Sportscasters

In his 13 months as a KABC-TV Channel 7 sportscaster, Todd Donoho has become the man critics love to hate. He's been blasted for delivering his sportscasts while standing in front of a video screen, for beginning and ending his segments with a trivia question, for commentaries opening with "Take a hike," and for a manner that led one critic to write that Donoho, "comes on like a three-alarm fire and is about as enjoyable."

Sportscaster Al Michaels was arrested for driving under the influence after he was stopped at a DUI checkpoint in Santa Monica. Michaels, a longtime announcer on NBC's "Sunday Night Football," was arrested about 10 p.m. Friday, booked into jail and released on his own recognizance early Saturday, according to CNN. "He was evaluated for suspicion of DUI, brought to the station for a Breathalyzer test, and it came out .08, which was at the legal...

At 28, Kirk Kilgour was one of the best volleyball players in the world. Blond-haired, blue-eyed and muscular, the Van Nuys resident had led UCLA to two national championships in the 1970s and was an avid surfer, skier and basketball player. In 1976, he earned a position on the U.S. Olympic volleyball team. But six months before the Games began in Montreal, Kilgour took an ill-fated leap off a springboard while coaching an Italian volleyball team in Rome. When he landed, he snapped his neck.

A San Diego sportscaster was suspended for a week without pay after nearly calling Danica Patrick a bad word before her Sprint Cup Series debut in the Daytona 500. Ross Shimabuku, who is at Fox affiliate KSWB-TV, showed a video clip Feb. 20 in which Patrick objects to being called sexy. Then he came up with his own word to describe her. "It's starts with a 'b' and it's not 'beautiful,' " he said. Shimabuku apologized for his comment the next day. MORE: San Diego State dismisses USC transfer Dillon Baxter Ben Howland confident he'll return as UCLA basketball coach UCLA's Dan Guerrero will wait before committing to Ben Howland  

I learned something in watching Israeli TV coverage of the European basketball championships while in Jerusalem recently. I learned that you don't necessarily need sportscasters on a sports telecast. The Israelis had them, but we didn't talk the same language. Unable to understand the Hebrew-speaking announcers doing the games, however, I still could follow the action merely from the pictures. It was simple: The ball either went in the hoop or it didn't.

Longtime sportscaster Keith Jackson was inducted into the Southern California Sportscasters Hall of Fame on Monday at the group's annual awards luncheon at Lakeside Country Club, then turned around during his acceptance speech and donated $5,000 to the group. Jackson, whose broadcasting roots are in Los Angeles, made the donation to help the group's annual scholarship program, which is designed to give college students starts in the industry.

Viewers demand no journalism from sportscasters. And in most cases, nothing is exactly what they get. The cupboard's bareness is especially visible on a local level. A brief history of the genre: The early, pre-color days of television brought Phase I: sportscasting yokels who wore crew cuts and bow ties as they sat in front of a camera and did little more than give the scores and regurgitate wire reports.

Sportscaster Fred Roggin has checked into an unidentified drug rehabilitation hospital because of chemical dependency, Channel 4 General Manager Reed Manville said late Tuesday night. "He sought help on his own and management is behind him 100%," Manville said. "There is probably no other sportscaster in town who works as hard, and we feel somewhat responsible because of the stress we put him under."

America needs another talk show this summer like it needs another Democratic or Republican national convention. But here's one anyway. It began this week, 30 minutes of wee-hours talk at 1:30 a.m., Mondays through Thursdays on NBC (Channels 4, 36 and 39). The title is "Later With Bob Costas." Later and littler, unfortunately.

Sportscaster Stu Nahan, fired by Channel 4 two years ago, returns to television next Monday at Channel 5. Channel 5 announced Tuesday that Nahan, who will remain at KABC radio, will do the weeknight sports report on the 10 o'clock news. Nahan replaces Keith Olbermann, who, as expected, is leaving the station and going to Channel 2. Although Channel 2 made no announcement regarding Olbermann Tuesday, he is expected to start there Monday, Aug. 29. His last day at Channel 5 will be Friday.

Alan Sues, the actor best known as a flamboyantly campy regular on "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" in the late 1960s and early '70s, has died. He was 85. Sues died Thursday night while watching television at his home in West Hollywood, said Michael Gregg Michaud, a longtime friend. "He had been in failing health the last couple of years, but it was nothing you could put your finger on; just old age," said Michaud. "Mentally, he was funny and 'on' as usual. He was a delightfully funny man, with a wonderful career that spanned six decades.

