potential clients.
The safety razor company Gillette, which was more closely associated with sports media than any other business at the time, paved the way for ABC’s sustained entry into big-time sports. Gillette underwrote Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, a series of sports programming that started on the radio in 1941, and variations of it like Friday Night Fights, which NBC debuted in 1944. Lou Maxon—head of Gillette’s advertising division—described Friday Night Fights as the “backbone” of his client’s marketing efforts.35 A combination of declining ratings and boxing’s associations with the criminal underworld compelled NBC to cancel the program in 1960.36 Left without a home for its prized program, Gillette offered to give ABC its $8 million annual sports advertising budget if the network attached Gillette to its Wednesday evening fight package and moved the program to Fridays. While Moore and Scherick badly wanted the capital, Alka-Seltzer and Kool cigarettes were already sponsoring the network’s weekly boxing show. With the ABC board’s blessing, the media executives hammered out a pact to move the sponsors to different programs so it could accept the Gillette payout. It was not, however, able to shift the fights to Friday evenings—an alteration Gillette believed would create continuity with its canceled NBC program—and instead scheduled it on Saturday nights. Outside of the boxing package, Gillette would let ABC use the money for any sports programming it saw fit except horse races and roller derby.37 The infusion provided a war chest that empowered ABC to pursue broadcast contracts not previously possible given its limited budget.
The network made NCAA football its first target, a sport ABC had not carried since its disastrous experience in 1954. NBC held the NCAA contract at the time and had been renewing it for several years without competition from CBS, which was primarily committed to pro football in the fall. While the Gillette contract was substantial, ABC’s suddenly enlarged budget was still not vast enough to survive a bidding war with its deep-pocketed rival. Scherick cannily reasoned that ABC would only be able to get the rights if it kept secret its intention to bid. After consulting a series of informants, he discovered that Tom Gallery, the NBC executive in charge of the network’s sports activities at the time, typically brought two envelopes to blind biddings like those the NCAA held. One packet contained a low bid—typically 1 percent higher than the previous year’s contract—and the other contained a higher offer. “If NBC got the slightest inkling that we were in the game,” Scherick explained, “they’d come in with their high bid. We were pretty sure we could top their low bid. Their high bid would be way beyond us.”38 The stakes were particularly steep because 1960 marked the first time the NCAA would sell its rights for two seasons.
Scherick then conjured up a strategy that could have been lifted from a cheap spy thriller. He would scour ABC to locate “the most innocuous fellow we can find, someone who could melt into the wallpaper,” and use this unassuming character as a Trojan horse to deliver the network’s shocking bid.39 He found Stanton Frankle, a self-effacing and bookish accountant of average height and build. Scherick carefully instructed Frankle that he would go to the bidding meeting at New York’s Royal Manhattan Hotel with ABC’s offer and a document that ABC’s lawyers drew up to guarantee that the recently flush network could afford its bid. He told Frankle to keep a low profile at the meeting, and not to lie if anyone asked about his affiliation. Frankle’s main assignment was to keep an eye on Gallery, make sure he had no competitors, and register ABC’s bid only after the NBC executive submitted his network’s presumably lower offer.
On the day of the bidding, Scherick sent Frankle by limousine to the Royal Manhattan. He was so concerned that the plan might go awry that he sent a backup in a separate limo should the accountant be intercepted or otherwise incapacitated. Scherick reportedly told the understudy that “if he should see Stanton Frankle fall injured in the streets, he should let Frankle lie where he fell and proceed to the consummation of the mission.”40 Frankle made it to the meeting unscathed and in time for NCAA director of TV programming Asa Bushnell to open the bidding. Just as Scherick predicted, Gallery scanned the room to check for competitors. When he did not see anyone familiar, he took one of two envelopes from his jacket pocket and submitted it to Bushnell. The bid was for $5.2 million, a predictable 10 percent higher than NBC was paying per season. Frankle made his move. “My name is Stanton Frankle,” he said to Bushnell as he handed him an envelope. “I represent the American Broadcasting Company and here is our bid.” ABC offered $6,251,114 for the two-year contract—a sizable chunk of the Gillette cash. When asked why he tacked on the extra $1,114 to the massive bid, Scherick flippantly claimed that he did not want to seem “chintzy.”41
Gallery, who had begun to treat the annual bidding as a convivial formality en route to resuming his network’s business with college football, was stunned. So was the NCAA, which was not thrilled about the prospect of giving its most coveted TV contract to the third-ranked network but could hardly turn down the extra million dollars ABC offered. “The NCAA would as soon as have had a Martian descend and bid as give their games to ABC,” Scherick explained. “The NCAA was used to the crème de la crème, NBC, and viewed ABC as a guttersnipe organization.” But the money was enough to motivate the NCAA to swallow its pride and sign with the Almost Broadcasting Company.42
As Moore proclaimed, “The acquisition by ABC-TV of NCAA rights marks a new era in the field of sports programming for ABC.” Beyond college football, ABC used the Gillette funds for rights to produce baseball, additional boxing, and the bowling program Make That Spare—a non-live “accordion” show it would place before or after NCAA football to round out its Saturday schedule. Los Angeles Times sportswriter Don Page claimed that ABC’s increased commitment to sports caused NBC “to shed its prize feathers” and suggested it might need to replace its peacock corporate mascot with a turkey as a result of this industrial power shift.43 Based on its acquisition of the desirable NCAA football contract, ABC started receiving station clearances in non-ABC markets. As Moore explained, “My argument to the top brass was ‘you let us get into college sports and we’ll get the games cleared in markets where ABC has no affiliates because the public doesn’t give a good goddamn about a station’s loyalty to NBC or CBS.”44
“THE MARK TWAIN OF TV SPORTS”
Concerned about ABC’s ability to set its sports programming apart, Scherick and Moore sought to pair the network’s contracts to air marquee sporting events with an engaging way of presenting them. To help develop this approach, Scherick hired Arledge, a twenty-nine-year-old NBC producer whose primary experience up to that point was in children’s programming. Arledge was a stocky, redheaded, and bespectacled attorney’s son from Forest Hills, Long Island.45 The inquisitive and private-schooled youngster developed an eclectic body of interests that included drama, literature, politics, geography, and sports. He indulged these curiosities by pursuing a liberal arts degree at Columbia. “I wanted to be a writer,” he recalled, “but I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to write sports, government, philosophy, or theater.”46 Arledge took courses on the great works of literature with celebrity professors Mark Van Doren and Lionel Trilling, who instilled in him a keen appreciation of and ability to analyze narrative. The serial overachiever served as president of his Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and edited the school’s yearbook, The Columbian, during his senior year. He wound up directing his interests toward a specialization in government and politics. Arledge also briefly did some graduate work at Columbia’s School of International Affairs, where he focused on the Near East and Middle East and assisted with the scholarly journal it published.47
Upon graduation, Arledge decided the communications industry might best foster his catholic passions and writing-heavy skill set. He had a promising connection in DuMont programming chief James Caddigan, a former Paramount Pictures employee. Arledge met Caddigan while working as a headwaiter over the summer at the Wayside Inn in Chatham, Massachusetts. Caddigan and his family entered the restaurant just as it was about to close. Rather than turn them away—which would have been firmly within his rights—Arledge left the kitchen open so the family could dine. Caddigan remembered Arledge’s generosity when the
