that not going to be allowed? I know it’s pretty much the same thing as sharing, but it’s literally me as I’m there and I turn it on, LOL.”Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      Pat McAfee’s On-Air Slams of ESPN Executive Show a Network Power Shift

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      For decades, the biggest star at ESPN was ESPN. That’s changing as it transitions from cable dominance to a much less certain streaming future.As it morphs from a television company into a streaming company, ESPN is undergoing rapid transformation. But if the extraordinary events of the past week are any indication, the transformation of its corporate culture is just as seismic.For decades, the biggest star at ESPN was ESPN. A long list of its best-known employees — like Keith Olbermann, Bill Simmons and Dan Le Batard — clashed with executives, and the story always ended the same way: Those employees left, and ESPN kept right on rolling.But last week Pat McAfee, the Indianapolis Colts punter turned new-media shock jock and ESPN star, directly criticized a powerful executive at the Disney-owned network by name, calling him a “rat.” Not only was Mr. McAfee not fired, he seemingly was not punished at all, shocking current and former ESPN executives and employees.“We know there is no more offensive crime in the universe of ESPN and Disney than host-on-host crime, or talent-on-talent crime,” Jemele Hill, a former “SportsCenter” host who left ESPN in 2018 after sparring with executives, said last week.To complicate matters even further, days earlier, Aaron Rodgers, the New York Jets quarterback and a regular paid guest on Mr. McAfee’s daily afternoon talk show, said during an appearance that a lot of people, “including Jimmy Kimmel,” were hoping a court would not make public a list of the associates of Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and registered sex offender.Mr. Kimmel’s late-night talk show is broadcast on ABC, which Disney also owns.It used to be that executives at ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, Conn., considered publicly criticizing a colleague practically the worst thing an employee could do.Tony Kornheiser was removed from the air for two weeks for remarking on Hannah Storm’s clothing. Mr. Simmons was twice suspended from social media, once for feuding with an ESPN-owned radio station and another time for criticizing the network’s popular show “First Take.” Mr. Olbermann was suspended for going on Comedy Central and calling Bristol a “God-forsaken place.”Tony Kornheiser, left, with his ESPN co-host, Michael Wilbon, on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show. ESPN once suspended Mr. Kornheiser for two weeks for remarks he made about a colleague.Randy Holmes/Disney General EntertainmentBut Mr. McAfee’s great escape has shined a light on his unusual arrangement with ESPN, which licenses but does not own his show. It also illustrates the bind that ESPN’s executives are in by empowering Mr. McAfee when the company is transitioning from the cable era it dominated into the streaming and social media era it has so far entered with less success.Mr. McAfee is both an ESPN employee who appears on some of its college football and National Football League shows, as well as a contractor who produces “The Pat McAfee Show,” which is shown for several hours on both the ESPN cable channel and the ESPN+ streaming service.Mr. McAfee previously worked for the Barstool Sports media company, the FanDuel sports betting company and World Wrestling Entertainment, and arrived at ESPN with a large and loyal audience. His show is a freewheeling shoutfest reminiscent of Don Imus or Howard Stern, with a recurring cast of characters and far more swearing than ESPN allows most shows.Last week he called Norby Williamson, who has worked at ESPN since 1985 and is officially the executive editor and head of event and studio production, a “rat.” Mr. McAfee also accused him of leaking unflattering ratings data for his show to The New York Post.“There are some people actively trying to sabotage us from within ESPN,” Mr. McAfee said on the air. “More specifically, I believe Norby Williamson is the guy attempting to sabotage our program.”In a statement over the weekend, ESPN said positive things about both men, adding that the company would “handle this matter internally and have no further comment.” Mr. McAfee and Mr. Williamson did not respond to messages requesting comment, and ESPN declined to make them or any executives available for an interview.Then there is Mr. Rodgers, whose weekly appearances on Mr. McAfee’s show sometimes feature anti-vaccine diatribes and have become increasingly unpredictable. After Mr. Kimmel — whose name was not on the Epstein list released by the court — threatened to sue Mr. Rodgers, Mr. McAfee apologized on his behalf, sort of, saying he thought Mr. Rodgers was just trying to rile up Mr. Kimmel as part of a small feud between the two. Mr. Rodgers did not offer an apology when he appeared on the show on Tuesday, instead saying ESPN executives and others in the news media misinterpreted his comments.On Wednesday, Mr. McAfee said Mr. Rodgers would not appear on the show for the rest of the N.F.L. season. He had been scheduled to appear through the playoffs, which start this weekend.While Mr. McAfee seemed somewhat uncomfortable in the middle of a clash between Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Kimmel, he did not apologize for his own criticism of Mr. Williamson. In fact, he reiterated it.