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The phone rang. It was Jimmy Walsh (not the entertainer).
Jimmy is Joe Namath’s best friend, lawyer, and financial
advisor since they were in school together at the University
of Alabama. I was a very lucky guy to have met Jimmy some
years before…what a great person!!! He has offices in NYC
and New Orleans, and married a New Orleans woman/fashion
expert named Yvonne. (I think they have eight kids). Jimmy
said, “Why don’t you drive up to Fort Lauderdale and take a
look at a new company named SportsLine (one day to be named
CBS SportsLine). Talk to Mike Levy and Kenneth Dotson the
founders of this online sports concept. I think radio can
someway become involved as a promoter of it”.
The next day I was at SportsLine to take a look. They had
maybe 50 people working for them (in the many hundreds now).
The amount of current plus archived sports material was
unbelievable!!! I was really impressed, and this seemed like
a good project. I asked to work on it. So, I took Kenneth to
visit with some radio people so he could get a feel for the
business. We went to see Clarke Brown in Atlanta, Tom Bigby
in Philadelphia, the WEEI brass in Boston, finance manRobert
F.X. Sillerman and Mark Chernoff at WFAN in New York. My
concept was to install (at no cost to the station) a
dedicated sports computer for the sports air staff to
observe as they were on the air. All they had to do was
mention “from the SportsLine front page, here are the
breaking sports stories” once an hour. Mark went to his GM
boss Joel Hollander who said they did not do “free”
mentions, but that we could “buy”10 seconds hourly. I
thought the price was right; however, SportsLine refused to
the deal. . That “deal” of course, would have made
SportsLine’s rise to popularity super fast because most
every prominent sports station would have followed the WFAN
leadership, and mentioned Sportsline hourly reading the
headlines (and have access to the archive).
A few weeks later SportsLine rented a ballroom at the
Waldorf in New York to present to the public what SportsLine
was all about. Broadway Joe is still one of the most popular
guys in New York. And the RSVP’s included every media person
in New York. In fact, the event was SRO, so there had to be
an additional press conference. Bob Costas was the MC for
both. He introduced the panelists for SportsLine including
Broadway Joe and Mike Schmidt (the great third baseman). But
guess what someone at SportsLine forgot to hire an announcer
to introduce Bob Costas. So the SportsLine people came to me
and asked it I would do it. I would introduce Bob hidden in
the balcony with a mic (I guess they didn’t like my face). I
gathered my best announcer/baritone voice and introduced
Bob. Between the first and second press conference I
cornered Bob on the podium to thank him for a great job. I
also congratulated him for his coverage of the Micky Mantle
Memorial that he had telecast the previous day from Dallas.
Co-founder Mike Levy had mentioned to me several times that
he wanted to have an Internet sports radio program. So Scott
Kaplan, a former NFL field goal kicker) and Sid Rosenburg,
who still maybe the sports announcer on Imus in the Morning
teamed up. They were both VERY green so much so that my
function when visiting the SportsLine studios weekly was to
commercialize them. During the two minute commercial breaks
I would encourage them, and give them a pointer. ( I have
been around too long to know that you can’t introduce twenty
ideas at the same time and expect the talent to execute
them, the ideas must be introduced one at a time). They came
along pretty well. SportsLine purchased absolutely the best
audio equipment. A small production staff was hired to
produce this daily three hour Internet program including
Tommy Alexander, one of the best board people I have met.
(If you need a production guy Tommy is your person).
I don’t recall the exact timing, but SportsLine became a
public company. Not too long after that Kenneth Dotson sold
his stock and retired, and I am certain that his creativity
is missed. Again, I am not certain about the day, month, or
year, but CBS presented to SportsLine a terrific deal,
including some funding and televised air plugs on their CBS
TV sports events.
It was a pleasure to work with the people at SportsLine. It
was different from a radio group/station, and even though
the monthly rating pressure wasn’t there…the pressure to
move the company forward with new, innovative on line ideas
and revenue was the key.
I remember it well…cause I WAS
THERE!!!
Next week: Pacific and Southern is not
a railroad.
e-mail Kent
kent@kentburkhart.com
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