When ABC Sports guru Roone Arledge was suggesting Howard Cosell for "Monday Night Football," NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle replied: "Cosell? Why don't you just dig up Attila the Hun?" Such was the reaction generated by modern broadcasting's first Category 5 hurricane: How-wuuuud Co-sellll. The way he pronounced his own name dripped with chutzpah and self-promotion. In his day, Cosell may have been the most mocked man in America. If the very memory of his nasal delivery is a form of aural torture, this book may not be for you. But if you remember Cosell as some sort of broadcasting pioneer, brave and occasionally brilliant, Mark Ribowsky's new tome is worth your time.

Former KTUU-TV sports director, John Hernandez, had no idea his former intern was sitting governor of Alaska until a friend "connected the dots for me. " He knew her as 24-year-old Sarah Heath, who made her sportscasting debut on Super Bowl Sunday in 1988. RELATED: Read the Palin emails "I remember a time WAY BACK WHEN when I took you under my wing," Hernandez reminisces in an email to the Governor in August 2008. Hernandez added he would "welcome the opportunity to see you again some day and – at the very least – to talk with you on the phone soon.

In sports, in broadcasting, in politics, there is no getting around it. When someone leaves a team or a booth or an office, we must speculate. Who comes next? Who will be the next center fielder? The next anchor? The next senator? The next voice of the Angels? Rory Markas, a man of subtle humor, pleasing tone and acknowledged professionalism, died suddenly and unexpectedly Monday night. He had suffered a brain aneurysm in November 2008, recovered, broadcast an entire Angels season in 2009, was well into this USC basketball season and was getting ready to be the full-time, regular television play-by-play man for the Angels in 2010.

George Michael, a high-rated and hyper-animated Washington, D.C., sportscaster whose extensive use of game highlights from across the country on his nationally syndicated show has now become the norm in the industry, died Thursday at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington. He was 70 and had chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Michael was a popular rock 'n' roll DJ in Philadelphia and New York before making a successful transition to television, where his boisterous style and unremitting hustle made him one of the dominant personalities in Washington for years.

Steve Physioc and Rex Hudler won't be broadcasting Angels games anymore. Physioc and Hudler have been told jointly by FS West and the Angels that they will not be part of the Angels' on-air team next season. A statement by Fox and the Angels said that Rory Markas and Mark Gubicza will be the television voices for the team on FS West and KCOP next season, and Terry Smith and Jose Mota will do the radio on KLAA AM 830. Physioc, 54, who has called baseball for 25 years for the San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants, Cincinnati Reds and ESPN, said the news was "a total shock.

NBC's Dick Enberg was pressed into double duty Sunday when Bob Costas came down with a severe case of the flu. Costas was so sick Sunday morning that he checked himself into a Denver hospital. Enberg, besides calling the game, also had to take Costas' place on the pregame and postgame shows. Then Ralph Wiley, who was scheduled to conduct postgame interviews in the Cleveland locker room, was stricken with the flu during the game.

Not since college has sportscaster Todd Donoho worked exclusively in radio, but his bosses at ESPN don't consider him inexperienced. They want him to do the same things he's done for 25 years on television--just without the cameras rolling. So "The Todd Donoho Show With Dave Stone," which airs weekdays from 1 to 4 p.m. on KSPN-AM (1110), the area's ESPN Radio affiliate, became the station's second local program.

Buddy Blattner, a former major leaguer and longtime sportscaster who paired with Don Wells on the Angels' KMPC radio broadcasts from 1962 to 1968, has died. He was 89. Blattner, a St. Louis native who spent most of his life in the Midwest, died Friday of complications from lung cancer at his home in Chesterfield, Mo., said his wife, Barbara. A gifted athlete, Blattner was a world champion table tennis player as a teenager before switching to baseball. In retirement he took up tennis, winning many national senior tournaments.

The cramped broadcast booth for AM 680, the Spanish-language outlet for the American League champion Tampa Bay Rays, is close enough to the infield of Tropicana Field to hear it all. The crack of the bat, the ball's loud pop as it is snared by the second baseman, the crowd cheering. Enrique Oliu, color analyst for the Rays' radio broadcasts, takes these sounds and spins them to life, making the game something a listener can see, even if he cannot. Oliu is blind. "And now, for the play-by-play, here's the friend of apple pie, Ricky Taveras!"