Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [36]
LEE LEONARD:
I hosted SportsCenter and we did a thing on the show called Lee’s Lip, where I would talk about anything I felt like for a few minutes at the end of each show. It was like a closing monologue. Sometimes it had to do with sports and sometimes it was just whatever I could think of that day, like a little editorial. Nobody seemed to care. As long as we filled up the time, that was the important thing.
But I went to work for them with the understanding that the “E” for Entertainment in ESPN was really going to be something. I was tired of sports. So when it became obvious to me that there wasn’t going to be any entertainment, brilliant me, I thought this thing was never going to work. So my agent called me and said, “There’s this crazy guy, Ted Turner, who’s doing a news network,” and I thought to myself, “Well, people might want to watch news twenty-four hours a day.” I asked, “Where am I going to work if I go to work for them?” And they said Los Angeles. And I said, “Oh that’s pretty nice.” I’d play golf in January. So I grabbed the offer and left. I wasn’t at ESPN very long—six months maybe.
LOREN MATTHEWS:
I was doing PR with the Mets for most of the seventies, and when the Mets were in the ’73 World Series, I was their liaison with NBC. I wound up meeting Scotty Connal back then. Once I got interested in ESPN, I had to go down to my in-laws and watch, because they had cable.
I joined in January of ’80 as a one-man broadcast promotions department, but at a certain point I was saying to myself, gee whiz, did I make a mistake? I didn’t know anything about television. I had told Chet and Scotty right up front. I know how to promote and I certainly know sports, but I don’t know anything about TV. And Scotty said, “Don’t worry, we’ll teach you television.”
But you have doubts. At one point I was getting on an elevator to go down to Scotty’s office and say to him, “Look, they haven’t filled my old job with the Mets yet, maybe this wasn’t the right idea. I think I should go back to New York.” As I’m getting on the elevator, Scotty’s getting off, and I said to him, “I’m just heading down to see you.” He said, “Well, I just want you to know that I think you’re doing a heck of a job.” One sentence. That’s all I needed at that point. I stayed for seventeen years.
BILL FITTS:
When we moved into our house, we didn’t have cable, so we called United Cable. The cable guy comes out and asks, “What do you want cable for?” I said, “I’m working for ESPN,” and he says, “Ah! Don’t worry about them, they’ll be gone in a year.” And this was the cable company telling us!
BILL CREASY:
It was a big deal when we hired Bill Fitts. He had tons of experience and I really wanted him up there with us, but in all fairness to everybody involved, some people were concerned about his drinking. He assured me that he was fine and then I assured them. He became our head of production, and he didn’t go back to drinking. But I bet he was close to returning to it many times because it was a very trying experience being up there in Bristol. He had virtually no money to spend on shows, and it was never easy.
BILL FITTS:
At CBS, a lot of our meetings were held in bars, restaurants, ad agencies, et cetera, and we certainly drank. Almost nobody went back to work after lunch. I had stopped drinking while I was looking for work, and when I went up to ESPN, I still didn’t go back to hard liquor, although there were times when I had beer and wine. Yeah, there were some times when I wish I hadn’t, but it was a bigger problem for me at CBS than it was over at ESPN. Then I quit for twenty-five years.
DREW ESOCOFF, Director:
Bill Fitts was the greatest boss anybody could ever have, and the greatest guy. To be able to have him as your first boss was magical. He was hysterically funny, but more important, he instilled a kind of work ethic, a creative ethic, and a free-thinking ethic with everyone who worked for him that you try to continue for the rest of your career and pass down to the people who are now working for you. It