Sportscaster Bob Costas Off His Game in ‘Later’

America needs another talk show this summer like it needs another Democratic or Republican national convention.

But here’s one anyway. It began this week, 30 minutes of wee-hours talk at 1:30 a.m., Mondays through Thursdays on NBC (Channels 4, 36 and 39). The title is “Later With Bob Costas.”

Later and littler, unfortunately.

In his relatively short life at NBC Sports, the 36-year-old Costas has established himself as one of the best, smartest and wittiest sportscasters in the business, whether announcing baseball with Tony Kubek or hosting the pre-NFL football show. And he’ll play a key role in coverage of next month’s Seoul Olympics on NBC.

But Costas has been a talk show host in a sportscaster’s body. He now joins a growing group of transsportuals--sportscasters seeking new challenges in non-sports arenas, none being more successful than Bryant Gumbel as host of NBC’s “Today” show.

And heading this year’s list of partial transferees are Ahmad Rashad of NBC Sports and former ABC sportscaster Jim Lampley, who recently made a dramatic switch at KCBS-TV Channel 2, from sportscaster to news anchorman.

More about them shortly.

With his skills and intelligence, Costas would seem an ideal candidate to succeed in any area of broadcasting. The best thing you can say about him in his new role, however, is that he’s a meticulous professional who has the potential to improve. The worst thing is that there is no compelling reason to wait for him to improve.

Take his choice of guests. Most of the initial ones are an uninspired melange of talk show deja vu, the first two weeks including Linda Ellerbee, Gary Coleman, Billy Crystal, Larry King and Sonny Bono.

Not that some of them won’t be interesting, only that they already have been interesting--elsewhere! So you get the feeling that, unlike “Late Night With David Letterman,” which precedes him, Costas will be taking few chances.

That is borne out by tonight’s excruciatingly arid show with Coleman, as it was with Monday’s opener with Ellerbee, who talked to Costas--as she has to others--about her own wee-hours TV life on “NBC News Overnight” and about the late Jessica Savitch, whom she knew when both were NBC correspondents.

The “Later” in the program’s title had a dual meaning Monday, for Ellerbee was two-thirds through her Savitch anecdotes before a clip was put up to show viewers who Savitch was.

Bright, honest and funny, Ellerbee nearly always gives good talk, but this half-hour (another with Ellerbee followed the next night) was very routine, with Costas rarely seeming involved.

Here was a guest with whom he at least could be playful. Yet, although the atmosphere was meant to be loose and intimate--with Costas and his guest sitting opposite each other in easy chairs as he occasionally sipped from a mug--it was stiff and formal instead.

Compared to the Coleman show, however, the Ellerbee appearance was a wild, chaotic romp.

For some reason, Coleman, the star of NBC’s defunct “Diff’rent Strokes,” seems to see himself now as a man (he’s 20) with a mission. After a period of relative obscurity, he is now on the interview circuit, blaming a past bad-boy reputation--which he says cost him jobs--on his parents and his “representation.”

He still has the same parents, the 4-foot-8 actor tells Costas, “but I’ve got new people working for me, new agent, everything.”

“This is indelicate,” says Costas, laboring with his questions, “but the thing that strikes people, above all else, is the size.” Costas wonders if Coleman has trouble asking girls for dates.

“I can ask some girls for a date,” Coleman replies. “I haven’t.”

What does that mean? That this man has never gone out with a girl? There seems to be a larger tragedy here than meets the camera. But alas, Costas does not follow up. However, he does ask Coleman if he liked his “Diff’rent Strokes” character and if he liked his show.

To say this interview has a problem is to say that the Titanic had a small leak.

Give Costas credit at least for not taking a low road or patronizing viewers with his subjects. And even when not at his best, he far exceeds the performance of his NBC Sports colleague Rashad on “Entertainment Tonight,” where the former Minnesota Vikings star’s work as a reporter/weekend host can be summed up this way: He smiles a lot.

A far brighter future as a sportscaster transferee seems to loom for Lampley, who still does some sportscasting for CBS and HBO while also co-anchoring the 5 p.m. newscast on Channel 2 and appearing on the 11 p.m. newscast.

Following in the footsteps of CBS sportscaster Brent Musburger, who spent a year as a Channel 2 news anchor in 1979-80, Lampley is demonstrating anew that reading and communications skills--not hard-news journalistic skills--are the most essential ingredients for anchoring local news.

Unless ratings intervene, Lampley should have a good future in news, and someday may even find himself co-hosting a show like “CBS This Morning.”

Listen to him now on Channel 2: “Also coming up on ‘Action News,’ a bus accident that could have been much worse if not for some quick-thinking passengers. . . . A crisis in Poland tonight. . . .”

A crisis in Poland? Few would know that only a few weeks ago, the biggest work crisis facing Lampley was the Dodgers’ lack of hitting.

Just hear those anchorly segues, as from a story about a flash flood to weathercaster Maclovio Perez: “It’s time, now, for Mac to flash onto the set and flood us with weather.” Just hear that anchorly kidding with Channel 2 “trouble shooter” Judd McIlvain and others.

Then later with Lampley on the 11 p.m. newscast, just hear him rehash the day’s top story: “Given the degree to which poll results now shape campaigns. . . .”

Given the degree, also, to which sportscasters now shape other areas of television, the record so far is mixed.