Long before ESPN's SportsCenter became a cultural institution, Fred Hickman was helping define what sports television could be. One of the fledgling Cable News Network's original on-air personalities, Hickman became nationally known alongside Nick Charles on CNN Sports Tonight, where “Nick and Hick” paired serious sports journalism with an easy, conversational chemistry that made the nightly highlights feel both authoritative and welcoming. Their signature “Play of the Day” became so recognizable that, as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, a viewer in Germany held up a bedsheet urging Fred to make a united Germany that night’s selection — a wonderfully improbable measure of the show’s massive reach and influence.
This week, we revisit Hickman’s remarkable life with journalist Harrison Golden, co-author of the posthumously published memoir "Channeling: My Life On Air, Off Air, and In Living Color." Golden first knew Hickman as a kid watching Yankees coverage on the newly launched YES Network, then encountered him years later while interviewing for a local television job in Baton Rouge. The two became colleagues and friends, and after Hickman was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he entrusted Golden with helping preserve the story he wanted to leave behind.
Our conversation follows Hickman from his hometown Springfield, Illinois, to CNN’s improvisational early days; the rise and enduring bond of “Nick and Hick”; Hickman's harrowing struggle with cocaine addiction in Detroit and the second chance that brought him back to Turner HQ in Atlanta; the explosive growth and eventual fragmentation of cable sports; and later chapters at YES, ESPN and beyond.
We also revisit Hickman's pioneering importance as one of the first Black sportscasters with sustained national visibility — and, of course, his infamous first-place vote for Allen Iverson in 2000 that kept Shaquille O’Neal from becoming the NBA’s first unanimous Most Valuable Player that year.
