Roone Arledge
Roone Pinckney Arledge Jr. (July 8, 1931 – December 5, 2002) was an American sports and news broadcasting executive who was president of ABC Sports from 1968 until 1986 and ABC News from 1977 until 1998, and a key part of the company's rise to competition with the two other main television networks, NBC and CBS, in the 1960s, '70s, '80s and '90s. He created many programs still airing today, such as Monday Night Football, ABC World News Tonight, Nightline and 20/20. John Heard portrayed him in the 2002 TNT movie Monday Night Mayhem.[1]
Roone Arledge
December 5, 2002 (aged 71)
Sacred Hearts of Jesus & Mary R.C. Cemetery, Southampton, New York
Columbia University (BA)
Early life[edit]
Arledge was born in Forest Hills, Queens, New York City, the son of Gertrude (Stritmater) and Roone Pinckney Arledge, an attorney.[2] Arledge grew up in Merrick[3] and attended Wellington C. Mepham High School on Long Island where he wrestled and played baseball. Although Arledge was not a stand out wrestler, Mepham was the most premier wrestling school in the country at the time.
Upon graduation, he decided that sportswriting was what he wanted to do in life, and applied to Columbia University. There, he discovered that Columbia's journalism program was a graduate program, not an undergraduate one. Even so, Arledge liked what he saw and enrolled in a liberal-arts program. He also served as President of the Omega Chapter of the fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta. His classmates included Max Frankel, who would eventually win a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for his work as editorial page editor of the New York Times; Larry Grossman, who became president of the Public Broadcasting Service in 1976 and later went on to head NBC News; and Richard Wald, another president of NBC News that Arledge would later persuade to come over to ABC News as a senior vice-president. He was the only one of the four who did not work at the Columbia Daily Spectator, the daily student newspaper of Columbia University.
After receiving a bachelor's degree in 1952, Arledge enrolled in graduate studies at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. Restless with graduate studies, he went looking for a job where he could use his college degree and obtained an entry-level job at the DuMont Television Network. Military service intervened, and after Arledge's discharge, he learned the network had folded and he had no job to return to.
Personal life[edit]
Arledge was married three times. He wed Gigi Shaw in 1994. He is survived by her and his four children from his first marriage, Roone, Elizabeth, Susan Weston and Patricia Loonie. His previous spouses were Joan Heise and Ann Fowler.
20/20 criticism[edit]
Scandal would erupt around Arledge again in 1985 from a decision by Arledge, president of ABC News and Sports, to kill a 13-minute report about Marilyn Monroe possibly due to his close ties to Ethel Kennedy. 20/20 drew criticism from the co-anchors of the program, Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters, and the executive producer, Av Westin. Arledge said that he had killed the piece because it was "gossip-column stuff" and "does not live up to its billing." Downs, however, took issue with Arledge's judgment. "I am upset about the way it was handled," he said in an interview. "I honestly believe that this is more carefully documented than anything any network did during Watergate. I lament the fact that the decision reflects badly on people I respect and it reflects badly on me and the broadcast."[7] Additionally, Westin said: "I don't anticipate not putting it on the air. The journalism is solid. Everything in there has two sources. We are documenting that there was a relationship between Bobby and Marilyn and Jack and Marilyn. A variety of eyewitnesses attest to that on camera." Two other aspects of the unaired report, according to an ABC staff member who has seen it, are eyewitness accounts of wiretapping of Miss Monroe's home by Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamster leader, that reveal meetings between her and the Kennedy brothers, and accounts of a visit to Monroe by Robert Kennedy on the day of her death. Fred Otash, a detective who says he was the chief wiretapper, is interviewed on camera, and ABC staff members said his account was corroborated by three other wiretappers. In addition, several people not in the book say on camera that Monroe kept diaries with references to meetings with the Kennedy brothers, according to a staff member who has seen the report. "It set out to be a piece which would demonstrate that because of alleged relations between Bobby Kennedy and John Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe the Presidency was compromised because organized crime was involved," he said. "Based on what has been uncovered so far, there was no evidence."[7] Arledge's decision to kill the broadcast resulted in the subsequent decision of Geraldo Rivera to leave ABC entirely. Rivera was a 20/20 correspondent but did not work on that story. He had been publicly critical of Arledge’s decision. Arledge, who has been both a champion and defender of Rivera, has said he thought the story needed more work.[8]
Honors[edit]
Arledge was selected by Life magazine as one of the "100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century". Sports Illustrated ranked him number three in a list of "the 40 individuals who have most significantly altered or elevated the world of sports in the last four decades".
The NATPE "Man of the Year" Iris Award was presented to him in 1971. In 1981, he was a recipient of the Silver Olympic Order.[9]
He was the winner of 37 Emmy Awards and in 1990 was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. In 2001, he was given the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award by the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In 2007, The Walt Disney Company posthumously named Arledge a Disney Legend for his contributions to ABC News and ABC Sports (now ESPN on ABC), both (along with the ABC Network) now owned by Disney.[10]
The Roone Arledge auditorium located in student center Alfred Lerner Hall of Columbia University, Arledge's Alma Mater, is named in his honor.
In 1997, Arledge won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism.[11]