Those Guys Have All the Fun by James Andrew Miller; Tom Shales

Those Guys Have All the Fun by James Andrew Miller; Tom Shales

Author:James Andrew Miller; Tom Shales
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-fiction
ISBN: 9780316043007
Publisher: Little Brown & Co
Published: 2011-05-24T00:00:00+00:00


CHARLEY STEINER:

In ’98, John [Walsh] was working us to the bone. We had meetings in the morning, we had meetings to schedule meetings, and we had what they called postmortem meetings after shows. I used to call those the PMS. And we were just running ragged, working ten to twelve hours a day every day. Howard [Katz] wanted to know why people wanted off SportsCenter, and we told him, all these meetings are killing us. Keith, Robin, and I were kind of the spokesmen for talent. Of our little group, Keith was the real anarchist, I was a moderate anarchist, and Robin, of course, was Switzerland. Then Howard, John, and Norby Williamson ran a meeting where we had a discussion of why people were wearing out. John was a big proponent of meetings, and we said, “An editorial meeting every day, terrific, but we don’t need to have a 10:30 a.m. meeting for a show that goes on the air at six or seven o’clock that night. And if we did, that’s why they have squawk boxes.” But, no, we had to be there. He felt the whole group had to be there so there’s not going to be any caste system. We said, “Well, that’s why people want off the show. You’re killing us.” And I remember Howard telling John, “You got a problem here. Fix it.”

For ESPN, a full season of the NFL remained an elusive holy grail. As of 1987, the most ESPN could get was a split season, and if the network really wanted to reach a higher level—to become the “Worldwide Leader” and not just use the term as a slogan—only a full NFL season would do.

Two big, stubborn roadblocks remained. First, Ted Turner: in the early eighties, when college football first became available, Turner outbid ESPN and walked off with the rights to the first-round package that ESPN had basically created. Later, when ESPN had seemingly wrapped up a big pro-basketball deal, Turner waved more money in the NBA’s face and ESPN again experienced the agony of you know what. It reached a point where many in the cable community felt that neither ESPN nor any other contender would ever be able to outbid Turner for anything.

The second major obstacle was dollars: Bornstein knew the price for a full season would be so high that he would have to get Michael Eisner to approve any deal that would satisfy the league. Bornstein quickly got to work on a presentation tape designed to excite Eisner and the Disney board about the prospect of Monday Night Football, and it came complete with gung-ho quotes from NFL stars: “It’s always better on Monday night.”—Drew Bledsoe; “Monday Night Football—how can you not be excited by it?”—Warren Sapp; “We have everybody’s undivided attention.”—Shannon Sharpe. The words were supplemented with sensational pictures of NFL action and clips from a Monday-night clash between Dallas and Philadelphia that the Cowboys won in a thriller, 21–20. The tape conveyed not only the wild



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