America's Host

By DAVID ELLIS CHICAGO

As a child growing up in Commack, N.Y., Bob Costas fell in love with the powerful notion of projection. Twisting the radio dial in his father's parked car, the young baseball fan was able to visit mysterious places, pulling in out-of-town stations broadcasting games through the crackling static. "There was a romance to the airwaves," Costas says, "a notion that moving the dial just slightly enabled you to eavesdrop on what people heard in Baltimore -- or, a little farther over, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and, on a really clear night, St. Louis."

This month Costas himself will be doing the projecting -- to 190 million viewers. And this time the eavesdropping will be global: he will be America's prime-time TV host for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Sure, he hopes to keep the romance of the airwaves alive; but during his 90 hours on the air, the NBC Sports broadcaster also has a more fundamental ambition: nothing less than redefining the job.

Jim McKay, who set the easy-does-it standard for Olympics broadcasting, hung up his blazer in 1988, and his successors haven't fared very well. CBS's Tim McCarver and Paula Zahn shifted uncomfortably delivering over-rehearsed remarks in Albertville last February. NBC tapped Bryant Gumbel for the starring role at the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, but his inability to meet the warm and fuzzy requirements of the job led the network to dump him in favor of Costas. The irony is that like Gumbel, Costas is determined to establish his journalistic credentials from Day One. The avuncular bit comes second.

Which is fortunate because, even at 40, Costas seems like nobody's uncle. He is smooth and smart, fixing the camera with a laser stare that gives his boyish face a cocky authority. Eight years of experience as a host of the NFL Live show and appearances on the N.B.A. Showtime program have trained him to master what is both the easiest and toughest task in TV: keeping a sports show rolling in 3-min. 15-sec. segments. It's easy because the segments are short, but tough because their brevity only heightens the pressure.

Pressure seems to have brought out the best in Costas throughout a charmed career. As a senior at Syracuse University, he won a job as the voice of the Syracuse Blazers hockey club after having attended only two hockey games in his life. Costas insouciantly sent the station a tape of his broadcast of a Syracuse basketball game with the explanation that he "didn't have any hockey tapes available." Later, the same tape, this time re-recorded with the bass up to make his voice sound richer, caught the attention of kmox in St. Louis, one of the exotic stations Costas had picked up in his father's car. The 22- year-old was signed and became the voice of the now defunct Spirits of St. Louis basketball team. He still lives in the city with wife Randy and their two children.

After a stint on CBS doing regional football, Costas moved to NBC in 1980, eventually joining the baseball Game of the Week. Here was the dream complete. "You can put a personal stamp on a baseball broadcast, be a reporter, something of a historian, a storyteller, conversationalist, dispenser of opinion," says Costas. Alas, NBC was unexpectedly outbid for the rights to televise baseball. "My career's in a four-year rain delay," he says ruefully.

Costas' tightly formatted half time shows often allow sports figures to get away with bitter cant and shameless self-promotion. It's a gig Costas is eager to outgrow. During the Games he is determined to curtail Olympic hype, and he intends to refrain pointedly from calling every upcoming event "exciting" and every confrontation "critical." Even with the tape delays necessitated by time differences, Costas will cover events as they happen, a high-wire act that will show off his considerable ad-lib talents.

A handful of viewers already know Costas as the best sit-down interviewer on television -- as host of Later with Bob Costas, the one network "talk" show where conversation takes place on a regular basis. Tucked away in the time slot behind David Letterman from Monday to Thursday, the half-hour show is a literate oasis among the infomercial emetics of late-night TV. Three million insomniacs regularly catch Costas with many celebrities who Don't Do TV -- talking acting with Robert Duvall, say, or camera angles with Lawrence Kasdan. Costas can also be a gentle nudge, drawing a controlled performer like Mike Wallace into revelations of his bout with depression.

Costas' commitment to Later (and to remaining in St. Louis) is striking. When the Today show was still reeling from the Deborah Norville fiasco and Gumbel was haggling over his contract, NBC executives reportedly let Costas know that the hosting slot was his for the asking. He wasn't interested. He hopes to develop prime-time specials based on Later, and he is also toying with the idea of creating a 60 Minutes-type show about sports. However, such is his devotion to baseball that despite his estimated $2 million-a-year salary, he has just about decided to leave NBC if it doesn't win back baseball next year.

But for now, Costas must draw upon a year of memorizing Olympic facts and cramming history to meet his greatest professional challenge. As Olympics ringmaster, Costas has the best -- and hottest -- seat in the house. Characteristically, he deflects the pressure with a joke. The Barcelona assignment, he says, is just the "payoff for three years of saying, 'We'll be right back after these messages.' "