With the possible exception of the failure to name the upcoming Mark Schlereth situation comedy, “Stank Block Bologna”, there has been no more disturbing development in the world of television than the recently announced plans to turn the life of ESPN Radio’s mid-morning creep Colin Cowherd into a show with greater longevity than “Listen Up”. ESPN’s Front Row site was launched with the specific purpose of provided a non-critical, fully-promotional vehicle for such endeavors (because lord knows, there’s nothing else on the channel, website or radio station that routinely trades in self-promotional) and with that in mind, we can’t really expect Bill Hofheimer to do the right thing and beat Cowherd to death with a shovel actually challenge the subject of what we’ll loosely call an interview :
FR: How did this all come about?
Cowherd: About two years ago, Eric Tannenbaum, a producer from Two and A Half Men, called my agent and asked to meet with me. He said he listened to my dialogue on a daily basis and thought there might be a sitcom in there about a workaholic kind of guy that has high-energy women in his life. Slowly, over the course of a few years we agreed that maybe there was something and we decided to give it a run.
FR: What show would you compare to yours?
Cowherd: News Radio and a little Home Improvement with Tim Allen, where you see some of that home strife. The great thing about News Radio is you never heard the radio. It was all about relationships. Our show is not about a radio show. It’s about a guy who does radio, but I might as well be a mayor. It’s a public job where my character’s got some power, and he has none of it at home, and kind of the issues surrounding that with my wife and me in the middle. It’s funny. It’s spicy. It’s real.