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This article is about the American television series. For the BBC TV program of a similar name, see Sportsnight.
Sports Night was an American television series about a fictional sports news show (also named Sports Night) and the people who worked there. It focused on the friendships, pitfalls, and ethical issues they face while trying to produce a good show under constant network pressure. Created by Aaron Sorkin, the half-hour prime time comedy aired on ABC for two seasons, from 1998 to 2000.
The show starred Robert Guillaume as managing editor and executive producer Isaac Jaffe, Felicity Huffman as producer Dana Whitaker, Peter Krause as anchor Casey McCall, Josh Charles as anchor Dan Rydell, Sabrina Lloyd as senior associate producer Natalie Hurley, and Joshua Malina as associate producer Jeremy Goodwin. Regular guest stars included William H. Macy as ratings expert Sam Donovan and Brenda Strong as Sally Sasser, the producer of Sports Night's West Coast Update and rival of Dana Whitaker.
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Overview
The fictional Sports Night is a sports news program in the style of ESPN's SportsCenter. It broadcasts from the fictional Continental Sports Channel (CSC), a subsidiary of Continental Corp, owned and run by Luther Sachs. (Some believe Continental Corp is loosely based on Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which owns Fox Sports Net.)
Sports Night struggled to find an audience. Its dialogue-based humor did not play very well in situation comedy–oriented America, and ABC cancelled it after two seasons. Although it had the opportunity to move to several different networks, including HBO, Showtime and USA, Sorkin decided to let the show pass so that he could focus on his popular drama The West Wing.
Although the first season of Sports Night is a sitcom, it oftentimes is portrayed as more of a comedy-drama representative of some of Sorkin's later work on The West Wing. Sorkin intended for the series' humor to be drier and more realistic than typical sitcoms. He initially wanted the show to be recorded without a laugh track, but ABC network executives insisted on including one. The volume of the laugh track faded as Season One continued and was abandoned at the beginning of Season Two. Even where the laugh track was used, it was typically in scenes where more than one character was off-camera, to minimize the "canned laughter" effect.
The dialogue is often delivered at a rapid-fire pace and uses a technique of exposing many aspects of communication that go beyond the words that are chosen. For example:
Dan: I need a favor.
Jeremy: Is this about Rebecca?
Dan: Rebecca?
Jeremy: Yes.
Dan: No.
Jeremy: I'm rooting for you, Dan, but I really can't get involved in things like this.
Dan: It's not about Rebecca.
Jeremy: Bad things happen to people when they get involved in other people's business, a lesson I'm trying to teach Natalie. I'd like to set a good example.
Dan: It's not about Rebecca.
Jeremy: What's the favor?
Dan: It's about Rebecca.
Also included into the dialogue are "Walk and Talk," where the characters are walking from one location to the next while in conversation. This is another characteristic of Aaron Sorkin shows as "walk and talks" are used quite frequently in The West Wing.
The show's main focus is the relationships between the characters. These include an off-again on-again flirtation and romance between Dana and Casey, the oil-and-water passion between neurotic Natalie and nerdy Jeremy, and Dan's ongoing problems with relationships in general. The character of Isaac Jaffe hovers over his staff as a benevolent but uncompromising father figure.
The show is mostly set in the studio and station offices. However, in the second season Anthony's, a local sports bar and restaurant, was introduced as another location for scenes in order to get the characters out of the work environment a little bit.
Guillaume suffered a stroke midway through the first season, and this event was worked into his character and the season's story arc. The show was released on DVD in 2003.
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Cast
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Recurring Guest Cast
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Awards
In addition to numerous awards and nominations from various guilds, the show was nominated for eight Emmys and one Golden Globe. It also won three Emmys
Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Series - "Cut Man" (2000), Janet Ashikaga
Outstanding Multi-Camera Editing for a Series - "Small Town", Janet Ashikaga
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Additional airings
After its cancellation, the rerun rights to the show were briefly picked up by Comedy Central. Though their airing of the show was brief, the series did extremely well ratingswise and brought the cancelled show many new fans.
