Though the Eagles get an A for making the playoffs for the second year in a row, some of their television shows didn't make the grade during the regular season.

By LAURA NACHMAN
Courier Times
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Though the Eagles get an A for making the playoffs for the second year in a row, some of their television shows didn't make the grade during the regular season.

The worst were the two productions of the team's Eagles Television Network, "The Andy Reid Show" and "The Donovan McNabb Show."

You knew your social life wasn't going well if you were home to watch "The Andy Reid Show" on Saturday night at 10:30. The show, which aired an hour before "Saturday Night Live," was like "Saturday Night Dead," with the coach answering queries from the host, Dave "Leave Tough Questions at the Door" Spadaro, who conveniently happens to be an employee of the team. The producers evidently believed that using MTV-style camera shots would make us forget that we were watching a conversation between two guys sitting at a desk.

Even more disappointing was "The Donovan McNabb Show," which should be called "The Donovan McNap Show." We expect Reid to be boring, but McNabb's Chunky soup commercials were more entertaining than watching the quarterback and always-bland host Beasley Reese do the interview/highlights dance. Once again, the producers believed that watching Reese and McNabb have a conversation with crazy camera angles was supposed to make everything more interesting.

As for some of the other shows, the only reason to watch the Andy Reid news conference (Mondays at noon on CSN) was to see how badly the sports writers dressed. Fox Philadelphia's "Game Day Live" thankfully wasn't a production of the Eagles, but had plenty of cheerleading from host Don Tollefson. However, its "Writers Roundtable" segment usually provided some criticism of the team. Finally, "Eagles Post Game Live" on CSN after each game did an admirable job micro-analyzing every aspect of the contest with Michael Barkann, Vaughn "G.Q." Hebron, Ray (it's OK to smile) Didinger and Ed Rendell.

Deja vu all over again

For the third time this season, ESPN's Sunday night team of Mike Patrick, Joe Theismann, Paul Maguire and Suzy Kolber will call an Eagles game when they do the Tampa Bay-Philadelphia wild-card game tomorrow on ABC. Luckily, the inferior ABC Sports "Monday Night Football" crew of Al Michaels, Dan Fouts, Dennis Miller, Eric Dickerson and Melissa Stark was assigned the Jets-Raiders game.

Cosell-ivision

Howard Cosell is depicted on screen for the third time in less than a year in the made-for-TV movie "Monday Night Mayhem" airing Monday on TNT. John Turturro plays Cosell in the flick about the beginning of "Monday Night Football." Turturro follows Jon Voight, who played Cosell in "Ali," and Fred Willard, who unsuccessfully portrayed him in "When Billie Beat Bobby" on ABC last spring.

Ron Burke, an original hire of CSN in 1997, has returned for his second tour of duty after a two-year stint at NBA.com TV.

Laura Nachman writes about television and radio sports for the Courier Times. Write her in care of the Courier Times, 8400 Route 13, Levittown, PA 19057, fax 215-949-4177 or e-mail bradyresident@aol.com.

Friday, January 11, 2002