Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [136]
At the same time we hired Mark, we hired a guy named Bud Morgan who had worked at NBC and ABC, where he produced American Sportsman with Curt Gowdy. We were really happy to have him because he was a real veteran. In the ramp up to the show, he would call me back in Bristol several times a week and give me updates. One day he calls me to run over things, and he says, “Listen, by the way, the kid that you hired as a PA, Shapiro, we have to get rid of him.” I said, “What’s wrong?” And he said, “He just can’t stay out of everybody’s business. Instead of paying attention to what he’s supposed to be doing, I find him over here trying to get involved with this, or over here trying to get involved with that. He’s got the assistants running off doing something that they shouldn’t be doing. We just don’t need this kind of hassle from the low man on the totem pole.” I told him, “Look, do me a favor. I think he’s a smart kid. Why don’t you have a talk with him? Tell him what the problems are here. Give him another two weeks and see if he can straighten out. If he doesn’t, then go ahead and get rid of him. But let’s at least give him another shot.” A couple weeks later, Bud calls me and says, “I had a good talk with Mark. He’s back on track—very smart, lots of good ideas about the show, and he’s developed a good relationship with Rome. We can definitely keep him.” So that’s how close Mark Shapiro came to not staying with ESPN.
Unlike their brethren in the news and entertainment divisions of ABC, the powers at ESPN were not particularly interested in developing celebrity anchors and reporters. Such luminaries might, it was thought, become more important or visible than the network itself—and stars have a nasty habit of asking for more money as their popularity increases.
JOHN WALSH:
Lack decided to go with the popular wave of the time, which meant wanting Keith to move over to ESPN2. His feeling was: If the company is betting so much on this new venture, why not get our most visible, popular, acerbic guy over to do this show? Some pointed out that if you really wanted to differentiate the show with topics that were going to be different, that really wasn’t who Keith was. So that debate went on and on and on, but finally John got permission from Steve to talk to Keith, and then you had the courting of Keith by John.
KEITH OLBERMANN:
Walsh successfully broke up the Berman/Saunders partnership and did not want another strong team developing. He promoted Saunders to game work and especially Hoops. He thought he’d solved the KO/Dan problem by “promoting” me to my “own” network. When that failed, and I came back, he began to try to stave off the team’s success. Long after Dan and I reestablished our unit, he remarked to somebody, “I’ve lost control of the talent.”
JOHN WALSH:
I was torn. We had hit the magic formula with Dan and Keith. They had the act down really well and knew how to relate to one another in a way that was appealing to a large mass audience. We did understand that the two of them together were greater than each individual, that it was one plus one equals three. We had a debate about Keith going over. That’s the way the place operates, you keep talking about it, asking questions: What’s the best decision we can make? Who’s going to get us more attention? Who’s going to get us more publicity? I know at various points along the way, I had argued strongly that we had a successful thing here, and why would we want to break it up?
KEITH OLBERMANN:
The approach about ESPN2 came in the late spring of ’93, so I had only been on the air doing SportsCenter for a year. Their target date being October 1 would have meant that I’d only been on SportsCenter for a year and a half before they moved me.
I was told it was going to be the younger, hip version of ESPN. My initial reaction to this was, “Are you