“Pardon the Interruption, but I’m Mike Wilbon, and welcome to Opening Day in this bizarre television experiment.”
“And I’m Tony Kornheiser, and if we can have a TV show…YOU can have a TV show.”
Those words on ESPN at 5:30 pm 24 years ago today kicked off one of the most endurable brands in sports television history: Pardon the Interruption. Featuring a pair of long-time Washington Post columnists, Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon took what has been pervasive in sports since the invention of sports – guys yapping about who has the better opinion about every sports subject – and turned it into loud, compelling (and did we mention loud) content.
PTI Brought Many Firsts To Television
The show started the debate format in sports television
In the nearly quarter-century since the show’s debut, so much has happened in the sports world. Leagues have expanded. Seasons have been shortened (or lost) due to work stoppages. Cable television has been overtaken by streaming services. And of course, social media was invented, basically to let everyone broadcast their own takes. But PTI has soldiered on.
Wilbon and Kornheiser have changed as well. Mike dealt with health issues, and had a son, Matthew, who’s now a high schooler with his own opinions on the games. Tony has gotten by his own admission balder and more orange, and most days joins the show from his attic, where he had a camera set up when the show went remote due to COVID. They have, like the show, soldiered on.
Both have talked about how they thought the show would never work, that no one wanted to watch two guys sit at a table and spout off about what they knew and what the other didn’t know.
Turns out, they both were loud wrong on that one.
Format standards started with PTI
So many things that have become the standards in “sports debate television” began with Pardon The Interruption. The rundown? That was PTI. The countdown timer for topics? That was them as well. Having the stones to admit the mistakes they made during the show? And to have a kid they lovingly but mockingly called “Stat Boy” point it out? Yep, Tony and Mike did that first.
It was because of PTI’s success that the other debate shows on television were created. The first was Around the Horn, first hosted by Max Kellerman and then by the aforementioned “Stat Boy” aka Tony Reali, whose two-decade run ended in May. Then came First Take. Then all the FS1 shows.
But only one got a congratulations on its 20th anniversary from former President Barack Obama.
And while shows have come and gone, it looks like Kornheiser and Wilbon will still be soldiering on. Both have signed multi-year extensions with ESPN to remain at least through the show’s 25th year.
