Warner Wolf

File:Warner Wolf WCBS 2003.jpg

Warner Wolf on WCBS in 2003 delivering his trademark line, "Lets go to the videotape!"

Warner William Wolf (born November 11, 1937) is an American television and radio sports broadcaster, best known for being a very popular local news sports anchor in Washington, D.C. and New York City.

Wolf began as a radio broadcaster in 1961, doing news, weather, and sports for WLSI-AM in Pikeville, Kentucky. He then moved on to radio jobs in Martinsburg, West Virginia and Washington D.C. at WTOP-AM before landing a sports television role in 1965 at WTOP-TV in Washington. There he became very well-known and popular as the news sports anchor; he also did play-by-play announcing of local college and professional basketball, football, and baseball games.

In 1975 Wolf gained an ABC Sports network role, working on Monday Night Baseball telecasts and as a host for coverage of football and the Olympics. Wolf's reception in those jobs was mixed, and he decided that he was best at the local news sports anchor role.

He thus returned to that position with a job at WABC-TV in New York in 1976, and then in 1980 moved over to rival New York station WCBS-TV. There he remained, with one interruption, until 2004. He also broadcast live sports reports for Israeli television during the 1991 Gulf War.

During this time he also continued to do some work in radio, giving sports reports on the nationally syndicated Imus in the Morning program. Indeed it was he that broke the news of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Imus show, since he saw the World Trade Center on fire from his lower Manhattan apartment. Wolf also covered the story for WCBS-TV.

Wolf is legendary in the sports broadcasting business for his use of catchphrases, including:

• [after someone does something dumb] "Give me a break!"
• [on a ball that hits the foul pole] "It hit the fair pole! It's the fair pole because the ball is fair if it hits it!"
• [after a one-sided defeat by, say, 40 points] "If you had <that team> and 39 points ... you lost!"

and most of all:

• [when introducing a highlight clip] "Let's go to the videotape!"

On May 27, 2004 WCBS-TV news director Diane Doctor fired Wolf. He was forced out without being giving a chance to say goodbye on air, three months before his contract expired, and replaced by a much younger anchor. Soon after his firing, which generated much public outcry, Wolf was hired by radio station WABC-AM and appears on air with Curtis Sliwa & Ron Kuby. There Wolf had to modify his trademark "Lets go to the videotape!" to "Lets go to the audiotape!"

Wolf played himself in the film Rocky IV and has made several other cameo appearances. He is the author of the books Let's Go to the Videotape and Give Me a Break.

On his mother's side he is a distant cousin of Abraham Lincoln.

Despite rumors to the contrary, and a similarly receding hairline, Warner is not the son of former Three Stooges comedy troupe member Larry Fine. His father was Jack Wolf, another employee of Ted Healy, the man who founded the Stooges.