You might say Hannah Storm and her husband Dan Hicks are both back in the swim. As Storm begins hosting ESPN's new live weekday SportsCenter Monday in the 9 a.m. to noon/ET timeslot, Hicks is on the other side of the world calling Olympic swimming events in Beijing for NBC.
"It's a funny parallel, because he does swimming every four years," says Storm, an NBC Sports veteran who has also worked the Olympics. "We were talking about how you've got to crank those muscles back up and try to remember what it's like. It's the same thing here. I haven't done sports in a long time, haven't done a highlight-intensive show since my CNN years Then boom, you're doing it on SportsCenter, the greatest, most iconic franchise show in sports television."
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ESPN held its upfront presentation Tuesday morning at the Nokia Theater in New York. Anchors Scott Van Pelt and Steve Levy hosted the event as a mock SportsCenter episode. The 80-minute presentation was light on programming announcements, but the biggest news was the addition of a block of live SportsCenters from 6 am to 3 pm/ET, beginning Monday, Aug. 11. A new web site, SportsCenter.com, will also debut in August. It was also confirmed that The Early Show's Hannah Storm will be one of the new anchors for this block. In other SportsCenter news, a 1 am/ET edition produced live in Los Angeles, will premiere on April 9, 2009.Other new programming includes ESPN Homecoming, an profile/interview show with Rick Reilly, who the network poached from Sports Illustrated last fall.Features reporter, deadpan "comedian" and Dancing With the Stars vet Kenny Mayne will host a new humor show for espn.com called Mayne Street.ESPN will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2009 with "30 For 30," a series...
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Hannah Storm, who left CBS' floundering Early Show last fall, is returning to her sports roots. According to Sports Illustrated's web site, Storm will anchor a new live morning edition of SportsCenter. The 45-year-old Storm worked for NBC Sports from 1992-2002, anchoring coverage from the Olympics, the NBA and Wimbledon, among other events.ESPN is expected to formally announce the news at tomorrow's upfront presentation in New York.
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CBS News has named Maggie Rodriguez to replace Hannah Storm as coanchor of The Early Show. Rodriguez is getting a shot on the weekday show after impressing CBS News brass with her work as a fill-in and as coanchor of the The Saturday Early Show. "In the past six months, Maggie has proved to be a remarkably good fit in morning news," CBS News president Sean McManus said in a statement. Rodriguez was a veteran of local news in Miami and Los Angeles before joining the network earlier this year. She joins Early Show coanchors Harry Smith and Julie Chen on Jan. 7. — Stephen Battaglio
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Hannah Storm is leaving her coanchor chair at CBS' The Early Show. The news division announced today that she will move into a new role at CBS News. A former sports reporter and studio host for NBC, Storm joined The Early Show in 2002, when the program moved to a multi-anchor format. A CBS News spokeswoman had no comment on whether Storm will be replaced. But the talk inside the news division is that execs are high on Maggie Rodriguez, a former Miami news anchor who has been coanchor of The Saturday Early Show since June 2007. It's likely she'll be moved over to the weekday program. — Stephen Battaglio
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