Greg Gumbel Is Probably An Idiot

7:42 am EST April 2nd, 2009 | Media, Sports | 1 Comment

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Greg Gumbel was tricked by a television producer into taping introductions for infomercials — footage the CBS Sports broadcaster thought would be used for educational programs, according to a federal lawsuit.

Gumbel, who hosts CBS’ coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale.
Paul Douglas Scott, owner of the Deerfield Beach-based Encore Television Group Inc., did not tell Gumbel the introductions would be used to promote products ranging from time-shares to tools, the lawsuit says.

Scott approached Gumbel and his agent in 2007 with a deal to introduce educational and news-oriented programming that would be produced by Encore, according to the lawsuit. Scott told Gumbel they would be producing 2-minute education stories called “Eye on America.”

The stories were supposed to cover subjects like health technology, business, trends and fashion. Gumbel was paid $50,000 to tape introductions for one day in late 2007 at Encore’s studios. He was then paid $60,000 to record for another day in early 2008.

This is the infomercial:

Ok, Gumbel’s piece is just at the top of these, but does someone really think he sits down for $50,000 for a day of work to do some educational thing? And wouldn’t you put some sort of approval in your contract if you’re a well known person like Gumbel? If he’s so la-dee-da with his image, couldn’t they have put on some porn or something wackier in these segments? His claim just doesn’t sound believable to me.

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One Response to “Greg Gumbel Is Probably An Idiot”

  1. Rhonda R Shearer says:
    April 2, 2009 at 10:41 am

    Thanks for this post…I wrote an in-depth story on this case a day before the lawsuit was filed. MsM did not bother to mention they were scooped by a blogger! See StinkyJournalism.org.http://www.stinkyjournalism.org/latest-journalism-news-updates-148.php.

    Turner Broadcasting (aka CNN Headline News) already told Time Warner Cable to take the infomercials down! Read more at StinkyJournalism dot org