Michael Strahan is the Broadcaster of the Year for 2022, according to the New York State Broadcasters Association. Strahan, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, is a co-anchor on ABC’s Good Morning America. He’s also an analyst on Fox NFL Sunday and hosts $100,000 Pyramid on ABC.

“We are honored to recognize Michael Strahan as our Broadcaster of the Year for 2022,” said David Donovan, president of the NYSBA. “This was a unanimous decision by the board of directors. Strahan is a tour de force in television. You see his award-winning talent every morning when he co-anchors ABC’s Good Morning America. NFL games would not be the same without his insights and analysis. He brings a perspective that can only be provided by a Pro Football Hall of Famer.”

Donovan also mentioned Strahan’s work in the community. “Michael donates his hands and heart to numerous charities,” he said. “Since 2010, he has also been a passionate supporter of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. His recent partnership with ‘See Her’ seeks to combat an unconscious bias that persists against women and girls in advertising, media, and programming.”

Strahan will be toasted at the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center on October 20. ■

HBO next month will premiere a new documentary series from Michael Strahan focusing on a successful football program in Baltimore.

The four-part series, The Cost of Winning, debuts Nov. 10 and tells the story of the St. Frances Academy Panthers football program in Baltimore, which despite being located in the heart of a neighborhood rife with gun violence and grinding socioeconomic challenges, became a source of pride and searing controversy, said the network. The series highlights the team’s expulsion from their private school league for being “too good” -- a turn of events that raised questions of racial bias, said HBO.

Strahan, an NFL Hall of Famer and Good Morning America co-host, along with Constance Schwartz-Morini, serve as executive producers of the series. “We are excited to bring the inspiring story of Baltimore’s St. Frances Academy to life on HBO, and to showcase the adversity and challenges the Panthers endured to save their program,” said Strahan and Schwartz-Morini in a statement. 

Another Super Bowl Sunday will produce memorable plays and make players into stars. After the game, some of those stars will turn into successful commercial endorsers.

Nielsen Talent Analytics looked at 30 of the highest ranked NFL players by N-Score — which evaluated the endorsement potential of athletes, actors and celebrities — and found that more than half of them are retired.

The highest score among retired players was registered by Joe Montana, who won four Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers. He earned an 81 score out of 100, the same score as Peyton Manning, who might be playing his last game on Sunday and stars in commercials for DirecTV, Nationwide Insurance, Papa John’s Pizza and other brands. (Manning and Montana appear together in a Papa John’s spot.)

Some of the other players with high N-cores were Michael Strahan, the Giants lineman turned talk show host on Live with Kelly and Michael; Dan Marino, the ex-Dolphins QB; and Brett Favre, the former Packer.

People polled by Nielsen have high awareness of these players and find them influential. The players are also seen as being successful.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

If the Daytona 500 is a big event in your home, Fox Sports’s upcoming marketing of the big NASCAR race on Sunday, Feb. 21, could really rev your engines.

If you don’t already celebrate “Daytona Day,” Fox Sports executive vice president of marketing Robert Gottlieb hopes the campaign will start you up and head you in that direction.

Fox was slated to air a “Happy Daytona Day” 60-second ad during this past Sunday’s NFC Championship game, showing people across America enjoying their Daytona Day rituals and parties, Gottlieb said. Directed by Joseph Kahn, known for his Taylor Swift videos, it’s a centerpiece of pre- Daytona 500 marketing that is the biggest Fox has done since it first aired the race in 2001. [UPDATE: view the "Happy Daytona Day" 60-second promo video here.]

Recently retired four-time NASCAR champion driver Jeff Gordon is the other big component of the campaign, as he’s joining Fox’s booth this year. Fox produced a spot in Los Angeles in which Gordon’s car is being chased by L.A.’s Finest — but with a happier ending than many helicopter-filmed freeway pursuits. It’s slated to air on Feb. 11, Gottlieb said. [UPDATE: view the Jeff Gordon freeway chase ad at this link.]

