“Sports Geniuses”: This week’s debut of this challenging, new, nightly sports trivia game show (6 p.m. weeknights, Fox Sports Net) gives me the opportunity to mention that I really dislike what has happened to the old SportsChannel as it morphed into a part of the Fox nationwide sports operation.
The fine work of Keith Olbermann on the network’s flagship highlight show notwithstanding, it has lost much of its local, sports-geek charm and now has a smarmy, show-bizzy, L.A. feel. Fox Sports Net seems mostly to consist of people who are smart enough to recognize why ESPN is good, but not quite smart enough to do that work themselves.
Two further strikes against Fox Sports Net: 1. It, you may recall, is the place that hired Jon Kelley from WMAQ-Ch. 5 so that he could continue his on-air assaults on language and logic. Our gain is the nation’s loss.
2. The network’s star, after Olbermann, is a still-goateed fellow named Jim Rome, who is all frat-boy bluster and stomach-turning faux chumminess with the athletes he interviews on his nightly show “The Last Word” (6:30 p.m.). During their chat, for instance, he and the Cubs’ Mark Grace were calling each other, over and over, “Gracie” and “Romie.” Pepto-Bismol, please.
Rome gives the illusion of substance with a nightly opinion piece, but his blandly stated thoughts mostly echo conventional wisdom and go after safe targets.
