Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [128]
I had spent thirteen years at MTV networks. I started in affiliate sales and marketing and ultimately was the head of marketing and promotional development for MTV. I took the ESPN offer because the opportunity to play around creatively in an on-air environment and launch a new channel was significant. So, yes, it was a big opportunity for me to be able to create a new on-air environment and to really do on-air as well as brand building. A big opportunity.
JOHN LACK:
We were working really hard—six or seven days a week. My life was three days a week in New York with Steve; Bodenheimer, who was head of affiliate relations and worked for me; and Jack Bonnani, who ran ad sales and also reported to me. Then I was in Bristol two days a week. It was a pain-in-the-neck commute but it was much more fun for me in Bristol. I was a program guy. I’m a sports nut. So the more time I spent up there, the happier I was. When I was in New York, it was just frenetic.
STEVE ANDERSON:
When John Lack showed up, everybody just knew, at many different levels, he wasn’t right for the place. It was sort of obvious. It just didn’t seem to work from day one. People have to buy into what ESPN is all about, and it’s about the culture. When you’re not willing to work hard, and not willing to be viewed as a team player, you’re not going to fit in.
VINCE DORIA, Vice President of News:
Al Jaffe and I went out to L.A. on a couple trips. We were looking for potential anchors and for somebody to do a talk show out there that eventually became Jim Rome’s. So they put us at the Peninsula, a very nice hotel. One day we walked upstairs just to look at the pool, and Lack was up there. He had a cabana all set up and he’d been there apparently for weeks. I’m not sure what he was doing—maybe he was doing God’s work, I’m not really sure—but it had the appearance that he was sitting there spending the company’s money. John was not shy about spending money. He used limos when almost nobody did. He was from the outside; he didn’t really understand the Bristol way of doing things.
STEVE BORNSTEIN:
For a couple years I really wanted to launch our version of the MTV Awards because I thought we could own it, and nobody else was in that space. Walsh just kept ignoring it, or, to put it another way, it was not high on his priority list. So I finally went out and hired a couple guys to do it. That infuriated the DNA of John Walsh so much that he finally engaged in the idea.
I had only two edicts for the awards show: no black tie and not more than two hours, both of which they ignored.
JOHN WALSH:
When my magazine Inside Sports was folding, I was trying to come up with ideas for shows, and one of them was an awards show. Much to my surprise and astonishment, who decides he wants to come and look at the proposal but Dick Clark! Dick Clark came to the Inside Sports offices! My heart was beating so fast. When I was growing up, every day I came home from school and watched American Bandstand from 3:30 to 5:00. They came to Scranton, but my parents wouldn’t let me go because rock-and-roll was dirty.
So anyway, Dick Clark passes on it and I take it over to ABC, where I meet this guy Bob Iger, who’s in programming. I showed him the proposal but he passed on it, too. So I just threw it away. When I did my consultancy for ESPN in ’87 before I was formally hired, I gave Bornstein the proposal, but I don’t think he even looked at it. When Magic announced he had HIV in ’91, we were in the board room and everybody was thinking he was going to die, so how should we honor him? Somebody said, “How about an awards show? We could call it The Magics.” So I pull out my awards proposal and said, “We should do this show.” At the same time, a group of people led by Ray Volpe and Ed Griles approached Bornstein about a sports awards show and the two things came together. Ed produced the first show, which was one of the top ten moments of my life both in terms of honors and horrors.
JIM ALLEGRO:
Once Steve had approved the concept for the ESPY Awards, he kind of bowed out, and it became