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By Root 2137 0

on day-to-day micromanagement; I delegated. I wanted to look at how we were going to spend our money and the major decisions that followed from that. We certainly had some personnel-management issues—the Steve versus Scotty struggle was a difficult one, and some people had difficulties with how some of our other managers treated the staff. We certainly had our share of infighting. Even though the company was quite a bit smaller then—we’re talking less than around five hundred people in the late eighties—I can’t tell you that I was aware of all of the personnel battles going on.

At the start of 1989, ESPN became the first cable network to surpass 50 million subscribers, covering 55.5 percent of all U.S. television households. ACNielsen reported that ESPN had been the country’s largest cable network since the late summer of 1983.

And it wasn’t letting up. ESPN even televised the North Atlantic Conference basketball championship, which was played in the Hartford Civic Center—despite the fact that literally no fans were in attendance, because there was a measles epidemic in the conference and the tournament was under quarantine. It didn’t matter to ESPN. Siena won in a squeaker over Boston University, 68–67.

For some, it was the best of times—working at ESPN in the rowdy years when it was still a fairly wild and crazy workplace. For others, however—especially the women who were making a bold but frustrating attempt to move into what was still mainly a man’s world—it often seemed the worst of times.

Management probably should have seen it coming. Here were dozens of young guys working long hours (sometimes through the night) in a male-oriented business, located in the middle of nowhere, doing work that for eons had been considered “guy” work, and the women on the job were likely to be the only women they would meet. Such factors combined to make the place a giant petri dish in which misconduct could breed and thrive.

Sexual harassment took several forms: women would be hit on or hooted at or touched inappropriately, or sometimes men would propose offering workplace privileges in exchange for sexual favors. Guys would share photos from girly magazines or look at pornography on house monitors and laugh among themselves at the discomfort they caused women nearby. Women could object and be ignored, or play along and be compromised. Up to this point, there wasn’t even a viable human resources department to turn to, so anyone who complained of sexual harassment in those early frontier days risked being labeled a troublemaker, being passed over for promotions, and generally having her workdays made miserable. Even male executives who wanted to help were inhibited by the fear that other guys might look upon them as sexual traitors, or as giving aid and comfort to “the enemy.”

Enter Karie Ross, a talented and hardworking new hire with a serious background in journalism. The fact that she was incredibly attractive made her a natural for on-camera work but also, unfortunately, a target for much unwanted attention from more than a handful of men at the network. The work environment clearly had to change, and it was Karie Ross who decided, when she simply couldn’t stand it anymore, to take aim not at individuals but at the system itself.

KARIE ROSS, Anchor:

I grew up in Clinton, Oklahoma, population eight thousand, in an avid University of Oklahoma home. My dad took me to the Oklahoma football games when I was in diapers. We were huge OU fans and we never wore orange, which was the color of Texas and Oklahoma State colleges. Of course I went to Oklahoma and majored in journalism, where I received an award for one of my writings. I worked at a daily newspaper during the summer, and I took TV courses as a minor. Then I entered this competition called “Maid of Cotton,” where I had to do several interviews and give a speech, and I won the darn thing. The prize was traveling around the world. So I went to China, Hong Kong, Korea, India, Thailand, Spain, and Italy. And I was on television everywhere I went. That was really what got me hungry