“We love Burke Magnus,” Mr. McAfee said on his show on Monday, naming a parade of top ESPN and Disney executives who are more powerful than Mr. Williamson. “Love Burke Magnus. And also love Jimmy Pitaro. Love Bob Iger. But there is quite a transition era here between the old and the new. And the old don’t like what the new be doing.”Speaking about Mr. Williamson, he added that he was not taking back “anything that I said about said person,” and that there were “just some old hags” that did not understand what the future looked like.Norby Williamson, who oversees “SportsCenter,” has been a powerful figure at the network for many years.Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty ImagesMr. Williamson has long been a powerful but divisive figure within ESPN. “The joke was they couldn’t get rid of him, and now he has more power than ever,” Mr. Simmons said on his podcast in 2017, comparing Mr. Williamson to Littlefinger, a power-hungry and Machiavellian character from “Game of Thrones.”Mr. Williamson’s domain has long been “SportsCenter,” which he obsessively promotes within ESPN. While other top executives focus on big-picture issues, Mr. Williamson is known to send out emails focusing on the smallest tweaks to shows, and has a reputation for liking a traditional, meat-and-potatoes version of “SportsCenter” focused on highlights.It is not clear where the dispute between Mr. Williamson and Mr. McAfee may have begun. Mr. McAfee’s arrival at the company did relegate the noon showing of “SportsCenter” to ESPN2 from ESPN, but otherwise the two operate in separate domains.It may be that the fight is part of a larger struggle regarding power within the network, and whether it should rest more squarely with on-air talent or with executives.Mr. McAfee is in the first year of a five-year agreement that reportedly pays him a total of $85 million. ESPN would not want to deal with the fallout of ending that contract prematurely, especially when Mr. McAfee is one of its star personalities and occupies hours of television time daily.One possible reason Mr. McAfee escaped punishment is that, while Mr. Williamson had never been criticized by an ESPN employee so publicly, it wasn’t the first time someone at the network clashed with him and believed he was being undermining.“These people did this to us at the end, with a series of strategic, orchestrated leaks,” Mr. Le Batard said Monday on his podcast, referring to his battles with Mr. Williamson and others, and his eventual departure from ESPN three years ago.Mr. Le Batard once had a stark warning for employees, like himself, who chafed at ESPN’s strictures. “Do not leave ESPN, man,” he said on the radio in 2016. “ESPN is a monster platform that is responsible for all of our successes.”But in 2023, at least as it relates to Mr. McAfee, his opinion has changed.“This is a guy who has got all his own power and is renting to them,” Mr. Le Batard said on his show. “He will be bigger the moment that he leaves there, because he was too hot for Disney to handle, than he was at any point before that. He has nothing to fear here, and that has to scare the hell out of them.” More

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      Pat McAfee Apologizes Over Role in Aaron Rodgers-Jimmy Kimmel Feud

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      Rodgers, the Jets quarterback, suggested during an appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show” that Kimmel had a connection to Jeffrey Epstein, leading Kimmel to threaten legal action.Pat McAfee on Wednesday apologized for airing comments that Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers made toward Jimmy Kimmel on McAfee’s ESPN television show a day earlier suggesting the late-night talk show host had a connection to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.“Some things obviously people get very pissed off about, especially when they’re that serious allegations,” McAfee said. “So we apologize for being a part of it. I can’t wait to hear what Aaron has to say about it. Hopefully those two will just be able to settle this, you know, not work-wise, but be able to chitchat and move along.”Speaking on his weekly Tuesday appearance on McAfee’s television show on ESPN, Rodgers, a four-time winner of the N.F.L.’s Most Valuable Player Award, suggested that Kimmel, the host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on ABC, was acquainted with Epstein, who was accused of having sex with minors and in 2019 died by suicide while in jail. Epstein was a longtime friend to powerful politicians and business executives, and the names of some of his associates are expected to be publicly released soon in court documents.