Editing Roone Arledge (section)

==Career==
Contacts he made at DuMont paid off with a stage manager's job at NBC's New York City station, WRCA (later [[WNBC-TV|WNBC]]).  One of his assignments there was to help produce a children's puppet show hosted by [[Shari Lewis]].  In 1958, the program won a New York City [[Emmy award]].

Even with that success, Arledge wanted to tinker with programming ideas.  Using the avant-garde magazine ''[[Playboy]]'' as his model, Arledge convinced his superiors at WRCA to let him film a pilot of a show he called ''For Men Only''.  While his superiors liked the pilot, they told him WRCA could not find a place in the programming schedule for it.  But the WRCA weatherman, Pat Hernon, who hosted the pilot episode of ''For Men Only'', began showing the [[kinescope]] to people around New York City who might want the program.  One of them was a former account executive at the ad agency [[Dancer Fitzgerald Sample]], [[Edgar J. Scherick]], who as far as Hernon knew, was doing something at ABC.

===Assistant Producer===
{{more citations needed section|date=June 2019}}
Scherick had joined the fledgling ABC television network when he persuaded it to purchase Sports Programs, Inc.  Scherick had formed this company after leaving [[CBS Sports|CBS]] when the network would not make him the head of sports programming, choosing instead [[Bill MacPhail]], a former baseball public-relations agent.  Before ABC Sports even became a formal division of the network, Scherick and ABC programming chief Tom Moore pulled off many programming deals involving the most popular American sporting events.

While Scherick wasn't interested in "For Men Only," he recognized the talent Arledge had.  Arledge realized ABC was the organization he was looking to join.  The lack of a formal organization would offer him the opportunity to claim real power when the network matured.  So, he signed on with Scherick as an assistant producer.

Several months before ABC began broadcasting NCAA college football games, Arledge sent Scherick a remarkable memo, filled with youthful exuberance, and television production concepts which sports broadcasts have adhered to since.{{citation needed|date=June 2019}}  Previously, network sporting broadcasts had consisted of simple set-ups and focused on the game itself.  The genius of Arledge in this memo was not that he offered another way to broadcast the game to the sports fan.  Arledge recognized television had to take the sports fan to the game.  In addition, Arledge realized that the broadcasts needed to attract, and hold the attention of women viewers.  At age 29 on September 17, 1960, he put his vision into reality with ABC's first NCAA college football broadcast from Birmingham, Alabama, between Alabama Crimson Tide and the Georgia Bulldogs won by Alabama, 21–6.  That same year, ABC began broadcasting games in the fledgling [[American Football League]] and used the same innovative techniques in their broadcasts.  Sports broadcasting has not been the same since.{{citation needed|date=June 2019}}

===ABC Sports===
[[File:Roone Arledge 1968.jpg|thumb|Arledge in 1968]]
Despite the production values he brought to NCAA college football, Scherick wanted low-budget (as in inexpensive broadcasting rights) sports programming that could attract and retain an audience.  He hit upon the idea of broadcasting track and field events sponsored by the [[Amateur Athletic Union]].  While Americans were not exactly fans of track and field events, Scherick figured Americans understood games.

So in January 1961, Scherick called Arledge into his office and asked him to attend the annual AAU board of governors meeting.  While he was shaking hands, Scherick said, if the mood seemed right, might he cut a deal to broadcast AAU events on ABC?  It seemed a tall assignment, but as Scherick said years later, "Roone was a gentile and I was not."  Arledge came back with a deal for ABC to broadcast all AAU events for $50,000 a year.

Next, Scherick and Arledge divided up their NCAA college football sponsor list.  They then telephoned their sponsors and said in so many words, "Advertise on our new sports show coming up in April, or forget about buying commercials on NCAA college football this fall."  The two persuaded enough sponsors to advertise, though it took them to the last day of a deadline imposed by ABC programming to do it.

''[[Wide World of Sports (US TV series)|Wide World of Sports]]'' suited Scherick's plans exactly.  By exploiting the speed of jet transportation and flexibility of videotape, Scherick was able to undercut NBC and CBS's advantages in broadcasting live sporting events.  In that era, with communications nowhere near as universal as they are today, ABC was able to safely record events on videotape for later broadcast without worrying about an audience finding out the results.

