Sports

Why Scott Hanson was ‘nervous’ to take on the role of Peacock’s Gold Zone host — and why it’s paying off

Hanson, the host of NFL's RedZone, knows a thing or two about acting as a de facto viewer's guide. But how does he keep up with so many events?

NBC is highlighting every gold medal won in the Games on Gold Zone.

August 3, 2024

If you’re a football fan familiar with NFL RedZone, word of NBCUniversal’s decision to replicate its whiparound approach for the Paris Olympics by taking viewers to the biggest moments just as they’re about to happen probably brought two thoughts immediately to mind.

First thought: What a great idea. This makes all the sense in the world. Now I’ll never miss an important moment.

Immediate second thought: Oh, this is going to be exponentially more daunting than doing it for a Sunday slate of NFL games. How are they ever going to pull this off?

As it turns out, one of the ways NBC has turned what it calls Gold Zone, which streams for 10 hours daily on Peacock, into one of the revelations of these games (at least for those unfamiliar with RedZone) is by hiring a certain energetic and deft host who has 15 of years of experience with such a format.

Scott Hanson is one of the hosts for Peacock’s whiparound coverage of the Olympics, Gold Zone.

Scott Hanson, who has hosted NFL RedZone since its inception in 2009, anchors the 2-5 p.m. window of Gold Zone from NBC Sports’ headquarters in Stamford, Conn.

He is the absolute ideal person for the assignment, someone, as NBC Sports president Rick Cordella noted on a conference call Thursday, who comes into the role “synonymous” with fast, paced whiparound-style programming.

“I think people really understood quickly what they were going to get when they came to [Gold Zone],” said Cordella. “That’s resonated really well with us.”

Hanson is actually one of four hosts on Gold Zone. Matt Iseman and Jac Collinsworth have the early shift from 7-11 a.m., while the also-unflappable Andrew Siciliano — who hosted DirectTV’s “NFL Sunday Ticket RedZone” until last year, when the package was sold to YouTube — has the 11 a.m.-2 p.m. window. Hanson’s shift coincides with prime time in Paris.

One would never know it as Hanson deftly hops from one event to another — sometimes four competitions are in boxed quadrants on the screen at the same time — but he admitted some trepidation when Molly Solomon, executive producer and president of NBC Olympic production, reached out near Thanksgiving to let him know the network was hoping to bring him on for Gold Zone.

“I don’t know if I should say this or not, but I demurred at first,” he said with a laugh. “I was daunted by the prospect of trying to take 39 sports and 329 medal events — some of which have no clocks, some of which start at all hours of the morning and evening, some of which have rules with which I am unfamiliar — and try and shuffle that deck of cards into the nice tidy package that we do on NFL RedZone that the audience loves.

“I was nervous about taking on the assignment, but Molly persisted, and here we are today. I am thrilled to be a part of this team.”

Gold Zone acts as a de facto viewer’s guide, taking its audience to the higher-profile events, but also unheralded but compelling ones, particularly those at which a gold medal is at stake. As one might imagine, it requires an extraordinary amount of preparation, while also leaving room to adapt to the unexpected plot twists of the day.

Hanson is quick to credit Jonathan Quartuccio, the senior director of research and editorial for NBC Sports, for being deeply prepared no matter what happens in any of the events.

“The research staff at NBC Sports is otherworldly,” said Hanson. “I’ve had maybe 1,000 questions leading up to the Games and during the Games, and I’ve had 1,000 correct answers.”

Hanson’s way of describing his approach to the job might as well be Gold Zone’s slogan.

“We’re not watching one thing, we’re watching all things, so you can see the best things,” he said.

“We could be going, ‘Hey we’ve got this gold-medal match in fencing,’ but suddenly a surfer gets a 22-foot wave in Tahiti that we absolutely want to show people because the visual is outstanding. Well, we didn’t know that was going to happen, but when it happens, how nimble can we be to get those types of amazing moments on the air as quickly as possible?

“Listen, we know there are very few American sports fans who readily hand over their remote control to a stranger in the living room. Hopefully, we’ve established that trust with our audience so far, and hopefully I’ve established trust on Red Zone, that if you give us the remote control in Gold Zone, you know you’re in good hands.”