Courtesy Kansas City Star

(February 11, 2009) There’s a certain symmetry to the decision by Bob Costas to cut ties with HBO, where he’d been nearly a decade, and join the MLB Network doing the job he does when he’s not on NBC. (He has been with the network since 1980, but NBC does not carry baseball games.)

Costas is leaving HBO, still one of the strongest brands in television and so renowned for excellence that merely OK shows like “Big Love” strike its viewers (like me) as disappointments. He is going to a network that came out of the gate Jan. 1 so predictably cookie-cutter and ordinary that it instantly dropped into the ocean of 24/7 sports TV talk shows with scarcely a ripple.

You may be surprised to learn that by moving from HBO to the MLB Network, Bobby C actually increased his visibility, if such a thing is possible for someone who has been on national TV for 30 years. Last I checked, HBO was in about 30 million homes; MLB Net is in about 50 million homes. That’s a 67 percent upgrade.

Meanwhile, what’s going on at HBO? First “Inside the NFL” got its walking papers last season (it went to Showtime, which picked up a few new subscribers) and now this. I know HBO is renowned for its sports documentaries, but almost anyone can put together a special effects-laden film about the Yankees these days.

Few networks, however, could offer the spectacle of a live, unbleeped rant by a Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter against a bogeyman known as “the blogosphere” (or as I call it, work). And say what you will about “Inside the NFL,” but it was a gathering of jocks that Costas kept in line with his intelligence and always deft snappy comebacks. There was nothing like it on broadcast or cable.

HBO still has “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel,” which remains a solid showcase for journalism. And after the Costas announcement, HBO announced it had signed Fox broadcaster Joe Buck to host his own sports-talk series. HBO’s head of sports, Ross Greenburg, said that the network would “craft the series to showcase Joe’s character and personality.”

What I am about to write is not to diminish what I believe is excellent work that Buck does on Fox’s baseball postseason coverage. However: What “character and personality” is Greenburg referring to? I mean, isn’t the whole point about Joe that he kind of kicks back and lets the game speak for itself?

I’d be delighted if the premier St. Louis-based sports personality of my generation started reminding me of Costas, the previous generation’s St. Louis-based sports personality or the ones before that (Joe’s dad and Harry Caray). If Greenburg can pull that rabbit out of his hat, I’ll be the first to acknowledge I was wrong to second-guess HBO.