NBC's KREMER -- ESPN Mistreating MNF Reporters

(From The USA Today -- By Michael Hiestand)

NBC's ANDREA KREMER is in a shrinking club -- NFL sideline reporters -- and doesn't like the contraction.

With CBS having already dropped its NFL sideline reports, ESPN this week said that its MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL sideliners -- SUZY KOLBER and MICHELE TAFOYA -- will continue to go to game sites and likely appear in pregame and postgame coverage -- but might not appear at all on games.

Says Kremer, who worked at ESPN for 17 years before joining NBC -- "They were doing the role that ESPN asked them to do -- more feature-ish stuff -- and they were fired for it? If you don't like them in that role, change their role. Don't humiliate them like that. The way (ESPN) handled it was terrible, just disrespectful. They treated two professionals in a completely non-professional way."

FRED GAUDELLI, who now produces NBC's SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL and worked with Kolber and Tafoya when he produced Monday Night Football when it was on ABC, suggests this is just ESPN's latest "mismanagement" of MNF.

He says ESPN "could have" kept announcers AL MICHAELS and JOHN MADDEN when MNF left ABC.

But, he says, "I just don't think the people there making these decisions know how a live event gets put on television. They know studio shows. But the people making the decisions just don't understand live events. They're not equipped to make these decisions. If they left things to (producer) JAY ROTHMAN, they'd be better off." (Rothman replaced Gaudelli as ESPN's NFL game producer, although Gaudelli was offered continued work at ESPN before leaving for NBC.)

With its three-man booth -- RON JAWORSKI, TONY KORNHEISER and MIKE TIRICO -- and the often-used Kolber and Tafoya as, well, celebs dropping by the booth to chat, MNF often got gabby.

In her latest column, ESPN Ombudsman LE ANNE SCHREIBER writes, "it seems to me that all the complaints I received about MNF have one root -- there is too much going on for viewers to feel they are experiencing a game."

NBC's Kremer -- ESPN Mistreating MNF Reporters