LITMIR.BIZ

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bureau.⁵² Arledge teamed with his Columbia classmate Larry Grossman to write a proposal for Masterpiece, a ninety-minute program that would dramatize the “stories of the world’s greatest masterworks of art, music and literature and the men who created them,” such as Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco, Beethoven’s “Eroica,” and Walt Whitman’s “Drum Taps.”⁵³ Grossman, who went on to run PBS and oversee the similar public television franchise Masterpiece Theater, claimed that he and Arledge conjured up the show in a noble effort “to save television from triviality.”⁵⁴

      Arledge went in a different direction with For Men Only, a variety program geared toward urban male sophisticates that he described as a combination of Playboy, True, Sport, and Field & Stream magazines. He recruited the dapper NBC weatherman Pat Hernon to host a self-funded pilot, which featured Sports Illustrated artist Robert Riger sharing drawings of a Carmen Basilio prizefight, sportscaster Marty Glickman narrating a segment on track and field, a feature on jazz, and a shapely young woman periodically parading in front of the camera in a bathing suit. The production team extended For Men Only’s flagrantly macho subject matter behind the camera by passing around a bottle of scotch while filming the sample episode.

      Hernon knew Scherick from previous jobs and slipped the sports packager a copy of Arledge’s production in hopes that he might find For Men Only suitable for ABC or have recommendations for where else they might shop it. Scherick had no interest in For Men Only, but he thought it showed some potential. “I recognized the talent in Roone as soon as I saw that kinescope,” he recalled. “It was another attempt to do a sports magazine show…. But it was done with nice flair and I liked its production.”⁵⁵ He consequently took a meeting with Arledge at SPI’s cramped and disheveled office, which Arledge later likened to a “bookie joint.” During the meeting Scherick explained his arrangement with ABC and their joint efforts to make a push in sports. He then tested Arledge’s sports knowledge by having the producer identify the athletes whose pictures hung crooked and dusty on the walls. Arledge knew all those Scherick asked him to name—and later expressed relief that Scherick did not quiz him on the several athletes he did not recognize. Scherick offered him a job on the spot to produce ABC’s NCAA football games for an annual salary of $10,000. Arledge started on May 1, 1960—just in time to begin preparations for college football.

      Though his new position was hardly a step up, Arledge was elated to leave his days at Hi Mom! behind. “I finally got my fill of early morning hours and puppets and decided to live like a gentleman,” he wrote in a letter announcing his career change to the Leo Burnett advertising agency’s Hooper White. “As you can see from the letterhead I have left NBC to go work in the field I have always preferred.” He giddily concluded the note by gloating that his “first assignment is a rough one. I have to go to San Francisco this weekend to watch the Giants and Dodgers play baseball.” “It’s a pleasure,” Arledge wrote to another colleague, “not to have to get up at 5am and look at puppets.” The producer made clear that he was moving on to bigger and better things. But several of Arledge’s associates warned that working in sports would harm his professional credibility. “There’s nothing creative you can do in sports,” he later said in mocking imitation of this unsolicited advice.⁵⁶ But, as he demonstrated with For Men Only, Arledge viewed sports as part of a cultural tapestry that included music, fashion, and cuisine and that deserved the comparatively dignified treatment these topics commonly received.

      In fact, Arledge’s main complaint with 1950s sports television was that it did not appreciate this richness. “When I got into it in 1960, televising sports amounted to going out on the road, opening three or four cameras, and trying not to blow any plays. They were barely documenting the game, but just the marvel of seeing a picture was enough to keep people glued to their sets.”⁵⁷ He noticed sports TV’s singular power after witnessing NBC’s telecast of the Baltimore Colts’ sudden death overtime victory over the New York Giants in the 1958 NFL Championship—a contest now commonly referred to as the “greatest game ever played”—enthrall a national audience. But Arledge thought these spectacles could be dramatized and personalized in ways that would increase their already vast viewership. They relied, he thought, too much on the events and not enough on the people, places, and circumstances that made them worth televising in the first place. For instance, Arledge recalled taking his wife to a Notre Dame–Army football game and being surprised to discover her engrossment. But he soon realized that she was not interested in the game so much as the marching band, cheerleaders, and fellow onlookers. This experience reminded Arledge of how Sports Illustrated’s photos and drawings highlighted sport’s emotion-laden details and atmosphere. He thought he could do the same with television. “The action on the field is only half of what’s going on,” he told TV Guide. “The peripheral action is just as important…. There’s something impersonal about 100,000 people, but if you can see the reaction of just one cheerleader when a touchdown is made or the look on the face of one fan when a player drops the ball, then you really know what’s going on.”⁵⁸ Arledge sought to emphasize the drama surrounding sporting events to amplify their spectacular status and to attract those, like his wife, who might not care about games but were interested in the stories and personalities they harbor.

      While Arledge’s new position in sports may not have impressed his more elitist peers, Scherick’s decision to put the greenhorn producer in charge of ABC’s highest-profile sports account was a big gamble. Scherick admitted that Arledge’s “experience did not warrant” the position “at all.”⁵⁹ Gillette and the NCAA were fretful when word leaked in the trade press that Arledge—with whom neither entity was familiar—was slated to oversee the autumn games. To soothe their anxieties, Scherick said that he, not Arledge, would personally helm the telecasts—a promise he had no intention of keeping.

      Because of the brouhaha surrounding Arledge’s hiring, Scherick asked his new employee to pen an internal memo explaining how he aimed to produce sports telecasts and how this approach would distinguish ABC’s college football coverage. The document—which Arledge claimed to have typed out over a couple of beers on a Sunday afternoon—became a de facto mission statement for ABC’s “up close and personal” aesthetic. In fact, the questionable new hire’s manifesto was eventually distributed in pamphlet form to all new ABC Sports employees. “Heretofore,” Arledge wrote, “television has done a remarkable job of bringing the game to the viewer—now we are going to take the viewer to the game.” He maintained that ABC would achieve this transportation by filtering NCAA football games through story lines that introduce the campuses where contests occur and include profiles of the otherwise faceless competitors. It would adopt a battery of innovations (handheld cameras, slow motion, split screens, crane shots, etc.) to display games and explain the feelings competitors bring to and experience during them. For instance, he argued that the handheld camera, which he referred to as a “creepy peepy” and borrowed from NBC’s coverage of the 1960 Republican National Convention, would “get the impact shots we cannot get from a fixed camera … all the excitement, wonder, jubilation and despair that make this America’s Number One sports spectacle and a human drama to match bullfights and heavyweight championships in intensity.” “In short,” Arledge wrote, “we are going to add show business to sports!...In addition to the natural suspense and excitement of the actual game, we have a supply of human drama that would make the producer of a dramatic show drool.” He closed his bombastic memorandum by promising that this style would install ABC as the leader in networks sports TV. “We will be setting the standards that everyone will be talking about and that others in the industry will spend years trying to equal.”⁶⁰ The proclamation was enough to convince Gillette and the NCAA that Scherick hired a producer with vision, if not experience.

      Arledge insisted that his ornate method would amount to more than eye-catching bells and whistles. Rather, it would probe—and even create—sport’s meanings. “You’ve got to distinguish between a legitimate journalistic device and a gimmick,” he said.⁶¹ The producer prohibited ABC’s partners from approving announcers or censoring coverage, affordances other networks permitted that he contended would compromise ABC’s integrity. As Arledge asserted, “We have to insist in our reporting, just as our news departments do in covering a space

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