George Michael, a television sports reporter whose Sunday night show, The George Michael Sports Machine, was the first nationally syndicated sports show to make liberal use of highlight films, died Thursday in Washington. He was 70 and lived in Comus, Md.
The cause was chronic lymphocytic leukemia, his wife, Pat Lackman, said.
Mr. Michael was sports director and sports anchor of WRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Washington, for 27 years. He was known as a hard-working reporter he covered a wide range of sports events, from the Super Bowl to rodeo but also as a large personality, a bravado interviewer and an irreverent commentator. Those qualities, as well as his belief, in the words of his wife, that on TV, the tape is the star, anticipated what much of television sports reporting has become, especially as presented on ESPN.
SportsCenter, ESPNs news and highlights show, made its debut as a daily program in 1979 (it now airs several times a day), but it has made many format changes over the years and was clearly influenced by The Sports Machine, which went national in 1984. As Steve Levy, an anchor for SportsCenter, told The Washington Post in 2007, For me, The Sports Machine really was SportsCenter before SportsCenter.
Mr. Michael, a native of St. Louis, was born George Gimpel, a name he changed for professional reasons, on March 24, 1939. His father, Earl, and his mother, the former Marge Maslin, owned and operated a butcher shop in which young George worked. He served in the Army after high school and attended St. Louis University. He was a disc jockey for rock n roll stations in Philadelphia and New York before getting a job at WABC in New York in 1974.
For a time he had a nightly show on WABC radio, after which he would do the 11 p.m. sports report on WABC-TV. Having no time to write a script for the television show, he enlisted his girlfriend, Pat Lackman, to do it. It turned into a permanent position, both as companion and writer. They married in 1978, and when they moved to Washington, she wrote the scripts for George Michaels Sports Final, the show that evolved into The Sports Machine four years later. Ms. Lackman wrote that show, too, but the taped highlights were always front and center.
Hes the only guy in town who can show you five minutes of tape in a four-minute sportscast, Norman Chad wrote in The Post in 1985.
Mr. Michaels first marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a brother, Earl Gimpel, of Escondido, Calif.; a sister, Jane Lettich, of Florida; two children from his first marriage, Michelle Allen, of Darnestown, Md., and Brad Michael, of Pompano Beach, Fla.; and two grandsons.
On WRC, Mr. Michael was also the creator and host of two popular local sports shows, Redskins Report, which focused on Washingtons professional football team, and FullCourt Press, a panel show featuring local sports journalists. In 2007, Mr. Michael left his sports anchor job, and The Sports Machine went off the air after NBC Universal, in a cost-cutting move, reduced the size of his staff, firing many of his longtime colleagues.
NBC made me an extremely, extremely beyond-my-wildest dreams offer to stay and sign a new deal, he said at the time, adding that if anybody was going to be laid off, I have to take the first bullet.
lets go to the video tape.
