Len Berman (Born June 14, 1947 in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
) is the former weekday evening sports anchor on WNBC-TV. Berman was with WNBC/NBC from 1982-2009. He was previously with
WCBS-TVWCBS-TV, channel 2, is the flagship station of the CBS television network, located in New York City and owned by CBS Corporation. The station's studios are located within the CBS Broadcast Center in midtown Manhattan and its transmitter is atop the Empire State Building...
from 1979–1982, and before that at
WBZ-TVWBZ-TV is a CBS owned-and-operated television station, located in Boston, Massachusetts, broadcasting mainly a high-definition digital signal on channel 30...
in Boston from 1973–1978.
On March 31, 2009, according to the
New York Daily NewsThe Daily News of New York City is the fifth most-widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 632,595, as of June 13, 2009. The first U.S. daily printed in tabloid form, it was founded in 1919, and as of 2007 is owned and run by Mortimer Zuckerman...
, Berman will be leaving WNBC due to budgetary concerns.
At the end of WNBC's 11 p.m. newscast on Wednesday April 22, 2009, following taped messages of goodbye and good luck from
Matt LauerMatthew Todd "Matt" Lauer
. is an American television journalist best known as the host of NBC's The Today Show since 1994. He was previously a news anchor in New York and a local talk-show host in Boston, Philadelphia, Providence and Richmond...
,
Al RokerAlbert Lincoln "Al" Roker, Jr. is an American television broadcaster, best known as the weather anchor for NBC's Today show. On July 20, 2009, he began co-hosting his new morning show Wake Up with Al on The Weather Channel, which airs weekdays from 6am to 7am ET, one hour away from Today show...
, and
Brian WilliamsBrian Douglas Williams is the American anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, the evening news program of the NBC television network. Williams replaced Tom Brokaw on December 2, 2004. Previously, Williams was the network's chief White House correspondent and host of The News with Brian...
, Berman announced that it was his last sportscast.
While Berman's immediate future for television is unknown, sources say he might make periodic appearances on the Today Show.
Len Berman (Born June 14, 1947 in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
) is the former weekday evening sports anchor on WNBC-TV. Berman was with WNBC/NBC from 1982-2009. He was previously with
WCBS-TVWCBS-TV, channel 2, is the flagship station of the CBS television network, located in New York City and owned by CBS Corporation. The station's studios are located within the CBS Broadcast Center in midtown Manhattan and its transmitter is atop the Empire State Building...
from 1979–1982, and before that at
WBZ-TVWBZ-TV is a CBS owned-and-operated television station, located in Boston, Massachusetts, broadcasting mainly a high-definition digital signal on channel 30...
in Boston from 1973–1978.
On March 31, 2009, according to the
New York Daily NewsThe Daily News of New York City is the fifth most-widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 632,595, as of June 13, 2009. The first U.S. daily printed in tabloid form, it was founded in 1919, and as of 2007 is owned and run by Mortimer Zuckerman...
, Berman will be leaving WNBC due to budgetary concerns.
At the end of WNBC's 11 p.m. newscast on Wednesday April 22, 2009, following taped messages of goodbye and good luck from
Matt LauerMatthew Todd "Matt" Lauer
. is an American television journalist best known as the host of NBC's The Today Show since 1994. He was previously a news anchor in New York and a local talk-show host in Boston, Philadelphia, Providence and Richmond...
,
Al RokerAlbert Lincoln "Al" Roker, Jr. is an American television broadcaster, best known as the weather anchor for NBC's Today show. On July 20, 2009, he began co-hosting his new morning show Wake Up with Al on The Weather Channel, which airs weekdays from 6am to 7am ET, one hour away from Today show...
, and
Brian WilliamsBrian Douglas Williams is the American anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, the evening news program of the NBC television network. Williams replaced Tom Brokaw on December 2, 2004. Previously, Williams was the network's chief White House correspondent and host of The News with Brian...
, Berman announced that it was his last sportscast.
While Berman's immediate future for television is unknown, sources say he might make periodic appearances on the Today Show. Currently, he is working on his latest project,
Len Berman Sports, an online blog which recounts Len's top 5 most interesting sports stories of the day.
