Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [27]
GEORGE GRANDE:
At the end of the first weekend Scotty said, “When are you going into work?” I said, “Tomorrow,” and he said, “Can you come in and see me before that?” So I went in on Monday morning and he said, “Would you come and join us, be our senior announcer and put together an announcing crew?” I went home and talked to my wife, Joanne. I loved CBS, I loved the people I was working with, and I was right on the precipice of moving to a position where I would start to get some pretty good assignments. But this was something that, whether it lasted three months or three years, it was too good an opportunity to pass up—because of what it possibly could be, and because of Chet and Scotty, who were the best in the business. So after talking with Joanne, I agreed to do it.
When I went to cover the baseball postseason that year, I called for credentials, and Larry Shank said, “Sure, no problem, CBS, right?” And I said, “No, no, I left CBS. I’m at ESPN now,” and he said, “What’s that?” I said, “It’s a cable operation, we’re just starting up and we’re going to be covering all sports.” He said, “Look, I’ll give you credentials this time, but you’ve got to come up with something more definitive next time.”
BOB LEY:
I watched the first show on a black and white TV the size of a tape recorder. If you’ve ever seen a tape or disk of it, think of a toilet in a Holiday Inn that’s been sanitized for your protection, because all of the gaffes and all of the inevitable technical challenges have been edited out. I was sitting there and watching this thing and thinking, “Oh, my gosh, I’m committed. I’m going up there.” The next day, I went out to my car, which was packed full of all my crap that I wasn’t shipping, and drove on up.
Once I was working up there, I found out they didn’t have teleprompters, nobody had computers, and they only had old wire machines. I was soon wondering if I could get my old job back. I thought, “Holy crap, are all the days going to be like this?” I began to fall into this manic pattern of just trying to survive. And oh, by the way, we had no idea who, if anyone, was watching. But I was working probably 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m., and they mandated that on every show, somebody had to be wearing a garish red sport coat because Getty wanted their color out there. And those things were made of pure polyester. Put them near a flame and you’d die.
CHRIS BERMAN:
In my interview with Scotty and Lou Palmer, I said, “Look, I’m just starting in TV, but this thing is just starting too. I’ll tell you what, rather than me send you a little clip reel so you can see the best five minutes I ever did, why don’t you turn on Saturday and Sunday night? You live here. Watch it for two weeks and see if you like it. If I fuck up, I fuck up. Just tell me what you think.” And Scotty Connal called me about a week or two later, late September, and offered me a job.
STUART EVEY:
One thing you did get as a perk if you were a vice president of Getty, because they didn’t have many, you did get a new Cadillac of choice or whatever for two years—every two years. Bill and Scott Rasmussen should not have gone out and gotten matching Cadillacs with the stupid license plates. They shouldn’t have done it. They’re in a start-up! And so here the chairman of the board of Getty had a worse car than the goddamn guy that didn’t have any money that we bailed out, you know.
SCOTT RASMUSSEN:
You’ve got to remember we had the cars before we knew Getty, before we even met Stu. My dad and I each had white Cadillacs. We were promotion minded and that’s why we had the license plates we had—my dad’s was ESPN and mine was ESPN1. I’ve still got mine somewhere. Stu really was unhappy about that.
STUART EVEY:
Chet was doing anything he could to piss them off so maybe they’d run away. He had nothing to do with them. He didn’t want them out in front taking credit for everything Chet was doing. I actually think this is beyond the personal, they were in the middle doing deals that were incredibly detrimental to the