Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [247]
MARK SHAPIRO:
After wrapping my second anniversary as GM for the Classic network, George took me for a walk in Central Park. He said that he wanted to put me in charge of programming for all of the ESPN networks. This meant not just the program-schedule decisions, but spearheading every program, and property negotiation with every league. The company was under a bit of pressure, actually. Don’t get me wrong: thanks to some brilliant carriage agreements with significant annual rate increases, ESPN as a business was in no danger. Still, we’d lost NASCAR to Fox and NBC, and ratings had been plummeting. George wanted to ratchet things up and see if he couldn’t spark some new thinking and new ideas about our overall programming decisions and philosophy. I remember he said to me, “I don’t know much about ratings. All I know is they’re down and I’m tired of reading about it. Fix it.”
So at thirty-two years of age, I was put in charge of all programming on ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN Classic—with one clear and defined mission: drive ratings.
Michael Eisner phoned to congratulate me on the job and he underscored my mission in a way only he could. He told me, “You have one job to do and that is increase ratings. When I ran ABC at a young age, I found my ratings weapon in Happy Days; that series ignited our success. Find your Happy Days.”
STEVE BORNSTEIN:
Shapiro’s a unique talent. He is every bit as good, arrogant, and aggressive as his reputation. I had to hit him upside the head with a two-by-four a couple times, but that’s what he responds to.
Mark Shapiro’s appointment and ascent would fuel one of the most dramatic transformations in the culture of ESPN. Apart perhaps from the moment when the blustery and supremely confident Steve Bornstein was promoted and the softer-spoken, unassuming George Bodenheimer took over from him, no contrast in attitudes and behavior had been as striking.
Suddenly, perhaps because of Shapiro’s age or his almost frighteningly high energy level, the company was divided: some younger employees were thrilled at the new vigor Shapiro brought, while others resented one of their peers making such a swift rise to the top. After all, he had jumped over his two older bosses. Among older workers, some were, as one executive put it, “absolutely terrified” by the force of Shapiro’s personality and his ambitious agenda; others thought a shakeup was overdue. And for some, the tremendous contrast between Shapiro and his predecessors was simply disorienting.
VINCE DORIA:
Did it take people by surprise? Did people have angst about it? Yes and yes. It was something that had never really quite transpired here before. I remember John Walsh saying to me and other people, “We need to do some big things here this year to show George, or otherwise we’re all going to be reporting to Mark Shapiro,” and John said it in a way like, “And the world is going to end.”
DAN PATRICK:
Many people were freaked out to see how much Shapiro, in the words of one producer, “made Walsh his bitch.” It was like one moment Walsh is there on top of things and then the next, Mark is talking down to John in front of everyone in meetings. John got put in the corner and Steve Anderson got kicked to the curb.
JOHN WALSH:
I was his boss for the first ten years. Then he was my boss.
MARK SHAPIRO:
I knew how to put John in a box, if you will, because John’s like a Unabomber: he’s got a lot of ideas, but some of them end up messing things up. You have to manage John. He’d walk into a production meeting and he would go over his ideas and people were thinking, “Do we have to listen to him?” His power had been greatly diminished, and people began to put him aside. He just wore people out.
TOM JACKSON:
I wish you could have seen our hierarchy