Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [237]
By the way, I had voted for Peyton Manning to win the Heisman Trophy.
By 1998, ESPN had four domestic networks following the purchase of the Classic Sports Network and ESPN News, plus twenty-one international networks, and had launched two brand extensions, ESPN: The Magazine and ESPN Zone restaurants. The result? ESPN and The Disney Channel together increased Disney’s revenues by $427 million, primarily because of subscriber growth at ESPN and increases in ad revenues, thanks to the 1998 soccer World Cup.
With the increase in size came the inevitable rise of comings and goings in the workforce. The “one big happy family” image had certainly become obsolete.
LEE ANN DALY, Senior Vice President, Marketing:
About a month before my official start date, Judy Fearing asked me to cover a commercial shoot so I could get an advance look at what they were up to with their ad campaigns. So I went up to Columbia University, where they were shooting the first round of the Bristol University campaign. Bristol University was this sort of fictional institution of higher learning that was populated by “Professor Berman” and all the different guys from Countdown, basically. And it was a campaign for professional football, not for college football. So it had a bit of a flaw in it in terms of just pure logic, but it was funny and the writing from that first year of the campaign was great. I was introduced to [Berman], and my title was mentioned. He was like, “Oh, goddammit, do we need another vice president?” And I just said, “Nice to meet you, too, Mr. Berman.” I didn’t ask to have that title. I interviewed for the job and was offered it, so there was really no need to be a jerk. But that kind of stuck with me. I noticed that Chris Berman was rarely happy. He was always very difficult to please. After the fact, when something was good, you would sometimes get credit from him, and he would say, “Hey, that was pretty good.” But it didn’t matter what had happened the last time, because every time was like the first time in terms of having to prove yourself. I learned that you have to be able to just say, “Whatever.”
When I got there, I found it remarkable and unlike any shoot I’d ever been on—and I’d been on plenty of them because I came from advertising—in the waiting areas there were Ping-Pong tables and video games and a pool table, and there were all these PAs—female PAs—playing Donkey Kong and pool and stuff. I was really surprised to see all this and was sort of like, “Why are all these nubile cuties wandering around?” I quickly gathered that it was to keep the guys from wandering off the set.
BILL FAIRWEATHER:
With SportsCenter, you could say, “The show is heavy, so drop the Clippers highlights,” and you get off on time. With NFL Primetime, you didn’t have that luxury. There had to be a highlight of every single game regardless of how short and how long and regardless if you have a triple-overtime game that was a late four o’clock start. So there were a lot of things that were tricky about producing that show. Anyway, here I was, my first show, all organized and feeling on track to have a good show. But about a half hour before we go on air, Chris starts getting really worked up. “I don’t have notes for this. Where’s the highlight for that? I haven’t seen this yet.” And what could have been an easy day all of a sudden started really getting frenetic. And now we’re getting closer to airtime and there’s more “I haven’t seen this highlight and where’s the shot sheet for this?” and Chris is really getting worked up. And, of course, I’m trying to get everything done, at the