Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [73]
GEOFF MASON:
We had a bunch of kids who liked to work hard but also have a good time, and my goodness, did they do both. We had a break during Christmas and New Year’s, and it was just party down. I mean, it was absolutely amazing.
GAYLE GARDNER:
I had one big moment of total panic. It was the end of the race and some of the reporters who had been covering it were supposed to join me in the studio to talk. We realized we couldn’t get anyone off the boats because everything was jammed up, so I had no one to talk to and just started talking about the nice boats and pretty pictures. They told me, “Just keep on talking.” My heart was thumping. I wound up talking on my own for forty-five minutes.
GEORGE BODENHEIMER:
I got a call from a cable operator who sounded quite serious and annoyed. He said to me, “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.” Now, in those days, this was not an infrequent call to get. There were a lot more cable systems back then and they all had their own issues. I asked him what his problem was, and he said, “I didn’t get any sleep last night. I was up watching the sailing all night.” We then had a good laugh over that. It was obvious ESPN was really beginning to break through.
ROGER WERNER:
You want to talk about a high-water mark? How about when our America’s Cup coverage made the front page of the New York Times. That’s when we believed we had finally made it. We had taken something as obscure as yacht racing and made it into something entertaining enough to attract a broad spectrum of viewers. We even made money on that event, and when we were having our discussions with NFL owners like Art Modell, several of them said how impressed they were by our coverage.
STEVE BORNSTEIN:
Herb Granath, our chairman, never paid me enough, but I love him dearly. So get this: we had just done the America’s Cup from Australia and had even been mentioned in the New York Times. We got the Television Critics Award for our coverage, and it was the first time that a group of people looked at us as other than a chickenshit operation. And we were up for a CableACE Award. Turns out it came down to us or the Discovery Channel. They had done a week’s worth of programming from Russia. Now, Herb was actually the chairman of this Golden ACE committee of twelve people, and he decided to abstain from the vote. And guess what? We lost by one fucking vote. It was going to be a huge deal for us, but we never got that acknowledgment. On the other hand, what the fuck is an ACE, right?
What a high point it was for ESPN—luring new viewers to the network who might never have tuned in before, and demonstrating the network’s ability to improve dramatically on the production techniques of the previous Cup four years earlier. Pride was becoming a commonly used word, and employees didn’t have to constantly repeat the name of the network when people asked where they worked.
Coverage of the America’s Cup challenge in 1987: Step Number Four in ESPN’s rise to world dominance.
DAVID HILL, Fox Sports Chairman:
The guy I worked for at the time in Australia, a guy called Kerry Packer, had been offered ESPN for $80 million in 1987. I was told to get on a plane and to have a look at this thing. The cable industry back then was all mom-and-pops; it hadn’t been consolidated. It was one or two people stringing a wire between two telegraph poles and controlling a certain area. Everything had to be negotiated. So I was sniffing around ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut. It wasn’t obvious at all that ESPN was going to become what it is today. Then there was a real downturn in the market and we stopped even thinking about buying it. Nothing was obvious. It wasn’t like we were going to be looking back in twenty years going, “Holy shit,