Kevin Seal was part of MTV's 2nd wave of VJ's, arriving in 1987. Unfortunately, his tenure ended not long after his Tuesday night series, Kevin Seal: Sporting Fool, was deep-sixed due to low ratings.
To be fair, without Sporting Fool, there wouldn't have been MTV Sports, which arrived a year or two later, hosted by Dan Cortese, and lasted about 2 years. Seal wanted to be a guinea pig, if you will, taking up various extreme sports, such as paragliding, as you'll see shortly, to show viewers the positives & negatives attached to those sports.
So why did it fail? Wrong night of the week, methinks. MTV had a standout checkerboard lineup at the start of 1990, with Colin Quinn (Remote Control) spinning off into his own series, Manly World, on Mondays, "Hollywood" Julie Brown in Just Say Julie (previously reviewed) on Wednesdays, Ben Stiller's 1st self-titled series on Thursdays, and Pirate TV on Fridays. The Half-Hour Comedy Hour would fill out the hour Monday-Thursday (Pirate TV was a 1 hour show). Smart thinking would've been to move Pirate to a later time after the Top 20 Video Countdown, and have Sporting Fool air on Fridays, setting up the weekend perfectly.
Seal was last heard from trying his hand at something else entirely---voice acting. Kevin worked on another short-lived series, Cartoon Network's Sheep In The Big City, a few years back, and has not done television since. Now, let's take a look back at Kevin's attempt at paragliding in Seattle.
I think he missed his true calling. Rating: B-.
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