Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [93]
My first job was in Oklahoma City, working in the sports department at KOCO, an ABC affiliate. Then I went to WBNS, a CBS affiliate in Columbus, Ohio, for four years and got a lot of experience doing sports. Once, at the university basketball game, I saw Dick Vitale. I walked right up to him and said, “You are one of my favorite people,” and introduced myself. He handed me the mic, and said, “Okay, Karie, interview me.” And I interviewed Dick Vitale for the guys back in the truck, I guess. But anyway, someone took a picture of that—me with an ESPN mic and interviewing Dick Vitale. Then, lo and behold, this is really weird, I heard that Steve Bornstein was visiting his in-laws in Columbus and offered to fly me in for an interview. That’s how I got my job at ESPN.
The very first day on the job, I got attacked in my hotel room. A guy tried to strangle me. Not many people know this. I had reported for duty, came back to get changed, and this guy was in my hotel room. I was just so innocent and naive, I was like, oh, maintenance is here fixing my bad sink or something. But then he looked at me and immediately I knew it wasn’t good. He slammed the door and he had me in there for, I don’t know, ten minutes or so, trying to strangle me. I don’t know how I did it, but somehow I got out. They say you get the strength somewhere. I just clawed my way out and started screaming at the top of my lungs. They never caught the guy, but it was pretty traumatic, ’cause I had to stay in that same hotel until I found a place.
Still during my first week, I was writing at my desk, really focused, and I just felt this feeling that there was something going on, so I looked up, and the Playboy Channel was on, with naked people, from the monitor right above my desk. I looked behind me, and there were like twelve to fifteen guys standing there just to see what my reaction was. I think I disappointed them because I just looked back down and started typing like I could care less. So that was sort of my first surprise.
You have to remember that back in those days, we weren’t a politically correct nation. This was before Anita Hill, and ESPN was almost all men. Gayle Gardner and I were about the only females there. Maybe there were a couple females in marketing, but it was definitely a locker-room atmosphere. There was just testosterone everywhere.
HOWIE SCHWAB, Coordinating Producer:
When I first got here in ’87, the Playboy Channel was up on one of the monitors, but that changed within a year. There were a couple of bad people who just weren’t good human beings, well, one in particular that I couldn’t believe what a jerk he was. He was a coordinating producer and got fired pretty quickly. He was harassing women. One time there was a baseball trade, and John Saunders and I were standing there and he goes, “Wow, three blacks for two whites.” I just looked at him and said sarcastically, “How the fuck did you figure that out that so quickly?” I was glad he didn’t last very long.
GRACE GALLO, Assistant:
There really wasn’t a cafeteria. We had this woman, her name was Carol and she had a southern accent, who would have a lunch cart and she would literally make your sandwich for you. You had an option of ham, turkey, tuna, or chicken salad. And we had vending machines that would carry a whole bunch of junk for your sugar highs. But that was it. It was ridiculous. And Bristol back then was nothing. The biggest thing to hit town was when a McDonald’s was built. We thought we hit the jackpot.
We were so tiny, so provincial, it was really like living on a small college campus. ESPN was like a little biosphere. That’s why we became so close and were such a family, but you were limited to the people who you could meet. There was no one to date.
I think the majority of women I would talk to would complain mostly about not being treated equally to their counterparts. A female producer would maybe not get an assignment that a male producer would get, that kind of thing. But it was a rough environment for women, I will say that. I mean, they