John Anderson - ESPN SportsCenter and ABC's Wipeout

This episode was a really exciting get for us as we are both big fans of John on SportsCenter and the former ABC show Wipeout!  This episode is PACKED with a lot of good material!  First, we get into talking about him growing up in Green Bay, and when he decided he wanted to go into Journalism.  Why Mizzou was his choice for school and how he was able to start his career working in TV moving from Columbia to Tulsa to Phoenix, and ultimately to Bristol where he has been since 1999.   John tells the story about how he almost didn't end up at ESPN and instead was prepared to take an offer from a rival national sports channel.  We get into the stories behind the breaking news of being on set covering the tragic death of former Marlins Pitcher Jose Fernandez and golf legend Arnold Palmer on the same night.   We move on to a lighter topic discussing the classic "This is SportsCenter" ad campaign including some stories behind the Abby Wambach and Georges St Pierre commercials.   Of course, we couldn't end the show without talking about ABC's Wipeout and the story behind how he was cast on the show, the production schedule, what's John Henson like when the camera isn't rolling, the struggle of writing jokes and getting them approved by the network censors, and a story about how a contestant injury may have actually saved the contestant's life.  Finally, with the reports that TBS is eventually going to bring back Wipeout, will John and John be back hosting?  The likely answer is in the episode!   We move on and talk about the challenges of hosting SportsCenter during the pandemic when there were no live sports.   As we finish up the show, Kate asks her "Five Fun Fast Facts" and John talks about how he has resisted joining social media and his reasons for doing so.     We really want to thank John for taking the time to sit with us.  We originally asked him for only a half-hour of his time and he gave us well over an hour!   Be sure to check him out on SportsCenter. As usual, the video of this episode is on YouTube, so subscribe and check that out!