Sunday’s game also was slated to include a promo in which Gordon and Fox NFL Sunday co-host Michael Strahan talk about how Strahan celebrates Daytona Day, Gottlieb said. Later this month, a The Simpsons spot will also promote the race.

Daytona is a bellwether for the entire NASCAR season and “the Super Bowl of the sport,” the marketer told The Wire, so it seemed apropos to position Daytona Day as a time for festive get-togethers, not unlike the Kentucky Derby or the Super Bowl (which airs Feb. 7 on CBS).

— Kent Gibbons

C-SPAN Offers Food for Thoughtful Coverage

C-SPAN gets style points for its latest campaign coverage promo goodies.

Last August, the public-affairs programmer sent out a mug, luggage tag and pen to national political reporters and 175 key cable-affiliate contacts to promote its “Campaign 2016: Road to the White House” coverage of candidates, by which it generally means letting them speak for themselves rather than pontificating over every word (but we digress).

Last week, as the primary and caucus season began to heat up, C-SPAN upped its game and aimed at the heart, er, stomach, of its key journalistic constituency.

Boxes of “campaign trail” mix and big cookies iced with maps of each of the four primary/caucus cities were sent to 55 key political media folks. The Wire would identify them, as well as 66 cable affiliates (Mediacom Communications, Comcast, Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications) in key early primary or caucus states, but we’d have to wipe a bit of crumb from the Iowa map off our mustache.

“We tried to have a little fun” with the food, Marty Dominguez, C-SPAN’s vice president of marketing, told The Wire. “As C-SPAN’s Campaign 2016 coverage kicks into high gear in the first primary and caucus states, we wanted to give our media and cable friends a reminder about C-SPAN’s on-of-a-kind media coverage of the candidates along the campaign trail.”

— John Eggerton

And the Winner Isn’t! FCC Loses the ‘Luddite’

We’re not sure anyone was popping champagne at Federal Communications Commission headquarters, but the agency’s decision to reclassify Internet access as a Title II common-carrier service did not win the Internet Technology and Innovation Foundation’s annual Luddite award.

The award is named after Englishman Ned Ludd, “who led a movement in the early 19th century to destroy mechanized looms. [T]oday’s neo-Luddites likewise want to foil technological progress,” ITIF said.

The general public picked the winner.

The just-announced dubious honor, which goes to “the year’s worst anti-technology ideas and policies in action,” went to “alarmist” talk from folks like Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates that artificial intelligence could “spell doom for humanity,” ITIF said.

The FCC had been nominated, according to ITIF, because, “in an effort to freeze network innovation, the [FCC], at the urging of a wide range of neo-Luddite organizations, enacted regulations to protect ‘net neutrality,’ a rather nebulous concept, generally standing for the principle that broadband networks should treat all data packets alike, even if they have different network needs. This will significantly constrain network innovation.”

That misstep, in the ITIF’s view, was ultimately trumped by warnings from Musk, Hawking and Gates that “in the not-so-distant future, humans could lose control of artificial intelligence (AI), thus creating an existential threat.”

Those optics work out better for one of ITIF’s honorary board members, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Communications Subcommittee and a big proponent of the Title II-based rules.

ISPs would argue, and have argued, that Title II reclassification is a threat to the continued investment in broadband.

— John Eggerton

Michael Strahan is set to host the 20th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards on A&E, to air Jan. 15 at 9 p.m., EVP A&E David McKillop and President of the Broadcast Film Critics Association Joey Berlin announced today. 

Super Bowl Champion and co-host of LIVE with Kelly and Michael, Strahan has previously been a co-host on ABC’s Good Morning America and he is also an Emmy-nominated Fox NFLSunday analyst.

Produced by Bob Bain Productions and Berlin Entertainment, A&E, the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association (BTJA) have joined to air the 2015 and 2016 Critics' Choice Movie Awards, as well as the Critics' Choice Television Awards.