Roone Arledge dead at 71

TV pioneer was creative force behind Monday Night Football

Roone Arledge was at the center of the Monday Night Football phenomenon. AP

NEW YORK (AP) -- Roone Arledge, a pioneering television executive at ABC News and Sports responsible for creating shows from Monday Night Football to Nightline, died Thursday. He was 71.

Arledge died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said. The cause of death was complications from cancer, ABC News reported.

"Roone changed the face of television sports coverage with Wide World of Sports in the early 1960s and the production of the Olympic games," said longtime broadcaster Jim McKay.

Although he retired in 1998, Arledge's far-reaching influence can still be seen on TV: when a slow-motion replay is shown at a sporting event, when Peter Jennings reads the news or when a sportscaster criticizes a player.

Arledge was single-handedly credited with bringing modern production techniques to sports coverage, then building ABC News into a power during the 1980s. For a decade, he was president of the sports and news divisions at ABC.

SI's Frank Deford Monday Night Football, and the way we view the Olympics. Monday Night Football changed our attention span for one day of the week. Bowling leagues went out of business on Monday nights. Restaurants saw a huge dip in proceeds unless they had a television set. Conversely, people started going to bars where they had televisions. Monday Night Football really changed the culture. FULL STORY  SI Flashback An article from Sports Illustrated's 40th Anniversary issue. Arledge was named the third most significant individual in the four decades of the magazine's existence. FULL STORY

The 36-time Emmy winner was cited as one of the 100 most important Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine in 1990.

"Roone Arledge revolutionized television and with it the way people see and understand the world," ABC News President David Westin said in a statement. "He was our leader and our friend, and we will miss his passion and his will to make us all better than we were."

Roone Pinckney Arledge was born July 8, 1931, and reared on Long Island. The Columbia College graduate joined ABC Sports as a producer in 1960 after a five-year stint at NBC.

Appealing to his bosses to bring showbiz to sports, the 29-year-old was given control of ABC's NCAA football broadcasts. Through the 1960s, he introduced innovations taken for granted today: slow-motion and freeze- frame views, instant replays, hand-held cameras and the placement of microphones to bring the sound of the game into living rooms.

In addition to all the technical innovations, McKay said Arledge would also be remembered for "putting the focus on the human being involved in sports."

In 1961, Arledge created "ABC's Wide World of Sports," one of the most popular sports series ever, and coined its tag line -- "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat."

David L. Westin President of ABC News I'm deeply saddened to report that Roone Arledge, Chairman of ABC News, passed away this afternoon. He was 71. As you know, Roone had been fighting valiantly on a number of medical fronts for some time. He came out of his last surgery well, but never regained his full strength. In the end, his body failed him when his spirit never would. Roone's many accomplisments defy description in any brief message. He took over ABC Sports in 1968 and turned it into the envy of the industry. He made the Olympics into the major international event it is today. He created the landmark sports anthology program, "Wide World of Sports." He was the first to take sports into primetime with "Monday Night Football." Under Roone's leadership, we were given instant replay, slow motion, "Up Close and Personal," Frank Gifford, Jim McKay, Howard Cosell, Keith Jackson, and other such sports television treasures. In 1977, Roone became President of ABC News (and remained President of ABC Sports, until 1986). Just as with sports, Roone transformed news coverage -- not just for ABC, but for the world. He created "Nightline," "World News Tonight," "20/20," "PrimetimeLive," and "This Week." Under his leadership, colleagues such as Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters, Ted Koppel, and Diane Sawyer became icons by which the excellence of ABC News is known. He brought to ABC News all of his creativity and innovation from sports and added to it his keen curiosity and overall passion for national and world events. For his efforts, Roone was given just about every award imaginable -- often more than once. He won the Dupont Golden Baton, four Peabodies, an I.R.T.S. Gold Medal, and 37 Emmies. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. Just last year, he was given the first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He was given honorary degrees by Boston University and Wake Forrest. He was named by Life magazine as one of the 100 most important Americans of the 20th century; Sports Illustrated ranked him as the third most important figure in transforming the world of sports in the last 40 years -- behind only Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan. And his list of awards and forms of recognition goes on and on. But all this was the Roone Arledge we shared with the outside world. For those of us who had the opportunity to work with Roone, we saw his unique creative genius coupled with an absolute refusal to settle for anything less than the very best. He was a perfectionist. He spurred us to give our personal best and to make better whatever it was we were doing. He always had the clearest eye of all for what was on the television screen and was always the advocate for the audience first and foremost. And none of us ever doubted how deeply he loved the two institutions -- ABC Sports and ABC News -- to which he gave his professional life. All of us have lost -- not just the public legend -- but our leader and champion.

Arledge, who became president of ABC Sports in 1968, supervised coverage of 10 Olympics from 1964 to 1988, including the memorable 1972 games in Munich disrupted by a terrorist attack in which a somber McKay delivered the news of the deaths of the Israeli athletes. Arledge expanded Olympics broadcasts beyond the competition by including personal profiles of athletes, a style echoed today since his protege, Dick Ebersol, runs NBC Sports.

He was the first to demand that networks, not sports leagues, approve announcers -- a philosophy that led to his hiring of Howard Cosell, the abrasive New Yorker who was probably the most famous sportscaster ever.

"His intuitive genius, that sixth sense that told him what would or wouldn't play on television, was never more apparent than when we first worked together in the 1960s," Cosell wrote in his autobiography "I Never Played the Game."

Monday Night Football, still a staple on ABC's prime-time schedule, was brought to the air by Arledge in 1970.

When Sports Illustrated in 1994 selected 40 individuals with the greatest impact on sports over the previous 40 years, Arledge was third behind Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan.

The reaction was harsh, though, when Arledge was selected in 1977 to resuscitate ABC's struggling news division -- while still running sports.

"People in news were outraged that I hadn't been a reporter or worked my way up. The newspaper articles were brutal," he later recalled.

Critics thought he would turn the division into ABC's Wide World of News.

ABC created, after disastrous starts, the newsmagazines 20/20 and Prime Time Live under his watch. He lured David Brinkley to ABC and installed him on This Week, reviving the Sunday political talk genre.

When terrorists seized Americans hostages in Iran in 1979, Arledge seized an 11:30 p.m. time slot from ABC's affiliates for young correspondent Ted Koppel to deliver nightly updates. He never gave it back, and the updates evolved into Nightline, which is still on the air today.

Arledge remembered Click the image to launch the clip Barbara Walters and Connie Chung share their memories of sports and news pioneer Roone Arledge. Start Video Plus Visit Video Plus for all the latest video and audio.

He wooed correspondents like Diane Sawyer to ABC and was largely credited -- or blamed -- for making newscasters rich stars on a par with Hollywood royalty. Arguably, all three network evening newscasters owed their positions to him: He installed Jennings on ABC's World News Tonight, while CBS' Dan Rather and NBC's Tom Brokaw earned their slots at least partly because Arledge launched bidding wars for their services.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, ABC was generally considered the top network news division.

"I took two divisions whose reputations were lower than low -- ABC Sports wasn't even paying its bills, and ABC News was so far behind NBC and CBS they weren't even taken seriously -- and I built them into the best in the world," he said.

Arledge could be prickly and elusive -- he was notorious for rarely returning phone calls -- and his inattention to the grunt work of management was a factor in his being gradually eased out of the news presidency. When Westin took over in 1998, ABC News had slipped to No. 2 and was faced with tough budget decisions.

Still, not only do his innovations remain alive in TV today, so too are network executive ranks sprinkled with his proteges.

 

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