Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [279]
MARK SHAPIRO:
As soon as I heard the pitch for Dream Job from Carol Silver, a junior exec, I instantly thought we should create a series in which Al Jaffe’s daily talent-evaluation process was on full display. If we could discover a new, young, raw news anchor that could be chosen by the fans and get a full-time gig on ESPNews, I was convinced it would be a hit and at the same time give our viewers an appreciation for the SportsCenter machine. Convincing the SportsCenter newsroom that we weren’t devaluing their everyday existence was another story altogether. It was a tough sell.
AL JAFFE:
Dream Job gave me a real appreciation for what talent does, because all of a sudden I was on camera. I learned about what talent has to go through, including some of the things that we in management take for granted. I think the show also taught America just how hard it is to be a sports anchor. I don’t think people realized before that a lot of highlights are just a shot sheet; there’s no real script. Some of our guys are so good, it just comes out as a seamless narrative, like they’ve written every word and changed it ten times, when in reality, it’s all just off-the-cuff. But a lot of those young contestants on the show were really talented.
STUART SCOTT:
I sucked when I was their age. There’s no way I could have done as well as a lot of them did. I wouldn’t have made it. Initially, we had some backlash from anchors in the building who had spent a lot of time paying their dues and thought it was wrong that someone could just come along, win the contest, and sit in an anchor chair. But as the show went on, that criticism died down. Besides, there’s lots of different ways to pay dues.
MARK SHAPIRO:
When the ratings came out, the series was delivering the same numbers as SportsCenter itself! Jaffe became a quasi cult figure, and the newsroom folks stopped taking themselves so seriously and got behind the series. Dream Job was a big hit and Jaffe ended up making me think about Howie Schwab.
HOWIE SCHWAB:
Mark Shapiro called me into his office one day and said, “We’re starting a new show, a trivia show.” I said, “Great, I worked on 2 Minute Drill, can I work on it?” And he said, “No, it’s called Stump the Schwab, and you’re going to be on it.” I said, “Are you fucking serious?”
My total record was 64–16. Only twice was I really pissed off when I lost. Once, the question was “Maori tribesmen destroyed what trophy?” I guessed World Cup, and it was America’s Cup. The second time was this kid who really pissed me off. He was just a bad, nasty kid. As soon as the show started, he was mouthing off—“I’m gonna beat him”—and I just stared at him. Then, at the end, he beat me on stupidity. I don’t think he psyched me out; I just missed a couple questions. I remember saying to myself, “I can’t believe I’m going to lose to this fucking asshole!”
Chuck Pagano had been a bearded, long-haired, “freakin’ radical hippie” and disc jockey in the early seventies and, for three months, a roadie for Steely Dan, the memory of which became, he recalls, “just one big blur.” Then he got serious.
Progressing through a long series of job titles, Pagano was eventually named ESPN’s executive vice president of technology, engineering, and operations—a kind of mad scientist in residence. All the work he’d done over the years could have been considered a prologue to the creation of ESPN’s Digital Center, one of the most sophisticated TV production facilities in the world. It opened for business on June 7, 2004, when it broadcast the first high-definition SportsCenter.
The digital center would occupy 120,000 square feet on the Bristol campus and house three high-definition television studios of 9,000, 5,000, and 3,000 square feet. Its existence