If you’re reading this column, you are likely familiar with Lisa Salters, given her work over the past 10 seasons on “Monday Night Football.” Though multiple play-by-play and analyst changes, Salters has been the on-air constant since 2012 on ESPN’s most important game property.
While Salters has earned praise for her work on “Monday Night Football,” “Outside The Lines” and various E-60 projects, basketball is actually her biggest sports passion. Salters played basketball at Penn State University for two seasons, and has been part of NBA coverage on ESPN and ABC since 2005. Her NBA television role traditionally ended after the second round of the playoffs, as Doris Burke served as the sideline reporter for ESPN/ ABC’s coverage of the conference finals and NBA Finals.
That changes this year. Salters has the plum assignment of being the on-court reporter for the NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics. The series will air exclusively on ABC, beginning with Game 1 tonight at 9 pm ET (All NBA Finals games will air on ABC, ESPN Radio, ESPN Deportes and the ESPN App and Game 1 will include an ESPN2 alternate presentation called “NBA Finals: Celebrating 75.”)
Salters was previously a courtside reporter for the 2006 NBA Finals, filling for Michelle Tafoya (who was on maternity leave) for the Heat-Mavericks final. She returns to that assignment 16 years later.
“I’d like to think that it was the time that I put in, that I waited patiently in the wings behind Doris Burke and now it’s my turn,” Salters said. “That’s the simplest way I could put it. The wait wasn’t as excruciating because I was doing ‘Monday Night Football.’ When you’re assigned to the company’s biggest platform and biggest stage, you certainly can lament about what you don’t have but it’s pretty hard to overlook the fact that I get to do ‘Monday Night Football’ every year and have for the last 10 years Back in 2005, when I was asked to the sidelines for our NBA coverage, I was over the moon about it and have loved every second of it.”
The role comes at a very good time professionally. Salters just re-signed with ESPN for four years. She isn’t contractually assigned to any properties — she works under the principle of not giving management any reason to make changes — but it would be very surprising not to see her on “Monday Night Football” for years given the new booth. Salters said she has never met Troy Aikman and has interacted in person Joe Buck once or twice through his wife Michelle Buck-Beisner, who works as a reporter at ESPN. Both Buck and Aikman reached out to Salters upon moving from Fox to ESPN to begin the process of finding some chemistry.
“I think sometime over the summer we will spend time together,” Salters said. “Those guys are so professional and awesome and cool that they reached out to me right away. Both of those guys got my number and hit me up saying how much they were looking forward to being part of the Monday Night team and to work with me, which meant a lot. I have no doubt there will be an instant camaraderie and chemistry.”
When a company wants to make major changes with their announcing teams, those changes are usually across the board. So it says something that ESPN has kept Salters in that position through multiple play-by-play changes (Mike Tirico, Joe Tessitore, Sean McDonough and Buck) and analysts (Jon Gruden, Booger McFarland, Jason Witten, Brian Griese, Louis Riddick and Aikman).
“That has not been lost on me,” Salters said. “I am extremely grateful and appreciative that they had not felt the need to make a change. I know that sometimes changes are made just for change’s sake. I get that. I feel like I haven’t given them a reason. Just the opposite. I’ve given them reasons to keep me around and I’d like to think that they believe they have the best person in the spot. As long as they believe that, I have to keep living up to that, which is why I can’t mail it in.”
I consider this the most important podcast I’ve done in a long time. Episode 210 of the Sports Media Podcast features writer John Woodrow Cox, an enterprise reporter for The Washington Post who has focused on the impact of gun violence on children. Cox is also the author of a book on the subject, “Children Under Fire: An American Crisis.” In this podcast, Cox discusses his reporting on children experiencing gun violence; what school shootings do to the kids who survive them; how to interview kids who experience trauma; what solutions could work; should media outlets show what bullets do to bodies; why good guys with guns have routinely failed to stop bad guys with guns who are intent on murdering school children; and the effect on reporters who report on gun violence.
You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and more.
Some big Premier League moves on the announcing side: Telemundo Deportes announced on Wednesday that Carlota Vizmanos will serve as the network’s lead host for Premier League coverage, including the pre- and post-match shows “La Liga Premier: Extra” and “3er Tiempo.” As far as NBC’s coverage goes, Peter Drury will replace Arlo White as the company’s lead Premier League announcer.
ESPN said the Celtics’ victory over the Heat in Game 7 on Sunday averaged 9.875 million viewers, the most-watched Conference Finals game on ESPN in four years, according to Nielsen. The series averaged 6.978 million viewers, which was up 40 percent from last year’s Eastern Conference Finals. You can thank an excellent matchup — and seven games — along with out-of-home viewing.
Episode 211 of the Sports Media Podcast features two guests. First up is Chad Finn, the sports media writer and general columnist for The Boston Globe. He is followed by Louise Radnofsky, a sports reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Her piece, “Testing Positive in Zero-Covid China” was about being isolated under aggressive policies in China during the Olympics. In this podcast, Finn and Deitsch discuss how we see the popularity of a Celtics-Warriors NBA Finals; what historical trends mean for this series; whether ESPN has found the right fit for its NBA studio programming; Greg Olsen officially being named as Fox’s No. 1 NFL analyst; NESN’s new direct-to-consumer product for the Red Sox and Bruins and more. Radnofsky discussed her piece on testing positive 19 hours after arriving in Beijing on Feb. 4 to cover figure skating at the 2022 Olympic Games; being part of Chinese policies that call for centralized isolation; how she and the Journal navigated her testing positive; her reporting on Britney Griner being held in Russia; the public campaign to advocate for Griner; the challenge of reporting on Griner’s situation; the future of USA Gymnastics; and the earnings potential of college gymnasts.
You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and more.
CBS Sports’ coverage of the Champions League Final was the most-watched UEFA Champions League Final in history for English-language coverage in the US Real Madrid’s win over Liverpool averaged 2.761 million viewers on CBS, up 23 percent versus last year’s Final. On Tuesday I did a deep dive on how CBS’s Champions League coverage handled the kickoff delay and chaos outside the stadium prior to the match.
F1 viewership continues to increase. ESPN said its race coverage between ESPN’s networks and ABC has averaged 1.4 million viewers this year, way up from the 948,000 average through the first seven races of the 2021 season and up 45 percent over the 949,000 season-long average for 2021.
(Top photo: AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
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