Bob Costas

Sports Broadcaster

"For years, when I broke in, I thought that my first name was Irreverent. I was the Irreverent Bob Costas. Then, all of the sudden, I became the Venerable Bob Costas. People like easy labels and caricatures and categories they can toss people into. I think if people watch what I do, they see that there’s a lot of lightheartedness in it. There’s some goofiness and irreverence. I hope it all fits within a style that has some texture to it."

About This Interview

Bob Costas was interviewed for one-and-a-half hours in New York, NY. Costas talked about his interest at a very early age in sports broadcasting. He described his approach to sportscasting, with a “knowledgeable fan” in mind as a target audience. He chronicled his early jobs as a play-by-play announcer, and his hiring by Don Ohlmeyer for NBC Sports. He talked about his consciousness in striving to be authoritative on television at first, then eventually (following a talk with Ohlmeyer) allowing his personality to come through in his work. He described various aspects of sports play-by-play: prepping for a broadcast, splitting his view between the field and the monitor on air, and the importance of historical sports knowledge. He outlined his expanded work at NBC, starting with Today and then Later with Bob Costas (commenting on his roster of guests). Other topics covered were: his appearances on David Letterman’ s show, some of the memorable games he covered, helming On the Record with Bob Costas, and hosting The Olympics (enumerating each of the Games he oversaw). The interview was conducted by Karen Herman on October 24, 2008.