ABC, Once the Network of Olympics, Now the Network of May

There was no doubt that ABC was, as it boasted, “recognized around the world as the leader in sports television.” Then, Atlas shrugged.

It was the network of the Olympics; of Roone Arledge, Howard Cosell and Jim McKay; of driven men at the cutting edge of sports television. Wherever network sports ventured, ABC often got there first. With Arledge spanning the globe on a high-budget, high-profile romp, ABC’s wide world of sports seemed limitless. The network created a generation of traditions--the up-close-and-personal Olympic extravaganzas, the much-copied “Wide World of Sports” weekend anthology, and the prime-time sensation of “Monday Night Football.”

But after the heady days of the ‘60s and ‘70s, the ‘80s have brought changes to ABC Sports. Many of its primary on-air voices either have moved on or have reduced their presence, Cosell’s abdication being the loudest. And in a rapidly changing industry, the other networks’ growing aggressiveness for sports rights and ABC’s austere new ownership have combined to leave ABC Sports as a follower at times rather than always the leader.

In 1992, ABC will not telecast either the Summer or Winter Olympics for the first time since 1960. Come 1990, ABC will not televise major-league baseball. Its big-event lineup is reduced to the Indianapolis 500, the Triple Crown of horse racing, three of the four Grand Slam golf tournaments, the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl and, every third year, the Super Bowl. Most of these are one-day events, unlike many of CBS’ upcoming blockbusters (Olympics, NBA finals, NCAA tournament, baseball playoffs) that unfold over several nights, or even weeks. “Monday Night Football” remains a prime-time force, but for weekend afternoon fare, ABC is left with “Wide World of Sports,” pro bowling and the college football and college basketball that it shares with other networks.

Former ABC sportscaster Jim Lampley half-jokingly said, with the Kentucky Derby and the Indy 500 two of their only remaining big events, “The network of the Olympics has become the network of May.”

Roone Arledge created ABC Sports, and because his was the No. 3 network looking for a boost, he had a far-reaching command. At a time when ABC Entertainment was last and ABC News was a non-factor, Arledge stockpiled the best production minds and spent lavishly to make ABC Sports unmatched.

“There was no question ABC was head and shoulders above everyone else,” said Don Ohlmeyer, formerly an ABC producer and NBC Sports executive producer. “NBC and CBS sports still were second cousins to the news division, and Roone was given the tools to build a tremendous organization.”

“In its heyday, ABC Sports was a hell of an organization. Maybe analogous to CBS News” in the Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite eras, said Chuck Howard, formerly a top production executive at ABC Sports. “The chemistry was there, and that was created and nurtured by top management.”

ABC Sports had several signature broadcasters--Cosell, McKay, Chris Schenkel, Keith Jackson. Its production people became entrenched, well-known figures--Ohlmeyer, Howard and director Chet Forte, among others. Just the presence of the network’s cameras and people--particularly the bombastic Cosell--suggested an event was even bigger than it was.

But if Cosell made the halftime highlights on “Monday Night Football” seem like a weekly Tet Offensive, the images people retain of many of the most important sports events of the last quarter-century--particularly from the Olympics--were framed by ABC. Who can forget John Carlos, Tommy Smith and Bob Beamon at the ’68 Summer Games; the ’72 Summer Games, when McKay stared somberly into the camera and reported the murder of the Israeli athletes; the “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” call by Al Michaels in the U.S. hockey team’s triumph over the Soviets at Lake Placid in 1980?

If it wasn’t the Olympics, it was Jack Nicklaus matching birdies with Tom Watson at Pebble Beach, or Notre Dame and Michigan State battling to a stalemate in East Lansing, Mich., or Bill Russell frustrating Wilt Chamberlain in Boston Garden.

“There was a mystique about ABC Sports, there was something special about the product over there,” said CBS sportscaster Brent Musburger. “Part of it was Cosell--he had such a distinctive sound. Whether you liked it or not didn’t matter. Here came Cosell, and it was a big event. . . . It was a remarkable run by Roone. In his own kind of mysterious way, he held it all together.”

“If you worked for ABC, you had the advantage of knowing you were doing better stuff than the guys down the street . . . ,” said Lampley. “On any given day, Cosell or McKay would be hanging around the 20th floor (where the sports offices are located). You had the feeling you were right in the middle of the business.”

People in the sports television industry argue about whether ABC has dropped off in recent years, or whether NBC and CBS simply raised production quality, making the three networks almost indistinguishable in most game coverage. But, clearly, ABC Sports has lost a tremendous amount of talent.

On the air, Cosell phased himself out--and “Monday Night Football” and ABC’s boxing coverage lost its primary voice. McKay reduced his “Wide World of Sports” presence. Schenkel, a four-time national sportscaster of the year, became less skillful at play-by-play and his assignments were reduced. Lampley was pushed aside and left for Los Angeles.

