ABS Returns "Definitive Sports Anthology" to Television

Spanning the galaxy to bring you the constant variety of sport!
The thrill of victory - and the agony of defeat.
The living drama of athletic competition:
This is ABS's Wide World of Sports!

New Avalon, Zeta Cygni - The Avalon Broadcasting System (ABS) today announced the return of the definitive sports anthology program, Wide World of Sports, to television after nearly four centuries off the air.

Wide World of Sports first debuted in 1961 on the Earth television network of the American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Hosted by sports broadcasting legend Jim McKay, it ran for more than 40 years, introducing generations of Earthpeople to a range of sporting events unequaled by any other single program, before going off the air a few years after Earth's First Contact with the galactic community in 1999.

Since then, Wide World has lived on in re-runs, the classic programs airing time and again all over the universe, introducing other cultures to the great (and not-so-great) sports and sports figures of Earth's Immediate Pre-Contact Period. It has been studied by xenoanthropologists, historians, and even military strategists.

"To understand Earthmen," Klingon Emperor Kahless XVI wrote in 2017, "you must understand Wide World of Sports."

The new Wide World will feature the classic show's world-spanning scope and all-embracing format, but magnified to the galactic scale.

"ABS's Wide World of Sports will be presented with the same warm, human touch and open-minded perspective as the original," said ABS Sports President Akari Kanzaki. "We'll show you games you never knew existed - and new ways of looking at the ones you already knew about."

That the warmth and honesty which were the hallmarks of the original show carry over to the new one will be ensured by Kanzaki's choice of host. ABS's new flagship sports program will be presented by none other than Jim McKay, the beloved host of the original Wide World of Sports.

McKay, 468, says his centuries in cryonic suspension and near-total cyborg conversion haven't slowed him down, nor blunted his enthusiasm for sports broadcasting. Furthermore, he's embraced the advantages that modern technology can give the television presenter on the go.

"I love it," he said. "I've been uploading rules and historical data on thousands of off-Earth sports to my neural lace ever since I came out of the freezer, and I can't wait to get started. There are more than ten thousand inhabited systems in this galaxy! You want to talk about the constant variety of sport?"

McKay isn't the only one who's excited.

"Are you kidding? I'm stoked!" said Benjamin "Gryphon" Hutchins, founder of Avalon Communications, ABS's parent company. "Wide World of Sports is part of my childhood. I didn't even like sports when I was a kid and I loved Wide World of Sports. And to have Jim McKay himself to host it, that's just the icing on the cake. Now all Akari has to do is snag the Olympics contract away from SBC... "

Wide World of Sports premieres Saturday, June 2, at 3:00 PM on your local ABS station.

..... and I, for one, think that's a Good Thing (TM) :)

I only ever caught a re-run here and there as a kid, but I
have to agree with UF-Gryphon - it was pretty cool.

Cheers!

j -_-

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<Wedge>: Don't merge the layers. It would be bad.

<Dave>: Define "bad".

<Wedge>: Imagine all the work you've done so far ceasing to exist and every pixel in your image exploding simultaneously at the speed of light.

<R-Type>: Total graphic reversal!

<Dave>: Okay, important safety tip, there. Thanks Wedge.