Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [24]
GEORGE CONNER:
The night we went on the air, they were running the last cable from the control room down a hallway to the studio where we were going to do our first SportsCenter show. That was our connection up to SATCOM 1, and I plugged it in I think maybe five minutes before airtime. We cut it pretty close.
GEORGE GRANDE:
Just before we went on the air, we didn’t have any of the live shots available at that point, and I asked the Creaser how we were doing. He says, “Well, strap yourself in! Get ready. We’re gonna rock-and-roll!” I looked at him and he looked at me, and his eyes kind of rolled; he knew what we were in for. But as long as I live, I will never forget the sight of sitting on that set and looking into the control room where Chet and Scotty were, and it was like being in a maternity ward watching the parents watching the birth of a baby.
In 1979, television was still living through the “three-network era,” with ABC comedies Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy topping the ratings. When ESPN officially went on the air on September 7, ABC was airing Fantasy Island; NBC had Diff’rent Strokes followed by The Facts of Life; and the CBS prime-time lineup consisted of The Incredible Hulk, The Dukes of Hazzard, and Dallas.
At 7:00 p.m., a small band of bickering pioneers, along with a determined supporting cast, managed to beam a signal from its ten-meter earth station in Bristol up to RCA’s SATCOM 1. There were 1.4 million homes available to witness the first image of the evening: a barren set and the face of Lee Leonard, who welcomed viewers to the new network by promising, “If you love sports… if you REALLY love sports, you’ll think you’ve died and gone to sports heaven.” Of the opening night’s offerings, only SportsCenter was truly auspicious, and even it looked a little tacky at first blush. Leonard introduced it by promising to bring viewers “the pulse of sporting activity,” whether through interviews, play-by-play, or commentary—or, when in doubt, highlights, highlights, and more highlights. Then he turned to an area only a few feet away in the makeshift studio—ESPN’s one and only studio at the time—and handed the reins to SportsCenter’s first anchor, George Grande.
Grande, done up in a yellow jacket and yellow shirt (a style that did not catch on except among bees), peered through the glass separating the studio from the control room and saw Chet Simmons, Scotty Connal, Stuart Evey, and Bill Rasmussen peering right back. The first result he announced was Chris Evert’s victory over Billie Jean King in that day’s semifinals of U.S. Open action. The show lasted a half hour and consisted mainly of videotaped highlights culled from the established broadcast networks.
Also joining the ESPN lineup that night were wrestling, college soccer, and a World Series game; no, not that World Series, but a critical matchup being played to determine—hang on to your hats now—the slow-pitch softball championship of the world. Lee Leonard refreshed the audience’s memory about softball: “We all play it on Sunday when we drink a little beer.” Speaking of which: the two teams competing were the Kentucky Bourbons and the Milwaukee Schlitz. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Schlitz but Budweiser with whom ESPN had signed its first monster sponsorship deal.
On the very first night of programming, ESPN had managed to tick off their only sponsor.
In addition to the softball game, viewers saw an interview, live from Denver, with University of Colorado football coach Chuck Fairbanks. There was one little glitch: no audio from Denver. The whole interview aired in silence.
An estimated 30,000 viewers saw that first night of programming. Not coincidentally, perhaps, one of the year’s big disco hits was Gloria Gaynor’s anthem of assertiveness, “I Will Survive.”
BILL CREASY:
I produced the first show and it was a technical nightmare. Everything was fucked up. It was dark in the truck and you couldn’t see what you were doing. We carried a god-awful night game of slow-pitch softball from Milwaukee, at eight o’clock