“There’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, really hoping that doesn’t come out,” Rodgers said on McAfee’s show. Kimmel denied the allegations on X, formerly known as Twitter, and threatened potential legal action against Rodgers.“Your reckless words put my family in danger,” Kimmel said. “Keep it up and we will debate the facts further in court.”ESPN and ABC are owned by Disney, placing McAfee and both entities in an uneasy situation. The predicament highlights the leeway ESPN gives McAfee, including the regular appearances by Rodgers, who has used his time on the show to speak out against vaccines and even challenged Travis Kelce to a debate during a recent appearance. In October, McAfee confirmed a report that Rodgers had been paid over $1 million to appear on the show.Spokesmen for ABC and ESPN did not immediately respond to requests for comment.ESPN signed McAfee, a former N.F.L. punter, to a reported five-year, $85 million contract last year to bring his popular digital show to the network and to appear on other programing. The hire came as ESPN underwent layoffs as part of an overall cost-cutting strategy from Disney.McAfee stands out among the network’s other personalities, often using profanity on what had long been family-friendly programming and eschewing the usual business-casual attire for tank tops. Though he has scaled back on the coarse language, ESPN has hoped his show’s freewheeling format would attract new viewers as the network’s business model changes.“We’re not putting a suit and tie on him,” Burke Magnus, ESPN’s president of content, told The Wall Street Journal in September. More

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      Different Sides of Bill Walton and Wilt Chamberlain in New Series

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      New documentaries explore the star-crossed careers and delicate spirits of Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Walton, two of basketball’s greatest.Pity the poor 7-footer.That’s the message of two new documentary series about storied basketball players: “The Luckiest Guy in the World,” about Bill Walton (available in the “30 for 30” hub at ESPN Plus), and “Goliath,” about Wilt Chamberlain (premiering Friday at Paramount+ and Sunday on Showtime).Serious and thorough, “Luckiest Guy” and “Goliath” are positioned to draft on the success of an earlier basketball biography, ESPN’s popular Michael Jordan series, “The Last Dance.” But while they are also portraits of men with supreme physical gifts, they are less focused on their subjects’ on-court exploits and more determined to get inside the players’ heads. The sportswriter Jackie MacMullan delivers what could be a thesis statement for both in “Goliath”: “I’ve found that big men are much more sensitive than we realize.”Chamberlain, who died of heart failure in 1999, and Walton both have well-defined personas, which they participated in creating. Each series spends a lot of its time picking apart the received wisdom about its subject while also indulging, for the sake of dramatic impact and storytelling shorthand, the very stereotypes it wants to deconstruct: Chamberlain the unstoppable, insatiable giant; Walton the goofy, fragile flower child.The four-episode “Luckiest Guy” was directed by the accomplished documentarian Steve James, always to be remembered for “Hoop Dreams,” and was made with the full cooperation of Walton, 70, who revisits old haunts and sits down for an entertaining round table with Portland Trail Blazers teammates like Lionel Hollins and Dave Twardzik. It’s engagingly introspective and personal, in part because James pushes back against Walton’s incessant recitation of the title phrase. How can Walton call himself the luckiest guy in the world, James asks from behind the camera, when his career was utterly ravaged by injuries that eventually crippled him and drove him to consider suicide?That, broadly speaking, is the idea that haunts both documentaries. The conundrum of Walton’s and Chamberlain’s careers is that they were marked by success — college and professional championships, statistical domination (in Chamberlain’s case), reputations for unmatched athletic skills — and defined by disappointment. Neither won as often or as easily as he should have, in Walton’s case because of injury and in Chamberlain’s because of the dominance during the 1960s of the rival Boston Celtics and their center, Bill Russell, enshrined in sports mythology as the hard-working Everyman to Chamberlain’s sex-and-statistics-obsessed egotist.