Pioneering ABC TV Executive Arledge Dies

NEW YORK Decembwer 6, 2002; Tara Burghart writing for The AP reported that Roone Arledge, the groundbreaking ABC television executive whose legacy includes everything from ``Monday Night Football'' and ``Nightline'' to the slow-motion instant replay, has died at the age of 71.

Arledge died Thursday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York of complications from cancer, according to ABC News.

Arledge is widely viewed as one of the most influential figures in the history of television. He helped usher in the era of primetime sports by launching ``Monday Night Football,'' and also is responsible for the long-running ABC news programs ``Nightline'' and ``20/20.''

He was a mentor to several prominent ABC broadcasters, including Ted Koppel, Peter Jennings and Sam Donaldson.

``He was a leader. You wanted to march off a cliff for Roone Arledge if he asked you to,'' said Donaldson. ``And if you produced for him, nothing was too good for you. I was fortunate to be among those he smiled on occasionally.''

Jennings called Arledge ``the complete television character — producer, editor, director and reporter, when he needed to be. Without Roone it would be difficult to imagine how my career or that of Ted Koppel, Barbara Walters or David Brinkley would have turned out.''

He 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.

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 invented television sports and then reinvented television news,'' said one of his proteges, Dick Ebersol, who now heads NBC Sports. ``He alone moved American sports from daytime to primetime, from small time to big time.''

Roone Pinckney Arledge was born July 8, 1931, and raised on Long Island. The Columbia University 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: replays, hand-held cameras and the placement of microphones to bring the sound of sports into living rooms.

In 1961, he 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.''

Arledge, who became president of ABC Sports in 1968, supervised coverage of 10 Olympic Games from 1964 to 1988, including the 1972 games in Munich that were disrupted by a terrorist attack. He expanded Olympic broadcasts beyond the competition by including personal profiles of athletes, a style echoed today.

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

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

Marc Gunther, author of a book called ``The House That Roone Built,'' said that before Arledge, sports was covered by TV in a ``very dull, routine, respectful way.

``The leagues would say the telecast must never be bigger than the game itself. And Roone would say, it's not about the game, it's not about the news event, it's about the television show,'' Gunther said.

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.

But the reaction was harsh 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.

After disastrous starts, ABC created 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 Koppel to deliver nightly updates. He never gave it back, and the updates evolved into ``Nightline,'' which is still on the air.

Koppel was broadcasting from Baghdad on Thursday night, and ``Nightline'' focused on the man Koppel called ``my friend and my mentor.''

``Roone Arledge was a man who relished sending us off to far-flung places and changing programs at the last moment,'' Koppel said. ``Well, here I am in Baghdad, and we've been up all night, changing the broadcast.''

Arledge 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.

The red-haired, ruddy-faced 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 David Westin took over in 1998, ABC News had slipped to No. 2 and was faced with tough budget decisions.

Arledge is survived by his wife, Gigi Shaw Arledge, and four children from a previous marriage. An ABC spokesman said a memorial service was being planned.