Off the air, Ohlmeyer and Terry O’Neil moved on. After Capital Cities bought ABC, Forte and Howard left. Even before that, Arledge had reduced his sports role by adding the ABC News presidency to his responsibilities. Skilled mid-level production types such as Mike Pearl, Joe Aceti and Bob Dekas jumped to CBS.

“It stands to reason that quality suffers when you lose that many quality people,” said Jim Spence, who was senior vice president of ABC Sports under Arledge but left after being passed over (in favor of Dennis Swanson) as Arledge’s successor. “ABC Sports isn’t today what it was years ago, but I think it is still a formidable organization.”

Other former ABC Sports heavyweights, though, go further than Spence, pointing specifically to the losses of Arledge and Cosell as lethal blows.

Cosell, naturally, is bluntly eloquent on the topic.

“There’s no Roone Arledge, who is irreplaceable,” he said. “There’s no Howard Cosell, and there’s not going to be another one. That’s not ego, that’s truth. The industry will never allow another Howard Cosell. . . . We were a great company--not just in sports, the whole company.”

Arledge depended on a small group of trusted, big-event producers and directors, and that created resentment among some underlings. “They basically had the same production people for years,” Pearl said. “ABC always had that Dennis Lewin-Chuck Howard-Chet Forte triumvirate who basically did the big shows for years and years.” That created a logjam among mid-level associate directors and associate producers, many of whom left when they couldn’t move up.

“There’s no depth at all in that department,” Forte said. “They still have the announcers, but purely and simply, they haven’t got much talent there. You get past (director) Craig Janoff, and you’ve got nothing. They didn’t bring anyone along. They didn’t groom anyone. . . . Have the other two networks passed them? Absolutely.”

Criticism of ABC Sports productions has increased in recent years, and such errors as failing to show Carl Lewis’ historic fourth gold-medal performance live at the ’84 Olympics and failing to show the winner of the ’87 New York Marathon served to heighten it.

“They don’t have the magic (anymore),” Musburger said. “I think you’ll find that NBC started to improve their product, and at the same time, we (at CBS) just kept improving. . . . ABC lost in the front office, they lost directors, they lost announcers. There was a huge, huge talent drain.”

“They have the longest, proudest tradition of anyone who does sports television. I guess it’s hard to sustain it over decades,” said CBS Sports Executive Producer Ted Shaker. “They seem to be in a period in which they’re trying to gear up again, trying to get that old magic back. Something’s been missing.”

Michaels, for one, believes little is missing. He thinks ABC Sports is moving along at the same level it has for years, that much of the network’s alleged superiority 10 and 20 years ago was a mirage.

“Mystique is a very good word for this. We made our share of mistakes, too,” he said. “We have certain figures who have developed a degree of mythological images in the years gone by. I’ve been there 12 years. Everything we did wasn’t terrific and everything the other guys did was a bit better than they were given credit for. . . . “

Some believe ABC Sports’ production decline accelerated when Cap Cities took over and Swanson was brought in to ride herd on the budget. “Swanson performed a function for Cap Cities, but he’s not a production guy,” Forte said. “Dennis was brought in to chop heads and he did what he had to do. But you lose creativity.”

Others think the budget cuts weren’t that significant--the other networks have been under similar financial restraints -- but that ABC’s unique dominance had run its course. “You could see the seeds for a different world (with the advent of cable television) by the time Arledge left” to take over ABC News, Lampley said.

Still others believe Arledge’s influence is far overstated, a theory that rankles Cosell. “I disagree with that thoroughly,” Cosell said. “Roone Arledge is a brilliant man. Anybody who doesn’t know that is an imbecile.”

Brawn, not brilliance, was the characteristic ex-Marine Swanson had that ABC felt was necessary to stem the huge losses the sports division was incurring.

“(ABC’s) philosophy was you had to spend money to make money. Capital Cities came in and they had a different philosophy,” Lampley said.

Coming off the financial hard times of 1988--when ABC took big losses on its $309 million Calgary Games and on major-league baseball--Swanson was set to practice financial restraint with newrights packages. Thus, ABC did not bid extravagantly on the Olympics or baseball, choosing to bide its time and start showing a profit again.

“At some point you have to draw the line, and we did,” Swanson said recently at a Los Angeles news conference.

When asked if ABC was getting out of the major sports business, Swanson said: “I don’t think we’re out of the major sports business. We still have some very attractive properties. . . . And it’s not a case of Capital Cities being unrealistic. We have bid very aggressively for the Olympics and for major-league baseball. It’s just that other people were willing to pay more--and at numbers we cared not to be associated with. . . .

“ABC Sports tried to buy both Olympics for 1992. We offered $500 million for both (Albertville and Barcelona), which we think was a pretty realistic figure. The IOC ultimately decided to go through an auction with each Olympics individually and achieved rights fees of $644 million. At those dollar levels, we just didn’t care to be involved with it. . . . At some point you have to ask yourself how much money do you want to lose.”