“Goliath,” directed by Rob Ford and Christopher Dillon, is a more workmanlike and conventional project than “Luckiest Guy.” But across three episodes it makes a persuasive case for Chamberlain as a generous, sensitive soul who was both blessed and constrained by his stature and his extraordinary all-around athletic ability.It does its sports-documentary duty, laying out Chamberlain’s triumphs and more frequent setbacks on the court. But it is more interested in the trails he blazed as a Black cultural figure and self-determining professional athlete, and it favors writers, pundits and scholars over basketball players in its interviews. (The scarcity of images from Chamberlain’s younger days in the 1940s and ’50s is compensated for with shadow-puppet scenes reminiscent of the work of Kara Walker.)Watching the series side by side, the differences between the two men are less interesting than the sense of commonality that emerges. Both were self-conscious stutterers who learned to endure, and perform under, the most intense scrutiny. Chamberlain may have been more flamboyant, but Walton, in “Luckiest Guy,” is just as conscious of his affect — there’s an ostentatiousness, and no small amount of ego, in the way he performs modesty. (James also challenges Walton’s lifelong, generally debunked claim to be only 6 feet 11 inches tall.)The veteran sports fan might see another commonality: As good as they are, neither “The Luckiest Guy in the World” nor “Goliath” is as exciting to watch as “The Last Dance.” This is a bit of a conundrum, because both Chamberlain and Walton are, quite arguably, more complex, interesting and moving figures than Michael Jordan. But Michael Jordan is a nearly unparalleled winner. And while winning isn’t the only thing, it is, for better or worse, the most compelling thing about the subject of a sports documentary. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Waco: The Aftermath’ and ‘The Hummingbird Effect’

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      A limited drama series from Showtime puts the resurgence of the militia movement into context, and a new slate of programming comes to PBS in celebration of Earth Month.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, April 10-16. Details and times are subject to change.MondayFrom left, Tim Holt, Walter Huston and Humphrey Bogart in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”Warner Bros., via Everett CollectionTHE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948) 8 p.m. on TCM. Adapted from the 1927 novel of the same name by B. Traven, this Golden Globe and Academy Award winning film follows Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) and Bob Curtin (Tim Holt), two drifters living in Mexico, as they team up with a prospector (Walter Huston) and head for the hills of the Sierra Madre in hopes of finding gold. The film not only explores concepts of greed and self-preservation “in a most vivid and exciting action display,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for The New York Times, but it is also “a swell adventure film” with “fast and electric” details. Though the movie has been the subject of criticism for its stereotypes of Mexicans, in 1990, the Library of Congress selected “Sierra Madre” for preservation in the National Film Registry.TuesdayROAD WARS 10 p.m. on A&E. This documentary series centered around road rage in the United States is back for a second season, as the show’s film crew gets back on the road to document the accidents, wacky weather events and instances of extreme human behavior that take place on America’s roadways.WednesdayA female green-crowned brilliant hummingbird in “The Hummingbird Effect.”Filipe DeAndradeNATURE: THE HUMMINGBIRD EFFECT 8 p.m. on PBS. In celebration of Earth Month this April, PBS is featuring a new collection of programs, documentaries and specials devoted to the topics of climate change and sustainability. “The Hummingbird Effect,” a new episode in the natural history documentary series “Nature,” is one such special. Set in Costa Rica, the episode explores the tiny birds’ relationship to the flora and fauna around them, and how their existence is vital to the health of the overall environment in which they are a part.NOVA: WEATHERING THE FUTURE 9 p.m. on PBS. This new episode from the documentary series NOVA documents the effects of climate change in the United States. From heat waves and megafires, to intense rainstorms and long-lasting droughts, the documentary focuses on how Americans are adapting and innovating in reaction to extreme weather.ThursdayHEADLINERS WITH RACHEL NICHOLS 10 p.m. on SHOWTIME. Featuring interviews with “players, coaches and front office personnel” in the world of basketball, the show, which is hosted and co-executive produced by the veteran NBA reporter Rachel Nichols, will offer fans a more intimate portrait of the industry, while still establishing an on-site presence during important game days. Nichols previously hosted “The Jump,” a daily basketball show on ESPN, until its cancellation in 2021, when it was reported that Nichols had made disparaging remarks about one of her colleagues.THIS IS MARK ROBER 10 p.m. on DISCOVERY. Produced by Kimmelot and ITV America, this new series offers a behind-the-scenes look of the concepts and processes of some of the most engaging viral videos of the former NASA engineer and YouTube star Mark Rober. He first gained notoriety in 2018, when he posted a video pranking package thieves with an engineered glitter bomb