In 2004, ABC1, a British offshoot of ABC, began broadcasting Season 1 of Sports Night in the United Kingdom for the first time, although the second season did not air until January 2006. It was also aired briefly in Latin America on Sony Entertainment Television.
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Similarities with The West Wing
The West Wing emulated Sports Night in many ways, including many of the same cast and crew members. The shows even share many similar storylines in the years when Aaron Sorkin acted as head writer. ***
Most notably, creator and head writer Aaron Sorkin went on to develop The West Wing.
Both the dialogue style and the steadicam tracking shots used in Sports Night are also used in The West Wing.
Joshua Malina starred on The West Wing as White House staffer Will Bailey.
Janel Moloney guest starred as Monica Brazelton, a wardrobe assistant, in Season 1's "The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee". Sorkin was so impressed with her performance that he brought her in to audition for The West Wing, where she became a series regular.
Lisa Edelstein guest starred in two episodes of Sports Night as fill-in anchor Bobby Bernstein. In the first episode, she was depicted as slightly deranged for thinking that she and Dan had had an affair. In the second appearance, it is revealed that Dan is the one who is wrong and had forgotten her. She also figured prominently in the first season of The West Wing as a prostitute that Sam Seaborn accidentally slept with.
Alex Graves has worked as director on episodes of both shows.
Paul Redford has worked as writer for Sports Night and is credited as being part of "miscellaneous crew" on both shows
The character Sam Donovan has a name very similar to a character who appeared in several episodes of The West Wing named Simon Donovan.
Felicity Huffman guest starred in a second season episode of The West Wing as Ann Stark, the chief of staff for a Republican presidential candidate. During the episode, Ann presents Toby with a jar of New Hampshire maple syrup (after Bartlet expresses his disgust that the maple syrup being served at the leadership breakfast is from Vermont and not his home state). This is a reference to a Sports Night episode in which Dana is going to Vermont for the weekend and offers to bring back maple syrup for her friends.
Season 1 episode 23: "What Kind of Day Has It Been" is also the title of the season 1 finale of The West Wing. Also in this episode, Casey tells his son that "the only thing you have to do to make me and your mom happy is to come home at the end of the day"; a line President Bartlet paraphrases to his daughter Ellie (played by Nina Siemaszko) in The West Wing. Nina Siemaszko also guest-stars in this episode.
The plot of Season 1 episode 18: The Sword of Orion was repeated almost verbatim in the episode of The West Wing entitled Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail in season 2. In the Sports Night episode, Jeremy's father and mother are getting divorced after the revelation by his father that he has been having an affair for Jeremy's whole life. Jeremy takes it hard and becomes fixated on a specific thing at work: a boating disappearance during the America's Cup. In The West Wing episode, Sam's dad reveals exactly the same thing, Sam takes it hard and becomes fixated on finding out the truth about an espionage case in the 1950's involving a White House staffer.
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Season 1
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Season 2
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Trivia
Both season finales ended with metaphors for the fate of the show, and the way ABC failed to promote it properly. In the 1st season, Jeremy is obsessed with a baseball game where one team is going down to defeat. He thinks they'll have a 9th inning rally, very similar to the unknown fate of the show. A major plot point of the second season involved the sale of CSC. The eventual purchaser of the network tells Dana "If you can't make money with "Sports Night," you need to get out of the money-making business." This is an obvious jab at ABC's failure to make the show a hit.
Aaron Sorkin originally wanted Sports Night to be a film, but when he couldn't come up with a solid plot for it, he instead made it a television show, thinking the episode format would be easier to create ongoing plots throughout.
After ABC canceled the show, HBO, USA and Showtime all expressed interest in continuing the series. However, they all declined when they found out Aaron Sorkin wasn't going to be involved with the show anymore because he was focusing exclusively on his new series at the time The West Wing.
Joshua Malina initially wanted the role of Dan Rydall.
Though mentioned quite a bit during the show, Luther Sachs, the CEO of Continental Corp, is never seen.
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See also
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