|
Nalod
Posts: 72390
Alba Posts: 155
Joined: 12/24/2003
Member: #508
USA
|
Did anyone catch "Stars on Stars"? Anyone realize he paid to have the show aired? Im looking on Youtube if anyone got it. March 10, 2007
TV Sports
Marbury’s Talk Show May Need a Remake
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Stephon Marbury’s new talk show, “Stars on Stars,” on Fox Sports Net gives the Knicks’ point guard a different image, but it’s doubtful he wants to be seen as a star-struck host. His guest on the first episode, which aired yesterday, was as polished as Marbury was raw. Kobe Bryant’s enthusiastic responses to a half hour of soft questions led the Lakers’ star to rave, “The best show I’ve ever done.”
Marbury has a 13-week series on F.S.N., which is surprising because of his dyspeptic, combative demeanor that has yielded brutal candor, like the return salvos last season against Knicks Coach Larry Brown. Marbury is in the midst of remaking his public persona with help from his popular line of inexpensive Starbury sneakers, an apparently well-executed business idea.
His brand of anti-Nikeism makes you want to like him, but in the news media prism through which he is viewed, Marbury is more sour than sweet.
“Stars on Stars” offers a gregarious, smiling, easygoing and thrilled-to-meet you Marbury, which might be his private style with his pals. But it has no edge or élan. He lets Bryant take the conversation wherever he wants, whether it is buying diapers for his daughter or scoring 81 points in a game.
“I didn’t feel like I was in the zone,” Bryant tells Marbury.
“Come on, man, you don’t feel like you was in the zone at all during the game?” Marbury asks, with a smile. Not until the fourth quarter, Bryant said.
Marbury has much to learn about being a host. His role is to guide and cajole, not be guided. He needs to be less in awe and more in control. He needs help with his grammar if he is to be the central authority of the series.
He needs to prepare his questions more carefully rather than appear to think them through as they are emerging from his lips.
His speech is peppered with the verbal tics of everyday talk: he says “like,” and “I mean” a lot. If he wants to banish those verbal enemies, he needs a lot of off-the-air practice, but this series is on-the-job training for a neophyte. He must be aware that someone as beloved as Magic Johnson was not prepared to be a talk-show host. Nor was Chevy Chase.
For an interview show with a current athlete as host to work, he must use his status to get something different out of them than they would tell Bob Costas, Jim Gray, Jim Rome or Len Berman. And Marbury can’t be satisfied with the possible exclusive that Bryant can make his daughter’s pigtails.
There is something charming about hearing two men discuss their children and what to do if they want to sleep in their parents’ bed. So the ambition of providing a glimpse of his guests’ family lives should not be abandoned. And let’s not forget about pursuing unrevealed household skills, which started with Marbury’s confession that he can iron.
It is a given that a contemporary athlete is not going to trample his guests or ask embarrassing questions, which is why Marbury’s role is a rare one. But even in the most congenial one-on-one exchange, it is not a sin to ask Bryant about Shaquille O’Neal or initiate a discussion about Bryant’s up-and-down-and-up relationship with his coach, Phil Jackson, and Marbury’s own season-long meltdown with Brown.
F.S.N. is not paying a fee to carry the series; the production house, Fastbreak Entertainment, paid for the time to show the episodes, of which five are done. Presumably, F.S.N. officials will seek major improvements.
E-mail: sportsbiz@nytimes.com
|
