Ron Zappolo, the former sports anchor who retired last year as a news anchor is coming back to Denver airwaves.
The Denver Post TV critic Joanne Ostrow reports Zappolo will be the “weekend sports conversationalist” for Denver NBC affiliate KUSA.
He’ll be paired with Sam Adams, Denver comedian and sportswriter (for the Rocky Mountain News), to talk sports as a segment within the newscast. The first taping is Friday, to air this weekend.
Advertisement“We’ll see what develops,” Zappolo said late Tuesday. “Anything’s on the table.”
KUSA President and General Manager Mark Cornetta calls the move an “experiment,” as a way to inject talk about sports, sometimes in a debate style, in the weekend newscast. “As with anything, if it is good, there is the possibility it could expand,” Cornetta said.
Zappolo left Fox31 last April with the intention of “reinventing myself one more time.” Zappolo had been considered Denver’s premiere sports anchor in previous stints at Channels 4 and 9, before taking a chance on becoming a news achor for Channel 31.
He had extended talks with FoxSports1 and with KDVR but nothing materialized at either outlet.
At 9News, he said, “they treated me really well.”