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The advancement of a dual revenue stream in March of 1983: Step Number Three in ESPN’s rise to world dominance.

BILL GRIMES:

Roger had something I didn’t have—an MBA. I learned a lot from Roger. He thought in a wonderfully strategic way about all aspects of the company. And here’s an example: This was, like, ’83; at that time we had boxing one night and skiing, tennis, and a whole bunch of other stuff on the schedule. We were talking one day about the fact that there was a lot of college basketball becoming available. I said, “You know, we could get basketball six nights a week. Our weekly ratings in prime would really go up.” But Roger said, “That’s true, we could probably get a better rating. But they’re only numbers. We’re now in the business of subscriber fees. So what we want is as diverse programming as possible. Even if a program like skiing or auto racing gets a lower rating, there are people who will never watch a basketball game. So we should now think a little bit differently.” This was totally contrary to what I had grown up with in the business—rating, rating, rating. Get the highest ratings we can get. But Roger was right. We didn’t want all our ratings from one thing, because it’s only those hundred people who watch the skiing event that’ll yell like hell if the cable operators ever do decide to drop ESPN. His belief that sacrificing a little bit of ratings to have greater variety was going to create more rabid fans of ESPN was absolutely right.

ROGER WERNER:

The cable-programming business wouldn’t be what it is without the development of a two-revenue-stream business model. Because of it, ESPN has fueled the growth of sports overall, the inflation of player salaries, the cost of thirty-second spots, and the cost of tickets to games. It’s all interlinked. We in some ways opened a Pandora’s box. We certainly aggravated an inflationary situation that was already there.

GEORGE BODENHEIMER:

I was driving through Holcomb, Kansas, which is where Cold Blood occurred, and I remember thinking, “This isn’t really a good omen.” The hotel I checked into there—I had never seen it before that night—had a huge sign behind the front desk that said, “No Pheasant Cleaning in the Rooms.” I told them not to worry about that. I was probably twenty-four or twenty-five, and I had to go and debate a guy who was twenty years older than me and very well connected in the town. He ran the cable system and we wound up in front of three hundred townspeople on whether or not he should pay twenty cents or something like that for ESPN.

I was nervous, but it turned out the night had nothing to do with my debating skills. The people really didn’t want to hear anything about his business strategy or hear his protestations about paying twenty cents. They just wanted their sports. They wanted college football and Kansas hoops. A week later we signed that guy and he got back on the cable system.

While Grimes and Werner dealt with the business issues, Connal and Fitts handled production, and Gutkowski and Bornstein figured out programming, the men—and a woman or two—in the trenches were doggedly plugging away at improving the product and polishing the air fare. The work was paying off; by year’s end, ESPN would be America’s largest cable network only four years into its existence. Occasionally, thanks to divine providence or fate or dumb luck, its progress got an unexpected boost. So in mid-March of ’83, two months into the network’s newly revised financial arrangement with cable operators, lightning struck. ESPN’s innovative policy of cutting simultaneous basketball games—from game to game to game—paid off spectacularly at that year’s NCAA tournament.

Viewers saw three perfect buzzer-beater finales within hours of one another: Maryland’s Len Bias helping to strike down Tennessee-Chattanooga; Ohio University’s Robert Tatum ending Illinois State’s run; and Purdue’s Steve Reid breaking the hearts of Robert Morris. It was a brilliantly orchestrated Hallelujah Chorus of sports