Overview

The tales of early ESPN people who gambled their careers while critics carped that “all-sports television will never work” are full of guile, luck, fear, fun, and unbridled optimism. As ESPN’s founding executive producer, Peter Fox was privy to some spectacular professional efforts by a cadre of Connecticut locals who made the dream real. The first 300 days of the fledgling network were filled with mayhem, on-air gaffes, and the slowest instant replay in television. What started as a humble idea in the late spring of 1978 to capitalize on the brand-new mania for UConn men’s basketball soon morphed into ESPN and a plan to begin airing a series of “test broadcasts” in the fall. This is the story of the early days at ESPN, told by one of its founders, and how a conversation over a couple of martinis in 1978 led to the creation of a broadcast juggernaut.

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9781493079575

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"""I was right there, in the midst of this historic startup, and I still learned things I never knew in Peter Fox's ""Early Days of ESPN."" This is a compelling account of the people and the moments creating a landmark cultural institution from blueprints and lukewarm coffee. A story like no other, told in the first person."" --Bob Ley, Emmy award-winning sports journalist ""Peter Fox continues to capture the imagination of sports fans through the power of his pen and the prowess of his creative intellect. In The Early Days of ESPN, he transports the reader through time and space to introduce us to the early disrupters, the satellite-sized dreamers, and the humans known as the 'SPNauts. He delivers an important cultural contribution, forever memorializing the origin story of a socio-historical phenomenon known as ESPN, the world-wide leader in sports. And he does so in true Fox Fashion - with vulnerability, honesty, humor and attention to preserving the historical details that honor the women and men he calls colleagues, friends, and family. It's a must read for fans of sport, sporty fans, and everyone in between."" --Sarah Hillyer, Founder of the Center for Sport, Peace, and Scoiety at the University of Tennessee, Director leading the Center's partnership with the U.S. State Department's Global Sports Mentoring Program ""We were like Mercury astronauts. We were rebels without a clue and working our asses off. I knew this was a good idea. We had a hand in building something that grew way beyond our imaginations. When there's a game on the moon, 'SPNauts will do it."" --Chris Berman, anchor for SportsCenter on ESPN since 1979 ""Every disruptive, overnight success starts with the same ingredients: gritty founders, emerging technology and years of personal sacrifices to materialize a vision of the future. The Early Days of ESPN is a true delight; first-person, visceral insights and observations, not from the conquering armies of later years, but from those who bootstrapped a vision to radically improve the way we experience sports. This book is for everyone and anyone who loves sports, technology and the unrelenting optimism of startup founders, presented with all of the brutal realism that is the founding of a company."" --Will Grannis, Vice President and CTO of Google Cloud"

"""We were like Mercury astronauts. We were rebels without a clue and working our asses off. I knew this was a good idea. We had a hand in building something that grew way beyond our imaginations. When there's a game on the moon, 'SPNauts will do it."" --Chris ""Boomer"" Berman, anchor for SportsCenter on ESPN since 1979, host of Sunday NFL Countdown from 1985-2016 and NFL Primetime from 1987-2005 and since 2019. -- ""ESPN Radio"""

"""We were like Mercury astronauts. We were rebels without a clue and working our asses off. I knew this was a good idea. We had a hand in building something that grew way beyond our imaginations. When there's a game on the moon, 'SPNauts will do it."" --Chris ""Boomer"" Berman, anchor for SportsCenter on ESPN since 1979, host of Sunday NFL Countdown from 1985-2016 and NFL Primetime from 1987-2005 and since 2019."

Author Information

After selling his advertising agency in the 1970s, Peter Fox became an independent television producer, winning Clio, Addy, and Golden Pen awards. He was the founding executive producer of ESPN, and later became producer, director, and writer of corporate communications materials for Lloyds of London Syndicate, DuPont, United Technologies, and PPG Industries among others. He is currently Editor in Chief of SportsEdTV, the leader in online sports instruction, and managing director of SportsEdTV’s Learn to Win peak performance training, powered by HeartMath research and technology. He lives in North Carolina.

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