box. Since then, Rober has amassed over 20 million followers on his YouTube channel, where he is known for his intricate engineering experiments, pranks and gadget videos. “This is Mark Rober” is a companion series to “Revengineers,” a prank show executive produced by Rober and Jimmy Kimmel, which premieres next week.FridayDandara Veiga, center, and the ensemble of Ballet HispánicoTeresa WoodNEXT AT THE KENNEDY CENTER: BALLET HISPÁNICO’S DOÑA PERÓN 10 p.m. on PBS. Through movement by the versatile choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, the dance company Ballet Hispánico paints a portrait of the life of Eva “Evita” Perón — the Argentine actress turned populist first lady. The ballet follows Evita’s ascent from poverty, showcasing her time as a performer and as first lady, and ends with her death from cervical cancer at age 33. In her review for The Times, Siobhan Burke highlights the ballet’s “thoughtful integration of movement” with its “handsome design elements,” adding that “this harmony stands out from the first, saintly image” of the performance.SaturdayKazunari Ninomiya at Saigo in “Letters from Iwo Jima.”Merie W. Wallace/Warner Brothers Pictures and DreamWorks PicturesLETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (2006) 3:30 p.m. on FLIXe. This Golden Globe and Academy-Award winning Japanese-language film portrays the Battle of Iwo Jima — the monthlong battle in 1945 between the Imperial Japanese Army and the United States Marine Corps and Navy that became memorialized through Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.” Directed and co-produced by Clint Eastwood, it is the companion film to Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers,” which was released two months earlier. “Letters From Iwo Jima” portrays the battle from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers, while its companion depicts the same battle from the American perspective. In the film’s observation of the lives and deaths of Japanese soldiers “it is unapologetically and even humbly true to the durable tenets of the war movie tradition, but it is also utterly original, even radical in its methods and insights,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times, calling the film “the best Japanese movie of the year.”SundayWACO: THE AFTERMATH 10 p.m. on CMT, PARAMOUNT and SHOWTIME. This five-part limited series looks at the so-called Waco siege, — when federal agents raided the Branch Davidian religious group’s compound northeast of Waco in 1993. At the compound, 75 people were killed, a third of them children. Coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the tragedy, the series puts into context the recent resurgence of the militia movement in the United States through its focus on what happened after the siege: the trials of Branch Davidian members who survived, and the indoctrination of the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh. More

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      Hank Goldberg, Betting Maven and Sports Radio Star, Dies at 82

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      A New Jersey fan of sports and gambling who became one of the country’s top television handicappers: What are the odds?Hank Goldberg, a prickly, bombastic and witty sports talk radio and television personality in Miami who became nationally known for handicapping horse races and N.F.L. games on ESPN, died on Monday, his 82nd birthday, at his home in Las Vegas.The cause was complications of chronic kidney disease, which required dialysis treatments and caused the amputation of his right leg below the knee last year, said his sister and only immediate survivor, Liz Goldberg.For more than 50 years, sports and gambling were inseparable spheres to Mr. Goldberg. A habitué of racetracks and casino sports books, he ghostwrote for the celebrated oddsmaker Jimmy Snyder, known as Jimmy the Greek, in the 1970s. He was an analyst for Miami Dolphins football games on radio, hosted sports talk shows on two Miami radio stations, and reported and anchored sports for a local TV station.As a major sports figure in Miami, he counted the Dolphins’ former head coach Don Shula and former quarterback Bob Griese among the friends with whom he bet on horses at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Fla. He imbibed the privileges of celebrity, including being treated like a king at the famous Joe’s Stone Crab restaurant in Miami Beach.“I own this town,” he said while driving around Miami in archival video that was used by ESPN in a tribute to him after his death.Starting in the early 1990s, he found a broader audience as ESPN’s betting maven, dishing out his takes on favorites, underdogs and point spreads before Sunday’s N.F.L. games and the odds before Triple Crown and Breeders’ Cup horse races.ESPN reported that Mr. Goldberg had a .500 record or better in 15 of the 17 seasons that he handicapped N.F.L. games for the network.