Funny how evolving cultural norms can sneak up on you.
Take Chad Ochocinco's ongoing offseason, which might have seemed bizarre just a few short years ago but now seems, if not perfectly normal, at least understandable.
Chad Ochocinco cut a mean rug with Cheryl Burke on "Dancing With the Stars" this month.
That the Cincinnati Bengals receiver managed to last until this week in ABC's Dancing With the Stars— falling just short of next week's finale — helps hype his upcoming VH1 series, Ochocinco: The Ultimate Catch. In it, 85 women — the number of his Bengals jersey and the loose basis for Chad Johnson renaming himself Ochocinco — will be seeded in a tournament-style bracket to try to date their way to winning his ultimate approval. The show's grand prize is a football.
But the success of Ochocinco's on-air hoofing means calling an audible for its production. Shooting might have begun weeks earlier if not for his run on DWTS, says producer Bob Horowitz, and then came this: "As unluck would have it, the Bengals recently scheduled a mid-June mandatory minicamp."
Not to worry. "We'll turn it into a positive," says Horowitz, saying five or six of the female contestants will still be in contention by mid-June and they'll just tag along to the Queen City. "We'll just work the minicamp into the show. There'll be a Bengals layer to it."
Which represents poetic justice. Horowitz says "in the reality (TV) business, you're looking for stars." He feels Ochocinco became "a breakout star" when HBO's behind-the-scenes Hard Knocks series showed up at the Bengals training camp last summer — "it was a highlight reel for Chad" — and was signed for Catch even before the DWTSlineup was announced. That gig, says Horowitz, was a game-changer: "If X people knew Chad before Dancing, now its 100 times X!"He says the TV dancing helped prompt 3,000 "qualified" women to apply to be contestants on Catch, in which Minnesota Viking Bernard Berrian will be Ochocinco's "wingman" and the online OchocincoShow will be a regular "part of the series' format." So, he says, will the women's bracket seedings: "Bracketology is a big thing. People will get it."
The series debuts July 11 and concludes when Ochocinco is back playing football.
Unless, say, the Bengals become a chorus line that goes on tour.
NASCAR Hall takes center stage
Roger Goodman, after joining ABC in 1965, worked 10 Olympics, 11 Kentucky Derbys and directed coverage of President Obama's inauguration and the 2009 Academy Awards show.
But Sunday on Speed, the Fox-owned cable TV channel in about 75 million U.S. households, he'll direct something he's never seen: the first NASCAR Hall of Fame Induction.
That show, starting at 1 p.m. ET and preceded by a red-carpet show at the new $195 million NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, will have two living inductees —Richard Petty and Junior Johnson— and relatives accepting for late honorees Bill France, Bill France Jr. and Dale Earnhardt. Master of ceremonies Mike Joy will be one of several Fox NASCAR announcers involved.
Show producer Steve Becker says viewers should not expect many unusual touches in the coverage "and the reason to watch is seeing the inductees and their relatives." But Goodman suggests there's potential for suspense: "There's no playbook here since it's a first. You need to be prepared for the unexpected and hope it happens."
Warner returns to Arena League for TV debut
The steady proliferation of TV sports channels has created a sort of farm system for would-be announcers.
And promising TV rookie Kurt Warner, who says he's "100% done" playing after throwing for 32,344 yards over 12 NFL seasons, gets his first outing Friday on the NFL Network.
He'll call the Arizona Rattlers at the Iowa Barnstormers (8 p.m. ET) in Arena Football, a league in which Warner once starred with the Barnstormers, who are retiring his No. 13.
Warner says he "talked with all the networks" about an on-air job and "now it's just wait and see."
Warner names NBC's Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth, as well as Fox's Joe Buck and Troy Aikman among his favorite announcers — "although I haven't watched a lot of TV over the years" — and would prefer calling games to studio shows — "you could share more personal anecdotes than having someone pick a topic and tell you to talk about it."
Warner says he's drawn to TV work because "talking about the game is something I've always enjoyed." But he's not looking for any all-consuming on-air job: "It's going to be about finding the right situation without giving away my life again."
Fox to test Saturday soccer with Champions League final
Viewers tuning in for Fox's usual Saturday afternoon MLB games are likely to find some really low-scoring action instead. As Fox's baseball moves to prime time Saturday to test whether its MLB games would draw better at night, viewers will see Fox's first soccer game in the UEFA Champions League final from Madrid (2:30 p.m. ET).
Fox Sports Chairman David Hill says the coverage came about because the game was moved from a weekday — "it's not like I was going to ask the network for Thursday night for a soccer game" — to a weekend. But Hill is understandably upbeat on soccer's potential appeal in the USA; he oversees cable TV's Fox Soccer Channel: "My feeling is soccer is on the cusp, partly because ESPN is treating (next month's) World Cup, for the first time, as a major event. … There could be more soccer on the network."
Fox's Inter Milan-Bayern Munich game will be a preview of play-by-play announcer Martin Tyler, ESPN's lead Cup play-caller. "He's fabulous," Hill says.