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of other people’s opinions. He’d hire people and make suggestions to other people around me by calling them directly. The force of his will and his position made it difficult for people to stay away from him or avoid him when he would come and talk to them. I just had to sit back and let him do it and try to undo whatever problems his involvement generated. He liked me to talk to him every day and tell him everything that I was doing—everything. And I refused to do that. It wasn’t anything I was keeping secret, but I had work to do, and the work was not to be on the phone with him 24/7.

ROGER WERNER:

Chet used to complain to us bitterly through the year and a half of consulting—1980 right on through the end of ’81—quite bitterly about Stu’s midnight phone calls and verbal abuse. It was a pretty strained relationship. Chet obviously was trying to protect himself from a boss who had a volcanic temper and was rather unpredictable.

Getting panicky, in early 1982, over the mounting millions in ESPN losses and what the Getty board might decide to do about them, and knowing he needed even more money to bid on cream-of-the-crop programming, Stu Evey decided the best course was to spread the absence of wealth around, to sell a minority interest in ESPN to the highest bidder. Evey’s first move was to once again get Ed Hookstratten to circulate rumors of Getty’s intention to sell ESPN. Evey’s plan to pit ABC’s Roone Arledge against CBS ultimately succeeded. (NBC was not included in the effort to avoid a conflict of interests given that many of Hookstratten’s clients—including Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, and Don Ohlmeyer—worked there.) ABC agreed to purchase at least 10 percent of the company within the next two years; it also had an option to up its stake to 49 percent in five years. CBS would not match the offer. A key in the negotiation was Evey’s insistence that the deal include a programming association between ABC and ESPN, which would help with inventory. The two sides subsequently argued fiercely over the fees ESPN would need to pay to obtain certain levels of programming, with lower-level programming remaining free. That dispute stemmed primarily from ABC’s tardy realization that it had been “out-negotiated”: Evey had overvalued ESPN.

STUART EVEY:

I pulled a hell of a deal with ABC Sports to buy 10 percent of the company. A hell of a deal. That was the biggest thing that probably saved ESPN—when I worked CBS against ABC, with them having no knowledge that I had any interest in selling it, other than a rumor that was planted by Ed Hookstratten. That did not sit well with Chet, nor anybody else in Bristol, but having the money responsibility, it sat perfectly well with me and obviously it became the turning point in the initial acceptance of ESPN.

CHRIS LaPLACA:

We had a horrible, horrible snowstorm up in Bristol—this was soon after ABC’s initial investment—and because our generators were outside, they froze and the power went off. So we were off the air. They called this crusty old engineer who lived on a mountain and told him we needed him to get us back on the air. He had this old truck and somehow made it through the storm. He surveyed the scene, then took out a pair of jumper cables and started up the generator. He essentially jump-starts the network! Now if you’re a publicist like I am, this is a great story, so I go crazy with it. The next day, there’s a big headline in the New York Post, I think it was, “Engineer Jump Starts Network.”

Then I get a call asking me to come to the office of the guy in charge of engineering, and I’m thinking he’s going to say to me, “Thanks for giving my guys some love.” Instead, he’s upset and asks me why I talked about it to the press. He says, “I didn’t tell anybody at ABC that we were off the air for three hours, and they didn’t know until they read it in the papers.”

CHET SIMMONS:

I decide I’m going to meet the people from the United States Football League. And we had a nice meeting. God, every one of them just oozed money—I mean, really big-time money.

STUART EVEY:

One of