{"id":1584,"date":"2025-10-22T23:47:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T23:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/?p=1584"},"modified":"2025-10-22T23:50:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T23:50:20","slug":"happy-birthday-to-a-sports-television-dynasty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/sports-media\/happy-birthday-to-a-sports-television-dynasty\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday To A Sports Television Dynasty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Pardon the Interruption, but I&#8217;m Mike Wilbon, and welcome to Opening Day in this bizarre television experiment.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And I&#8217;m Tony Kornheiser, and if we can have a TV show&#8230;YOU can have a TV show.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Those words on ESPN at 5:30 pm 24 years ago today kicked off one of the most endurable brands in sports television history: <em>Pardon the Interruption<\/em>.\u00a0 Featuring a pair of long-time <em>Washington Post<\/em> columnists, Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon took what has been pervasive in sports since the invention of sports &#8211; guys yapping about who has the better opinion about every sports subject &#8211; and turned it into loud, compelling (and did we mention loud) content.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gVZkH__gDRY?si=Hdv409jEwVZ2rlyI\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>PTI Brought Many Firsts To Television<\/h2>\n<h3>The show started the debate format in sports television<\/h3>\n<p>In the nearly quarter-century since the show&#8217;s debut, so much has happened in the sports world.\u00a0 Leagues have expanded.\u00a0 Seasons have been shortened (or lost) due to work stoppages.\u00a0 Cable television has been overtaken by streaming services.\u00a0 And of course, social media was invented, basically to let everyone broadcast their own takes.\u00a0 But PTI has soldiered on.<\/p>\n<p>Wilbon and Kornheiser have changed as well.\u00a0 Mike dealt with health issues, and had a son, Matthew, who&#8217;s now a high schooler with his own opinions on the games.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 They have, like the show, soldiered on.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p>Turns out, they both were loud wrong on that one.<\/p>\n<h3>Format standards started with PTI<\/h3>\n<p>So many things that have become the standards in &#8220;sports debate television&#8221; began with Pardon The Interruption.\u00a0 The rundown?\u00a0 That was PTI.\u00a0 The countdown timer for topics?\u00a0 That was them as well.\u00a0 Having the stones to admit the mistakes they made during the show?\u00a0 And to have a kid they lovingly but mockingly called &#8220;Stat Boy&#8221; point it out?\u00a0 Yep, Tony and Mike did that first.<\/p>\n<p>It was because of PTI&#8217;s success that the other debate shows on television were created.\u00a0 The first was Around the Horn, first hosted by Max Kellerman and then by the aforementioned &#8220;Stat Boy&#8221; aka Tony Reali, whose two-decade run ended in May.\u00a0 Then came First Take.\u00a0 Then all the FS1 shows.<\/p>\n<p>But only one got a congratulations on its 20th anniversary from former President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tzra-Saubhk?si=9LMXt4DrAjh3BhuO\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>And while shows have come and gone, it looks like Kornheiser and Wilbon will still be soldiering on.\u00a0 Both have signed <a  href=\"https:\/\/espnpressroom.com\/us\/press-releases\/2025\/09\/tony-kornheiser-and-michael-wilbon-sign-new-multi-year-extensions-with-espn-2\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">multi-year extensions<\/a> with ESPN to remain at least through the show&#8217;s 25th year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Pardon the Interruption, but I&#8217;m Mike Wilbon, and welcome to Opening Day in this bizarre television experiment.&#8221; &#8220;And I&#8217;m Tony Kornheiser, and if we can have a TV show&#8230;YOU can have a TV show.&#8221; Those words on ESPN at 5:30 pm 24 years ago today kicked off one of the most endurable brands in sports [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5660,"featured_media":1585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[267,238,266],"tags":[75,321,322,320],"class_list":["post-1584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-espn","category-sports-media","category-networks","tag-featured","tag-michael-wilbon","tag-pardon-the-interruption","tag-tony-kornheiser"],"modified_by":"Steve Carney","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5660"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1584"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1589,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584\/revisions\/1589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}