For the past three years, the Fox Sports cable channel FS1 has aired a quirky, funny, intelligent and self-deprecating sports show called Garbage Time, with host Katie Nolan. It’s arguably one of the best shows on Fox, and Nolan is great as a host and an interviewer, and has lots of interaction and fun with her guests.
Her show features plenty of humor, including the show-ending bit called “Add/Drop.” Or as Katie says it, “It’s time for AAAAAD-DROOOOP…”
And just in case you think Katie Nolan is just being a goofy sports babe with a talk show … well, that’s how much you DON’T know about her.
Because at the same time, Katie Nolan can turn around and give an intelligent, impassioned, direct commentary about the unacceptable and repulsive acts of violence by male athletes against women. As in this take from 2015, where she basically took the Dallas Cowboys’ Greg Hardy and ripped him to shreds.
Oh Katie Nolan’s not done with Greg Hardy. Trust me on this.
And don’t even try to talk down to Katie Nolan or suggest that women might not understand professional sports at the same level as men. No. Just don’t. Because all that mansplaining is just going to go nowhere. See for yourself.
That doesn’t mean that Katie Nolan can’t have a good time with her sports gig. At one point during her show, she actually crowdfunded the engraving of a bench in New York’s Central Park – a bench that now reads, “David Ortiz – Thanks for the Memories.” Oh, I forgot to mention that Katie Nolan is from Boston … yeah, that part slipped my mind.
How good is this show?
It won a Sports Emmy Award in 2016. That’s how good the show is.
Don’t miss EMMY WINNING @GarbageTime with @katienolan TONIGHT Midnight ET on #FS1! pic.twitter.com/VTvmIFKRx7
— FS1 (@FS1) May 11, 2016
And Katie Nolan became the first person, to my knowledge, to ever drink beer out of an Emmy Award. Don’t laugh, you know that Joe Buck’s wishing he thought of doing that first.
So what do you do with a television show whose host just won a Sports Emmy Award, and is one of the few shining lights on a sports network that is, on most other nights, an ESPN clone?
If you guessed, “Fox Sports will probably cancel her Garbage Time show, or retool it, or monkey around with it in some way, shape or form,” you’re right.
Damn it.
Seriously?
According to the website awfulannouncing, Fox Sports is retooling Garbage Time – or possibly cancelling it outright – and maybe relegating Katie Nolan to other duties on the network … maybe as a co-host of a morning sports show, maybe as part of an ensemble program similar to the NFL Network’s Good Morning Football or something like that…
Seriously?
Listen up, Fox Sports. You’ve got a very talented on-air personality. She wasn’t poached in a contract raid from ESPN like Colin Cowherd or Skip Bayless, and she’s much smarter than either of those two windbags. She’s not a bimbo or a sports bunny, she’s intelligent and articulate and compelling. And for three years, you’ve kept her Garbage Time show pinned on a late night Wednesday timeslot as if she was working a short shift on a college radio station. And despite all that, she’s developed a loyal fan following, and she’s got a freakin’ Emmy Award. An Emmy Award in a category where her competition involved the Kentucky Derby broadcast and two ESPN shows!
Come on, Fox Sports, do the right thing. If you want to do right by Katie Nolan, move Garbage Time to a better timeslot. Give her a budget that’s larger than the current one she has, which looks like it barely pays for studio time. Treat Katie Nolan like the rising star that she is.
Because if you don’t treat her like the rising star that she is …
Her “rising star” will rise over to ESPN or to CBS Sports or to some other broadcast outlet.
Come on … you don’t want to lose Katie Nolan, do you?
Especially someone who can make a music video spoofing Tom Brady’s “Deflategate” with a music video twist?
Don’t know of her, never saw the show.
But based on the above, the first thing that comes to mind is that she slapped somebody’s hand, behind the scenes.
Wouldn’t “go along to get along,” as the saying goes.
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Chuck, had you been paying closer attention, you would have known that this isn’t a case of singling Katie out for bad treatment, because the entire network seems to be retooling itself, possibly with its head up its rear end. FS1 outright canceled “Fox Sports Live” and will not be renewing Jay’s and Dan’s contracts when they expire in March. (Jay has already agreed to return to TSN; I wouldn’t be surprised to see a bidding war for Dan’s services on both sides of the border.) With that in mind, if Katie still has a job at FS1 after all is said and done, I’d say she made out fairly well. And if she ends up moving on to greener pastures, even better for her and it’ll be FS1’s loss.
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