Arledge, his colleague [[Chuck Howard]], and [[Jim McKay]] (who left CBS for this opportunity) made up the show on a week-by-week basis the first year it was broadcast.  Arledge had a genius for the dramatic storyline that unfolded in the course of a game or event.  McKay's honest curiosity and reporter's bluntness gave the show an emotional appeal that attracted viewers who might not otherwise watch a sporting event.

But more importantly from Arledge's perspective, ''Wide World of Sports'' allowed him to demonstrate his ability as an administrator as well as producer.  Arledge did not gain a formal title as president of ABC Sports until 1968, even though Scherick left his position to assume a position of vice president for programming at ABC in 1964.

Arledge personally produced all ten ABC Olympic broadcasts, created the primetime ''[[Monday Night Football]]'',{{citation needed|date=June 2019}} and is said to have coined ABC's famous "The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat" tagline{{citation needed|date=June 2019}} — although ABC insiders of that era attribute the authorship to legendary sports broadcaster [[Jim McKay]]. He also presided as producer over the 1975 flop, ''Saturday Night Live with [[Howard Cosell]]'', which director [[Don Mischer]] blamed on Arledge's inexperience with the variety show genre and indifference to the work required.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Gunther|first=Marc|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/18069619|title=Monday Night Mayhem: The Inside Story of ABC's Monday Night Football|date=1988|publisher=Beech Tree Books|others=Bill Carter|isbn=0-688-07553-3|edition=1st|location=New York|pages=184–190|oclc=18069619}}</ref>

===ABC News===
[[File:Roone Arledge 2.jpg|left|thumb|Arledge in the 1970s]]

Arledge took over as President of ABC  News during a time that had  been characterized by  blunders such as the disastrous pairing of [[Barbara Walters]] with [[Harry Reasoner]] at the desk of the network's evening news. The previous year, ABC had lured Walters away from NBC's Today Show for $1,000,000. Previous to that time, the only news experience Arledge had was providing ABC's coverage of the tragedies during the '72 Olympics in Munich. Other than that, he had no other major experience in news. Arledge's first major creation for ABC was 20/20, which premiered in June 1978. The first iteration of this program fared badly, and resulted in the firing of the original hosts, with [[Hugh Downs]] chosen as the new anchor beginning the second week of the program, with the above-mentioned Barbara Walters joining Downs the following year, eventually becoming Downs' co-anchor by 1981.

Shortly thereafter, Arledge reformatted the network's evening newscast with many of the splashy graphics he had developed at Wide World of Sports, and created World News Tonight. The program was unique not only because it was anchored by three newsmen, but because each of them was located in separate cities. The lead anchor became [[Frank Reynolds]], who was based in Washington, with [[Max Robinson]] based out of Chicago, and [[Peter Jennings]] reporting from London. The program expanded to Sundays in 1979 and Saturdays in 1985.

In 1983, Reynolds died of bone cancer, and Robinson departed the network, and ABC made Jennings the sole anchor of World News Tonight on September 5, 1983. Jennings anchored the broadcast until April 5, 2005, when he announced that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer, to which Jennings would succumb on August 7, 2005.

In 1979, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran was taken over by Iranian students, creating the [[Iranian Hostage Crisis]]. And on November 4, 1979, Frank Reynolds began anchoring a series of special reports entitled [[America Held Hostage]]. Several nights later, [[Ted Koppel]], then the network's diplomatic correspondent to the U.S. State Department, took over as anchor. The special reports led to the creation of [[Nightline]], which premiered on March 24, 1980. Koppel anchored the broadcast with [[Chris Bury]], and served as its managing editor. Koppel retained the position until his retirement in November 2005.

In 1981, Arledge brought David Brinkley to ABC from NBC, and created the Sunday-morning affairs program This Week for Brinkley. Brinkley would retire from the program in 1996. The last major news program created during Arledge's reign at ABC News was ''Primetime Live'', in 1989. The program was originally anchored by Sam Donaldson and Diane Sawyer.

In 1986, Arledge stepped down as president of ABC Sports. That same year, ABC's World News Tonight began a ten-year domination of the network news ratings. In 1998, Arledge retired from ABC News. Arledge died on December 5, 2002, in New York City, New York, at the age of 71, following a battle with prostate cancer. He was buried in Southampton Cemetery. His autobiography, ''Roone: A Memoir'', was published posthumously in 2003.