Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [265]
He was a bulldog negotiator, and in talking to league people, you would hear stories about how he was very demanding—“take it or leave it at the table,” that kind of thing. He got off on that. Oh, he loves confrontation.
MERRIL HOGE, Football Analyst:
When I was diagnosed with cancer in 2003, I called Mark Shapiro. He was the first guy I called. I told him of my situation and that I still planned on doing the draft and that’s really the only obligation I had contractually during my chemotherapy time. And he’s like, “Listen, we’re behind you 100 percent. You do whatever you want to do. If you want to do it, you’re doing the draft. If you feel like you can’t, you don’t have to do the draft, and I don’t want you to worry a second about work.” He was really supportive and that was very meaningful to me and my family.
THEA ANDREWS, Anchor:
I always had a lot of faith in everything about Mark, especially as a leader. I believed he was a visionary, and what he was trying to do was incredibly smart and innovative. He’s one of those people you want to follow into battle. You don’t ask questions, you just go. That’s what leadership is, I guess; I just believed in him.
I’m sure there are people who disagree with me, but there are two things no one can disagree with: first, he’s one of the most charismatic people on the planet, and second, he’s an unbelievable television producer. I remember the first time I saw him break down a piece of television and explain what was good and what was bad about it. That’s when I said, this guy knows exactly how to make good TV and if I can just follow him, I will be in good hands.
You may never know where the next great idea is going to come from, but you have to put yourself in a position to be open to it.
MARK SHAPIRO:
I had four thousand people reporting to me, and would say at town-hall meetings that anyone could get fifteen minutes with me one-on-one. Anyone. I did admit it might take six months to get on my schedule, but no one was ever declined. I wanted everyone to bring their ideas forward, regardless of their position. So a guy named Fred Christenson, a midlevel director in our Programming department, asked for some time. He comes into my office and tells me if I double the hours we were devoting to poker, and gave him some money for a new camera that had been developed, he was convinced poker would really take off. Now, at the time, we were broadcasting eight hours a week of poker and not really paying much attention to it. I talked with David Berson, and we both decided we didn’t want to do anything more at that time. A couple months later, Fred was back again, asking for the same things. He was usually a mild-mannered guy, but he was so passionate about poker’s potential that I just had to say yes. It was for ESPN2 and I had plenty of space over there, so I figured, why not give the guy a chance?
FRED CHRISTENSON, Director of Programming:
My sell was that we needed to put money into production. Quality was historically bad on all poker produced on any level, but in order to justify increased production costs we needed a multiyear rights deal from the Binions, who were the rights holders at the time. I went to Becky Binion and her husband, Jack, and hammered out a five-year rights deal in which we paid next to nothing in rights fees, so all the money could go into production. From then on, we produced poker like it was a big event.
MARK SHAPIRO:
Then I hired Norman Chad because I knew him and knew he was a big-time gambler who would be perfect for us as an analyst. We added Norman, we added the hours, and we put in this whole new camera. And the thing took off immediately!
NORMAN CHAD, Analyst:
A confluence of events led to this poker boom.