Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [292]
BARRY MELROSE:
The thing I’ve learned at ESPN is, even though we’ve got a lot of guys who love hockey here, the important thing is ratings. You have to have ratings. I always say the ratings are going up in the NHL on Versus and on NBC with the outdoor game and stuff, and that the best thing for the NHL is to get back on ESPN. And now ESPN is saying, “You know, jeez, maybe it’s time to look at the NHL again and get back into it.” So there’s hope.
BILL CLEMENT:
I left ESPN because hockey left ESPN. No more hockey there. It became apparent immediately that there weren’t any slots left. Barry’s there because he was the face of hockey in the studio and they still want to have some hockey presence because it’s a national sport. I was the lead game analyst, so because there were no more games, there were no more jobs for a game analyst. Understood it completely.
7
Reconciling the Dream: 2005–2008
“We have to distrust each other. It’s our only defense against betrayal.”
—Tennessee Williams
In 2005, ESPN was monarch of all it surveyed, master of its domain, a top dog earning top dollar, and deserving of other clichés too predictable to mention. Financially the network was all but stamping out Franklins in its Bristol basement, thanks in part to the enduring genius of its dual-stream revenue—advertising revenues plus cable subscriber fees. It was a little like selling cake and getting paid to eat it too.
Despite losing hockey the previous year, ESPN was now gleefully obsessed with its professional football, baseball, and basketball coverage. In addition, College GameDay had developed into a certifiable phenomenon, drawing bigger crowds than ever before and becoming arguably the best sports show on television; ESPN: The Magazine was winning awards and new readers; hungry fans were crowding into ESPN Zone restaurants; the breadth and depth of ESPN’s online offerings had made them a must-see for the rest of the industry; and the opening of a new $100 million–plus digital center made the company’s Bristol headquarters one of the wonders of the media world. While other networks were still planning a switch to high-definition, ESPN was already there.
But a rather large cloud was threatening to block the sun. A new round of negotiations for rights to broadcast the most popular, most expensive, and most desirable properties in all of sports television—National Football League games—was looming on the horizon. The NFL was offering up its entire inventory: Sunday afternoons, Sunday nights, and Monday night football. ESPN had been paying handsomely for rights to Sunday night games since 1987, but Monday night was glittering conspicuously against the black velvet because for the first time since its inception in 1970, it looked like ABC might drop the ball—even throw it away.
Monday Night Football had not only aired exclusively on ABC throughout its existence but seemed inextricably part of the network. Nevertheless, embattled Disney chief Michael Eisner reportedly no longer wanted Monday Night Football on the Disney-owned ABC television network. It was, like so much about television, a dollars-and-cents issue: the golden goose had been laying leaden eggs to the tune of at least $150 million in losses annually for the past several years. Falling ratings combined with rising costs is no formula for success in television, and in the face of grim figures, Eisner in effect said, “To hell with prestige and tradition; we’re losing money!”
There were even rumors that one year, at the prestigious Allen & Company media summits in Sun Valley, Idaho, Eisner had offered the Monday night package to Les Moonves at CBS one year, and to Bob Wright at NBC the next—not that Eisner necessarily had the rights to do it without the NFL’s approval. In addition, the burgeoning success of ABC Entertainment’s Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy on Sunday night suggested that Eisner would not want to disturb such rarities as prime-time scripted hits.
Virtually every department at ESPN geared up for the bargaining. In all likelihood,