Starting Wednesday, Roy Firestone will have a lot more opportunities to make athletes cry.
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America Online has signed Firestone to a one-year deal that gives the former ESPN host a weekly interview talk show on AOL for Broadband. The first interview, with NASCAR driver Tony Stewart, will be available online on Wednesday.
AOL executives confirmed the deal, which is expected to be announced this week, but declined to disclose financial terms.
AOL late last year hired Firestone on a temporary basis, and the positive response from interviews with Shaquille O’Neal and Barry Sanders prompted AOL executives to employ Firestone for its Super Bowl coverage. AOL for Broadband had 500,000 streams of Firestone’s Super Bowl interviews with Tom Brady, Warren Sapp and several other players, according to Carlos Silva, senior vice president of news and sports for AOL programming.
Since the Super Bowl, AOL executives have tapped Firestone to do interviews around major sporting events. The new contract is part of an overall effort to give AOL for Broadband’s 3 million members more consistent access to major news and sports journalism personalities, Silva said.
Although Firestone’s show will be a weekly feature, AOL will stray from that schedule initially to present two other NASCAR interviews, with Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick, before this weekend’s Coca-Cola 600.
The interviews will be available on a separate page devoted to Firestone, who as host of ESPN’s “Up Close” elicited many emotional interviews with athletes.
