Strahan will spend 12-14 hours a week going back and forth his two television jobs
That title has a bit of hyperbole as getting paid millions a year and yucking it up with Kelly Ripa isn't too shabby a line of work. But what flew under the radar last week with the Live with Kelly announcement is that Strahan is keeping his Fox pre game show.
I was actually talking with someone at Fox who thought they wouldn't have let him pursue that job unless he was going to stay. My reply was 5 days a week live on television in New York had to nix his Los Angeles based pre game show job with Fox.
But credit to Strahan or the firm grip of Rupert Murdoch, Strahan is doing both:
"The ABC gig involves plenty of preparation. There’s also work to do after each show. When he’s finished with his five-day thing Strahan will fly from New York to Los Angeles, probably on Friday, and begin preparing for Fox’s “NFL Sunday.”
“The Fox guys told Michael the only way it would work is if he shows no signs of slipping on the pregame,” an NFL mole said. “He’s got to be the same guy.”
The Daily News article goes on to say that industry folks are skeptical he can really do both:
“I don’t know if he still will be able to contribute anything meaningful to Fox, I don’t think he will,” a network source with NFL connections said. “He’s not going to have the same preparation time. After a week of watching makeovers and playing to a predominantly female audience, how is he going to make a quick adjustment back to football?”
A part of me thinks it's rather similar to Joe Tessitore recently saying on the recent Sports Media Journal podcast how much he embraces his crazy work and travel schedule knowing he is an immigrant's son doing what he considers a dream job.
But with that said, this schedule is brtual. Even some of the more demanding jobs in sports media, rarely have it this bad.
Strahan will grind it out Monday-Friday in New York where millions of eyeballs will be on him. He'll fly either late Friday or Saturday to Los Angeles and then catch a late flight back to New York after a football packed cram session on Sunday and start all over again. That's just a lot of travel, a lot of time on television, a lot of makeup, production meetings, preparation, etc.
While most people would jump at having the opportunities Strahan has in front of him, it sounds kind of awful and I'm betting the experiment only lasts one season. 5 months of 6 days a week of live television and 2 days a week traveling cross country isn't sustainable for such high profile television gigs. The guy won't have a day off for months at a time and we haven't even thought about his Subway spokesperson gigs as well!
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