barely had time to learn the ropes at DuMont before being drafted into the military in March 1953. Until December 1954, he served at Maryland’s Aberdeen Proving Ground, where he ran the radio and television section of the base’s Public Information Office and, as he noted in his résumé, was “responsible for the dissemination of information concerning the United States Army Ordnance Corps and its weapons, training and other features.”48 Though there were protections in place guaranteeing soldiers the jobs they left after being drafted, DuMont’s broadcasting wing was practically defunct when Arledge was discharged, and the company had nothing for him. Arledge threatened legal action and sent an enraged letter to Caddigan. “I deserve better treatment than to be notified by your secretary that you had left word that was nothing available for me,” he seethed to his unresponsive former boss. “It looks as if the whole DuMont policy has been to keep me hanging.”49
But not regaining the DuMont job proved a blessing in disguise. Arledge shortly found work as a floor manager at NBC’s New York City affiliate WRCA-TV, where his first wife, Joan, served as one David Sarnoff’s secretaries. In his letter of application, Arledge suggested his “main field of interest and experience has always been in the area of public service programming. My educational background, combined with the experience I have gained in the actual staging of television programs could best be utilized in News and Special Events Television Programming.” Though his entry-level position amounted to little more than grunt work, Arledge optimistically told professional colleague Orrin Dunlap that “advancement from this position is very good and that I will have a chance eventually to do some creative work.”50 Arledge quickly worked his way up to director, producer, and unit manager. He oversaw an assortment of programs, including the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting ceremony featuring Olympic figure skater Dick Button, whom he eventually hired as an expert commentator for ABC Sports. But Arledge’s primary job was producing ventriloquist Shari Lewis’s morning children’s puppet show Hi Mom!, which starred the precocious sock puppet Lamb Chop. Though Hi Mom! got Arledge his first Emmy Award, the high-minded Ivy Leaguer divulged “it would have been even nicer … had it been acquired for producing something meatier than a morning kids show.”51
Arledge’s diverse ambitions and hopes for rapid career advancement drove him to explore a variety of TV genres. He wrote a teleplay titled Nothing to Hide in 1955, sold an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol to CBS, produced the informational program Tax Party, worked on a quiz show named Opportunity Knocks, and did freelance productions that ranged from promotional films for American Airlines to features for the Nassau, Bahamas, travel bureau.52 Arledge teamed with his Columbia classmate Larry Grossman to write a proposal for Masterpiece, a ninety-minute program that would dramatize the “stories of the world’s greatest masterworks of art, music and literature and the men who created them,” such as Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco, Beethoven’s “Eroica,” and Walt Whitman’s “Drum Taps.”53 Grossman, who went on to run PBS and oversee the similar public television franchise Masterpiece Theater, claimed that he and Arledge conjured up the show in a noble effort “to save television from triviality.”54
Arledge went in a different direction with For Men Only, a variety program geared toward urban male sophisticates that he described as a combination of Playboy, True, Sport, and Field & Stream magazines. He recruited the dapper NBC weatherman Pat Hernon to host a self-funded pilot, which featured Sports Illustrated artist Robert Riger sharing drawings of a Carmen Basilio prizefight, sportscaster Marty Glickman narrating a segment on track and field, a feature on jazz, and a shapely young woman periodically parading in front of the camera in a bathing suit. The production team extended For Men Only’s flagrantly macho subject matter behind the camera by passing around a bottle of scotch while filming the sample episode.
Hernon knew Scherick from previous jobs and slipped the sports packager a copy of Arledge’s production in hopes that he might find For Men Only suitable for ABC or have recommendations for where else they might shop it. Scherick had no interest in For Men Only, but he thought it showed some potential. “I recognized the talent in Roone as soon as I saw that kinescope,” he recalled. “It was another attempt to do a sports magazine show…. But it was done with nice flair and I liked its production.”55 He consequently took a meeting with Arledge at SPI’s cramped and disheveled office, which Arledge later likened to a “bookie joint.” During the meeting Scherick explained his arrangement with ABC and their joint efforts to make a push in sports. He then tested Arledge’s sports knowledge by having the producer identify the athletes whose pictures hung crooked and dusty on the walls. Arledge knew all those Scherick asked him to name—and later expressed relief that Scherick did not quiz him on the several athletes he did not recognize. Scherick offered him a job on the spot to produce ABC’s NCAA football games for an annual salary of $10,000. Arledge started on May 1, 1960—just in time to begin preparations for college football.
Though his new position was hardly a step up, Arledge was elated to leave his days at Hi Mom! behind. “I finally got my fill of early morning hours and puppets and decided to live like a gentleman,” he wrote in a letter announcing his career change to the Leo Burnett advertising agency’s Hooper White. “As you can see from the letterhead I have left NBC to go work in the field I have always preferred.” He giddily concluded the note by gloating that his “first assignment is a rough one. I have to go to San Francisco this weekend to watch the Giants and Dodgers play baseball.” “It’s a pleasure,” Arledge wrote to another colleague, “not to have to get up at 5am and look at puppets.” The producer made clear that he was moving on to bigger and better things. But several of Arledge’s associates warned that working in sports would harm his professional credibility. “There’s nothing creative you can do in sports,” he later said in mocking imitation of this unsolicited advice.56 But, as he demonstrated with For Men Only, Arledge viewed sports as part of a cultural tapestry that included music, fashion, and cuisine and that deserved the comparatively dignified treatment these topics commonly received.
In fact, Arledge’s main complaint with 1950s sports television was that it did not appreciate this richness. “When I got into it in 1960, televising sports amounted to going out on the road, opening three or four cameras, and trying not to blow any plays. They were barely documenting the game, but just the marvel of seeing a picture was enough to keep people glued to their sets.”57 He noticed sports TV’s singular power after witnessing NBC’s telecast of the Baltimore Colts’ sudden death overtime victory over the New York Giants in the 1958 NFL Championship—a contest now commonly referred to as the “greatest game ever played”—enthrall a national audience. But Arledge thought these spectacles could be dramatized and personalized in ways that would increase their already vast viewership. They relied, he thought, too much on the events and not enough on the people, places, and circumstances that made them worth televising in the first place. For instance, Arledge recalled taking his wife to a Notre Dame–Army football game and being surprised to discover her engrossment. But he soon realized that she was not interested in the game so much as the marching band, cheerleaders, and fellow onlookers. This experience reminded Arledge of how Sports Illustrated’s photos and drawings highlighted sport’s emotion-laden details and atmosphere. He thought he could do the same with television. “The action on the field is only half of what’s going on,” he told TV Guide. “The peripheral action is just as important…. There’s something impersonal about 100,000 people, but if you can see the reaction of just one cheerleader when a touchdown is made or the look on the face of one fan when a player drops the ball, then you really know what’s going on.”58 Arledge sought to emphasize the drama surrounding sporting events to amplify their spectacular status and to attract those, like his wife, who might not care about games but were interested in the stories and personalities they harbor.
While Arledge’s new position in sports may not have impressed his more elitist peers, Scherick’s decision to put the greenhorn producer in charge of ABC’s highest-profile
