ARLEDGE, Roone Pinckney, Jr.

(b. 8 July 1931 in New York City), television executive and producer known for innovative ABC sports programming, as well as for making ABC the most popular source for television news.

Born to Roone Arledge, Sr., a lawyer, and Gertrude Strit-mater, a homemaker, Arledge was raised in the Forest Hills section of Queens in New York City. He graduated from Mepham High School in Merrick, New York, in 1948, and then attended Columbia University, graduating with a B.A. degree in 1952. That year he found a job with the DuMont network, where he learned the technical and economic nuts and bolts of the emerging television industry. Moving to NBC in 1954, he became an in-house producer assigned to news stories, special events (including sports), and even a puppet show, for which he won the first of his many Emmy Awards. He made another career move in 1960, arguably a risky one, leaving the powerful NBC to become a sports producer at ABC, which was then the perennial "third network" in a field of three.

It proved a wise decision. Lacking the entrenched corporate power structure of its older and richer rivals, ABC provided Arledge with the opportunity to be creative in what was then one of television's least creative programming genres. Before Arledge, television network sports coverage was typically little more than a radio broadcast with a camera following the ball. Announcers were restricted by the networks to colorless play-by-play descriptions and quick interviews with star players. Prevailing wisdom was that sportscasters' lack of personality would reassure viewers of the network's fairness and objectivity in the presentation of the game.

Within a year of his arrival at ABC, Arledge created and produced ABC's Wide World of Sports (1961), an anthology showcase that presented an eclectic array of events, including track and field, auto racing, ice skating, swimming and diving, and dozens of other sports, many of them ignored by the other networks. The show's signature credits sequence featured the voice of the anchor Jim McKay announcing to viewers that the show was "spanning the globe" to bring them "the thrill of athletic competition … the glory of victory and the agony of defeat," accompanied by an appropriate visual montage of highlights and low-lights. The sequence was soon familiar to every sports fan in the country.

Another Arledge production, ABC's American Sportsman (1965), provided an umbrella for various types of hunting, fishing, and outdoor photography expeditions. The series, which featured guest athletes and other celebrities each week, was a solid indication of the direction that Arledge would take ABC Sports and televised sports in general: the synthesis of sports and showmanship, with sports integrated into the general mix of entertainment. As with Wide World of Sports, Arledge's insistence on making the ABC imprimatur part of the title of the sports production helped to create a brand identity for the network, a tactic he continued to use successfully throughout his career in sports, and later in news.

Football became another growth area for ABC under Arledge. During the 1950s CBS had achieved a lock on broadcasts of the professional sport by signing an exclusive contract with the National Football League (NFL). Unable to compete for NFL games, ABC signed a similarly structured contract in 1960 to carry the games of the new American Football League (AFL), although few insiders held out hope for the AFL's long-term survival. Arledge was instrumental in promoting the new league, which became so successful that eventually the NFL was forced to merge with it. In 1964 Arledge was named the vice president of ABC Sports, and in 1968 the president of the division.

One of Arledge's greatest innovative successes was ABC's Monday Night Football, which premiered in 1969. Although ABC had been instrumental in the AFL's birth and survival, in 1964 its rival NBC outbid the network and came away with most of the profits as the new league reached parity with the NFL. Shut out of professional football coverage once again, Arledge made a characteristically bold proposal that the NFL restructure its entire schedule so that a single game be played each Monday night to be shown on ABC during prime time, the most watched and most lucrative period of the broadcast day. Understanding the special need for showmanship in prime time, Arledge put together a broadcast team consisting of the former New York Giants flankerback Frank Gifford, an articulate, even-toned student of the game; Don Meredith, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback with a good old boy's drawl and easygoing personality; and Howard Cosell, a loudmouthed former lawyer whose abrasive personality played off dramatically against those of the two star athletes.

Coverage of the Olympic Games was another area in which Arledge forged changes in television, sports, and televised sports. In 1968, at a time when ABC was still striving to reach parity with its rivals, Arledge convinced the network to go out on a financial limb to obtain the broadcast rights to the games. Once again, he brought showmanship to what had been pious, ritualistic reportage. Punctuating live coverage of the Olympic events with "up close and personal" taped interviews, he made television stars of ice skaters, gymnasts, pole vaulters, and platform divers who were previously unknown to the general public. In 1972, when Palestinian terrorists killed eleven Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich games in Germany, Arledge personally produced eighteen hours of live coverage as well as a filmed documentary, which he completed in less than twenty-four hours after the murders. ABC won twenty-nine Emmy Awards for the coverage.

In 1977 the chief executive officer Leonard Goldenson broadened Arledge's responsibilities dramatically, making him the president of ABC News as well as the president of ABC Sports. He was the first nonjournalist ever to head a network news operation. Although news purists were scandalized, Arledge went about the business of doing for the news division what he had done for the sports division. Introducing innovative series (including Nightline and 20/20), attractive personalities, eye-catching graphics, and savvy promotion, he was instrumental in bringing ABC News to the top of the list in ratings and profits. Arledge gave up his leadership of ABC Sports in 1985 when the network's new owner, Capital Cities Communication, asked him to focus exclusively on news. On 21 May 1994 Arledge married his third wife, Gigi Shaw, after having been married to Joan Heise and Anne Arledge. In 1998, having lost most of his day-to-day power at ABC, he became chairman of ABC News, a ceremonial role given to him in fulfillment of a lifetime contract.

Over the course of his career, Arledge won virtually every honor available to a broadcast executive, including thirty-six Emmy Awards, four Peabodys, and two Christophers. He was the first broadcaster to receive a Medal of the Olympic Order, and was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1992. According to a 1997 Time magazine article, Arledge "virtually invented the world of big-time sports television, [by] giving fans Wide World of Sports, the instant replay, and Howard Cosell." There are some, however, who associated Arledge's achievements with the subjugation of contemporary sports, and especially the Olympics, to the needs of commercial television. Charges of this kind, whether true or not, come hand-in-hand with success in television.

Marc Gunther, The House That Roone Built (1994), although primarily concerned with his career as the head of the ABC News division, reveals much about Arledge's personality and ideas. Marc Gunther with Bill Carter, Monday Night Madness (1988), specifically focuses on what is probably his most enduring creation. Extensive interviews with the television executive were conducted by Broadcasting (2 Dec. 1985) and the renamed Broadcasting and Cable (10 Oct. 1994); the earlier article contains more sports information.

David Marc