Roone Arledge (1931-2002)

Roone Arledge, a pioneering television executive at ABC News and Sports responsible for creating shows from "Monday Night Football'' to "Nightline,'' died December 5th, after a long battle with cancer. He was 71.

"We've lost a great man and a great friend, a creative genius and innovator who changed the face of television and impacted the careers of so many of us," said ABC Sports president Howard Katz. "We will miss him deeply, but his legacy will live on forever. I'll be forever grateful for the guidance and support he offered me throughout my career and for the personal memories that I will always treasure."

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

Roone Pinckney Arledge was born July 8, 1931, and reared on Long Island. The Columbia University graduate joined ABC Sports as a producer in 1960 after a 5-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, Arledge would also be remembered for putting the focus on the people 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.''

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 protégé, Dick Ebersol, runs NBC Sports, which now broadcasts the Olympic Games.

Arledge 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 became probably the most famous sportscaster ever.

Cosell helped Monday Night Football,' which Roone Arledge became a cultural event, and changed the way football was broadcast. Arledge's broadcast contributions to the NFL were recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2001 when he was given the Pete Rozelle Radio and Television Award, named for the former commissioner. He also received the Medal of the Olympic Order from the International Olympic Committee, and was inducted in the Olympic Hall of Fame in 1989.

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.

In 1977 Roone Arledge was selected to resuscitate ABC's struggling news division, while still running sports, at first the reaction was harsh, "People in news were outraged that I hadn't been a reporter or worked my way up. The newspaper articles were brutal,'' Arledge later recalled.

Critics thought he would turn the division into ABC's "Wide World of News.'' After disastrous start, the newsmagazines "20/20'' and "Prime Time Live'' began 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.

He wooed correspondents like Diane Sawyer to ABC and was largely credited or for making newscasters rich stars on a par with Hollywood royalty. Arguably, all three current 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,'' Arlegde once recalled.

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 before retiring in 1998. Still, not only do his innovations remain alive in TV today, so too are network executive ranks sprinkled with his protégés.