NBC will launch a monthly Bob Costas interview show on NBC Sports Network, the channel currently called Versus. The monthly, hour-long show will debut in the spring and feature interviews with celebrities, newsmakers and sports stars. The show will be supplemented with quarterly Town Hall-style shows that will discuss sports issues of the day in front of a live audience. The first of these two shows, "Costas Tonight: Live from the Super Bowl," is scheduled for Feb. 2 at 8:00 p.m. ET from Indianapolis (John Ourand, THE DAILY). Costas said the meetings “will attempt to, in a lively way, address for the most part substantive issues, sometimes they’ll be a celebration of aspects of sports." Some will be more humorous than others, but the balance will be journalistic.” He added, “For lack of a better description, it will be like a Larry King-Piers Morgan format.” Costas said that the idea of working on NBC’s cable side “was first broached by Dick Ebersol, the former longtime chairman of NBC Sports, who resigned earlier this year.” Costas added that “none of his shows will focus entirely on baseball as a courtesy to his other employer, the MLB Network” (N.Y. TIMES, 11/9).
