ESPN rebrands 'Numbers Never Lie'
Effective noon Monday, ESPN2's "Numbers Never Lie," whose name no longer made sense in the show's current form, will become "His & Hers."
That is a nod to the fact the program mostly centers on sports-related kibitzing between Jemele Hill and Michael Smith, a partnership whose chemistry first became evident in 2012 via their "His & Hers" podcast.
(The original premise when the show launched in 2011 was to focus on statistics and analytics, hence the title "Numbers Never Lie.")
"'His & Hers' is the show Jemele and I were meant to do together," Smith said in a news release. "We'd like to think we're a match made in sports heaven."
For some of us who are very old and watched too much black-and-white television in our youths, the new name brought to mind a short-lived but influential show called "He & She" from the 1967-68 season.
It starred the real-life couple of Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss and had a direct impact on the development of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," which premiered a couple of years later.
All of which happened well before Smith or Hill was born. Oh, never mind. Sigh.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
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