Last season, CBS Sports’ number two NFL team was Ian Eagle, Dan Fouts, and Jenny Dell. (The first string was Jim Nantz, Phil Simms and Tracy Wolfson) This season, Jenny Dell will partner with Carter Blackburn and Aaron Taylor to form CBS’ lead college football announcer team.
On one hand, Dell moves from a second string announce team to a first string, on their junior varsity network. That’s one way of looking at it.
However, looking at it realistically and accurately, it’s a big step down. Like Brad Daugherty famously said “the NFL slaughters everything in America” and the NFL on CBS is a package containing some of the league’s top games.
Jenny Dell will be on the CBS Sports Network first choice team; NOT CBS on regular, free, over the air tv.
CBS and FOX are the co-leaders in broadcasting the top NFL games each season, while college football overwhelmingly belongs to ESPN/ABC.
While CBS has a nice SEC package, and FOX is making some strides in college football, the Disney owned networks pretty much have hegemony here.
The NFL on CBS was Dell’s first new gig since her controversial and highly publicized exit from NESN in 2014. Jenny Dell had some issues towards the end of her first season in the new role at CBS too, as chronicled by the Boston Globe.
She wasn’t the only one, as Otis Livingston made some substantial gaffes too.
Finn writes:
Let’s just say neither Dell nor Livingston did much to affirm CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus’s decision this year to use sideline reporters on NFL coverage for the first time since 2006.
McManus, who had said in the past that the role diverts attention unnecessarily from the rest of the broadcast, reconsidered in part because the network picked up the Thursday night package, and a sideline reporter is a standard element of a prime-time or postseason broadcast. CBS wanted Thursdays to have that big-game feel.
As Finn pointed out, Dell came very close to committing plagiarism. At best, it’s horrendously bad incompetence and journalistic malfeasance.
Jenny Dell brings a lot of skills to the broadcast table, but she’s not a journalist, and never has been. Reporting isn’t one of her strong suits; reading promos is.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network, the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America and RG.org. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Washington Post and ESPN. You can follow him on Linked In and Twitter.