The once-ubiquitous Bob Costas could soon have another prominent role.
The New York Post reported Friday that Costas is in negotiations with TBS to host the network’s coverage of the scheduled National League Championship Series in October, in what would be his first postseason assignment for an outlet other than MLB Network since the 2000 American League Championship Series on NBC.
Costas already has roles on TBS corporate siblings HBO and CNN, hosting a talk show on the former and appearing as a contributor on the latter. He also worked for HBO when Turner began airing the MLB Postseason in 2007, but at the time expressed no interest in a role on TBS. He made no appearances on Turner Sports programming during his entire run with HBO from 2001-09.
Since calling the 2000 ALCS, Costas’ postseason role has been limited to working one game a year on MLB Network.
Costas has not hosted any sports broadcast of note since his final assignment for NBC, the 2017 NASCAR season finale. He was supposed to host the 2018 Super Bowl for NBC, but the network elected to replace him because he had occasionally criticized the NFL over concussions.
Per the Post, bringing in Costas would lessen some of the burden on Ernie Johnson, who resumed hosting the TBS studio show last year after more than a decade on play-by-play. Johnson was able to host the TBS postseason show last year without any conflict from his NBA hosting duties because TNT’s NBA coverage ended in September. With this year’s NBA season set to begin in October, he would not be able to easily handle both assignments.
Johnson, per the report, is expected to host TBS coverage of the Wild Card and Division Series.
[News from NYP 8.20]
