MSNBC's "The Big Show" broadcast live from Jacobs Field
in Cleveland last night, with Keith Olbermann interviewing
Cleveland Mayor Michael White, Cleveland Plain Dealer
columnist Dick Feagler and NBC's Bob Costas (THE DAILY).
HELLO, CLEVELAND: Mayor White said the Indians' playoff
run and the World Series "will contribute about" $51M to the
Cleveland economy. White: "But it also gives us a chance to
show our city to more than a thousand media types from all
over the world, to show what Cleveland is today versus what
it was just a few, short years ago." White, on the city's
new sports facilities: "It's far more than sports. ... It's
about economic development first. It's about creating jobs.
It's about creating ancillary spinoffs before it is about
sports." White added that with the new Browns stadium, the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and other new attractions, "we're
creating a destination, which will not only bring people
here to see what we have but will give us the ability to use
it as a link to our convention and business industry in this
town. So for us the sports is about business and the
business is sports and how we use it as a generator." NBC's
Costas, on public stadium financing: "My feeling is that in
some situations you can justify building a new stadium if
its well thought out and if the team itself contributes to
the building of the stadium" ("The Big Show," MSNBC, 10/20).
WHAT ABOUT IT, BOB? More Costas, on MLB's divisional
series: "The divisional playoffs have been a television
bust. They get very low ratings by network television
standards, and I would contend they diminish the ratings of
the League Championship Series and maybe even the first few
games of the World Series, because the World Series is
beginning to feel like the baseball finals -- like the end
of a protracted process instead of something special that
stood alone and unique in American sports" (MSNBC, 10/20).