Early life
Despite having a very neutral viewpoint when reporting the sports in New York, he grew up an avid
New York YankeesThe New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the borough of the Bronx, in New York City, New York and are a member of Major League Baseball's American League East Division...
fan. He is also partial to Big East basketball, having graduated from Syracuse University and serving as an advisor to that school and to St. John's University. When Berman hosted "Sports Update" Sunday nights on WCBS-TV he used the dance tune "The Break" by Katmandu as the theme song.
Spanning the World
One popular monthly feature Berman is responsible for is
Spanning the World, which aired on WNBC's newscasts and
The Today Show.
Spanning is a reel of odd and interesting sports highlights from the past month, with a recorded introduction and closing by
Don PardoDominick George "Don" Pardo is an American radio and television announcer. He is noted for his long association with NBC, and in particular with Saturday Night Live, for which he has been the announcer for all but one of its seasons, and continues today as the program's announcer, several years...
. When the Segment Begins, The World is torn in two and the sound of a Rooster Crowing is played. When the segment ends, the world goes back to its "Pre-Torn" State, with the same Rooster Sound, and Announcer Don Pardo says "Tune in Next Time for "Spanning the World", If there Is a Next Time. I'm Don Pardo." In his last WNBC broadcast, Berman mentioned the segment would continue on The Today Show.
The NFL on NBC
From
1982The 1982 NFL season was the 63rd regular season of the National Football League. Before the season, a verdict was handed down against the league in the trial brought by the Oakland Raiders and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum back in 1980...
to part of the
1984The 1984 NFL season was the 65th regular season of the National Football League. The Colts relocated from Baltimore, Maryland to Indianapolis, Indiana....
, Berman also hosted
The NFL on NBC Pregame ShowThe NBC television network's pregame/studio coverage for their National Football League coverage has had a rather inconsistent history in comparision to The NFL Today on CBS and Fox NFL Sunday on the Fox Broadcasting Company...
, then known as
NFL (insert year) until he was supplanted by
Bob CostasRobert Quinlan "Bob" Costas is an American sportscaster, on the air for the NBC network since the early 1980s.-Early life:...
. During the early weeks of the
1988 NFL seasonThe 1988 NFL season was the 69th regular season of the National Football League. The Cardinals relocated from St. Louis, Missouri to the Phoenix, Arizona area becoming the Phoenix Cardinals but remained in the NFC East division....
, Berman served as the host of what was, by this time, called
NFL Live! while regular host Costas was hosting NBC's coverage of the
1988 Summer OlympicsThe 1988 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIV Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event celebrated in 1988 in Seoul, South Korea. They were the second summer Olympic Games to be held in Asia and the first since the 1964 Summer Olympics held in Tokyo, Japan...
in Seoul, South Korea.
Live at Five
In 2005, he was one of a handful of rotating co-anchors with
Sue SimmonsSusan "Sue" Simmons has been the lead female news anchor at WNBC television in New York City since 1980.-Background:Simmons grew up in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem; her father is John Simmons, a renowned jazz bassist whose compatriots included Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum, John Coltrane,...
on
Live at FiveLive at Five is a name used by several television stations in some countries to refer to their 5:00pm newscasts or talk shows.* The name was coined by WNBC-TV in New York City in 1980 for a lifestyle and celebrity news show...
after Jim Rosenfield left for
WCBS-TVWCBS-TV, channel 2, is the flagship station of the CBS television network, located in New York City and owned by CBS Corporation. The station's studios are located within the CBS Broadcast Center in midtown Manhattan and its transmitter is atop the Empire State Building...
.
Blog
Since August 2008, Len has kept a blog and daily newsletter at LenBermanSports.com, using the form to continue his type of humor and whimsical sports stories.
Books
Len has written three books:
Spanning the World and two kids books,
And Nobody Got Hurt! (Volume I and II).
Personal
Len currently resides in
Port Washington, New YorkPort Washington is a hamlet and census-designated place in Nassau County, New York on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the United States 2000 Census, the community population was 15,215....
and has a vacation home in
Palm Beach, FloridaThe Town of Palm Beach is an affluent incorporated town in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. The Intracoastal Waterway separates it from the neighboring cities of West Palm Beach and Lake Worth...
.
External links