“It was the next step up from what ‘the Greek’ did,” said Mark Gross, a senior vice president of ESPN. Mr. Snyder declared which teams would win but was prohibited by the N.F.L. from discussing point spreads. Mr. Goldberg was restricted only from using team nicknames on the ESPN show “SportsCenter” but could talk about their cities.Mr. Goldberg’s outsize personality emerged most fully on radio, where he started in 1978, at WIOD-AM in Miami. His aggressive style led him to argue with callers and sometimes hang up in disgust.Joe Zagacki, one of Mr. Goldberg’s producers at WIOD, recalled in a phone interview a day when “Hank had an argument with a caller — he had one of his volcanic explosions — and I said, ‘My goodness, you just hammered that guy. You’re ‘Hammering Hank Goldberg.’”The nickname stuck. After he started at ESPN in 1993, Mr. Goldberg began banging a mallet on a studio desk to express his disagreement with a colleague or his disdain for a sports figure. He referred to himself as “Hammer.”He initially appeared on ESPN2, which was new at the time and was attempting to reach a younger audience with anchors who dressed in a casual, cool style. Not Mr. Goldberg, who was definitely not cool but brought a quirky, brassy personality to the network — although it was more congenial than his in-your-face radio demeanor.“Hank could fit into any genre; he could fit anywhere,” said Suzy Kolber, a longtime anchor and reporter at ESPN who worked with Mr. Goldberg on ESPN2 and in Florida. “Plug him into the horse-racing crowd or the ESPN2 bunch. He fit right in.”Henry Edward Goldberg was born on July 4, 1940, in Newark and grew up in South Orange, N.J. His mother, Sadie (Abben) Goldberg, was a homemaker; his father, Hy, was a sports columnist for The Newark Evening News. Hy Goldberg frequently took his wife and children to the Yankees’ spring training in Florida, where young Hank became friendly with Joe DiMaggio, who called him Henry, Ms. Goldberg said in an interview.At 17, Mr. Goldberg went to the racetrack for the first time and won $450 when he hit the daily double at Monmouth Park in New Jersey. When he brought his winnings home, he recalled, his father told him, “Oh, you’re in trouble now.” In an interview this year with The Las Vegas Review-Journal, he added, “He knew I’d never get over my love for the races.”After attending Duke University, he transferred to New York University and graduated in 1962. He started his career as an account executive for the advertising agency Benton & Bowles. He moved to Miami in 1966 and continued to work in advertising.He found work in the broadcast booth of the Orange Bowl in Miami as a spotter — helping the play-by-play announcer by identifying which player caught a pass or made a tackle — for network telecasts of the Dolphins. He developed a friendship with the NBC play-by-play announcer Curt Gowdy. and also developed relationships in the local sports world that led him to meet Mike Pearl, who wrote and produced Jimmy Snyder’s radio show and ghostwrote his syndicated column.Ms. Goldberg said that Mr. Pearl introduced her brother to Mr. Snyder and they got along well. When Mr. Pearl left for CBS Sports, where he would produce “The NFL Today,” Mr. Snyder asked Mr. Goldberg to take over the column.In 1978, he was hired as the host of a sports talk show and a commentator on Dolphins games at WIOD, replacing Larry King. In 1983, he added work as a sports reporter and anchor on the Miami TV station WTVJ. He also continued to work in advertising; from 1977 to 1992, he was an executive with the Beber Silverstein agency. Despite his success on WIOD, Mr. Goldberg was suspended several times over the years and fired in September 1992, following a dispute with the program director over the content of his show.“The biggest radio name in South Florida sports is a loudmouth who loves to drop names — often like dirt — and who upon announcing the Dolphins’ fantastic finish Monday Night didn’t know it was his own, too,” wrote Dave Hyde, a columnist for The Sun-Sentinel, a South Florida newspaper. Mr. Hyde suggested that all the station should have done was “wash out his mouth.”Mr. Goldberg was quickly hired by another local station, WQAM-AM, where he was again successful. But he left in 2007, believing he had been lowballed in contract negotiations.By then, he was well into his two-decade run at ESPN. It ended around 2014, but he returned for the “Daily Wager” show in 2019, a year after he moved to Las Vegas. He was also a prognosticator for CBS Sports HQ, a sports streaming service, and Sportsline, an online CBS sports network.Asked what motivated her brother, Ms. Goldberg gave a simple answer: “He loved the microphone.” More

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      Dan Le Batard to Leave ESPN

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAfter Much Sparring, Dan Le Batard Is to Leave ESPN in JanuaryLe Batard, a radio- and television-show host, had recently criticized his bosses for laying off one of his producers, and he has bashed the network’s reluctance to allow commentary on politics.Dan Le Batard on the set of the ESPN show “Highly Questionable” in 2014.Credit…Rodrigo Varela, via Associated PressBy More