{"id":80812,"date":"2024-01-25T11:05:34","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T16:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eyesofageneration.com\/?p=80812"},"modified":"2026-06-04T08:48:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T12:48:50","slug":"the-house-that-roone-built","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/?p=80812","title":{"rendered":"THE HOUSE THAT ROONE BUILT"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Modern sports television began in Athens, Georgia on September 18, 1965 when the University of Georgia Bulldogs took on Alabama&#8217;s Crimson Tide at Sanford Stadium<\/span>. The game, broadcast on ABC, was the first nationally televised game for Georgia, AND the start of <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Roone Arledge&#8217;s &#8220;Big Idea&#8221;<\/strong><\/span>. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>His famous 1960 memo to Ed Scherick, which laid out his ideas on how to &#8220;bring the viewer to the ballgame&#8221; is hard to find, but here it is&#8230;it starts with the indented part of this first page and finishes at the top of the third page.<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After that is the description of how Roone put it into practice in Athens that crisp fall afternoon when he took the helm in the truck and produced that season&#8217;s first game. Going forward, all the ABC producers were busy incorporating these new measures into their game presentations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-80813\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"503\" height=\"530\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-1.png 503w, https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-1-285x300.png 285w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 503px) 100vw, 503px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-80814\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/2-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"496\" height=\"457\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/2-1.png 456w, https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/2-1-300x276.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 496px) 100vw, 496px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-80815\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/3-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"488\" height=\"344\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/3-1.png 488w, https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/3-1-300x211.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 488px) 100vw, 488px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-80816\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/4-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"494\" height=\"551\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/4-1.png 494w, https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/4-1-269x300.png 269w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 494px) 100vw, 494px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Luck was with Roone and The Bulldogs that day, because at the very last minute, Georgia coach Vince Dooley called a trick play and won the game with an 18 to 17 victory over Bear Bryant. Here is that now famous 22-second play. Many thanks to author Marc Gunther for his great 1994 book <em>&#8220;The House That Roone Built: The Inside Story of ABC News&#8221;. <\/em>It is a great behind-the-scenes account of how Roone Arledge transformed ABC&#8217;s sports, and later their news division and draws on interviews with top network personnel to examine Arledge&#8217;s willingness to experiment and to spend money on talent.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Flea Flicker 1965\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_WDKEHScTeU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Modern sports television began in Athens, Georgia on September 18, 1965 when the University of Georgia Bulldogs took on Alabama&#8217;s Crimson Tide at Sanford Stadium. The game, broadcast on ABC, was the first nationally televised game for Georgia, AND the start of Roone Arledge&#8217;s &#8220;Big Idea&#8221;. His famous 1960 memo to Ed Scherick, which laid [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_vp_custom_popup_image":0,"_vp_format_audio_url":"","_vp_album_images":[],"_vp_custom_thumbnail":0,"_vp_custom_thumbnail_focal_point":[],"_vp_custom_thumbnail_cover":0,"_vp_hover_thumbnail":0,"_vp_hover_thumbnail_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[784,724,787,704,725],"class_list":["post-80812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-abc","tag-cast","tag-net","tag-producer","tag-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80812"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81719,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80812\/revisions\/81719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/80817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}