| "Roone: A Memoir"
With Lawrence Ashmead,
Vice President and Executive Editor,
HarperCollins
Tuesday, May 20, 2003; 11 a.m. ET The winner of 36 Emmys and many other awards, Roone Arledge played a leading role in shaping the direction and development of television news and sports programming. His resume includes ABC's Wide World of Sports, Monday Night Football, the Olympics -- 10 of them -- and many other sports broadcasts. He became president of ABC Sports in 1968 and held that position until 1986. In 1977 he took over ABC News and built the fledgling news organization into a high-end contender with a bold commitment of resources to both domestic and international news coverage, launching World News Tonight, Nightline, 20/20, PrimeTime Live and This Week With David Brinkley during his tenure. In 1997 he was appointed Chairman of ABC News. Lawrence Ashmead, the editor of "Roone: A Memoir" and vice president and executive editor at HarperCollins Publishers, was online Tuesday, May 20 at 11 a.m. ET, to discuss the life of a television pioneer. Arledge wrote his memoir in his "spare time" between his job as chairman and while battling prostate cancer. The book is filled with memorable portraits and anecdotes of ABC news and sports personalities including Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters, Ted Koppel, Diane Sawyer, Sam Donaldson, Howard Cosell, Don Meredith and Frank Gifford, to name a few. Arledge died on Dec. 5, 2002 at the age of 71. Ashmead has been in publishing for the last 43 years, serving as editor at Doubleday, Simon & Schuster and Lippincott prior to joining HarperCollins 23 years ago. A transcript follows. Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
washingtonpost.com: Mr. Ashmead, thank you for joining us today to talk about Roone Arledge's memoir. You were the editor. What was it like working with him? And many ask, did he in fact finish the book before his death? Lawrence Ashmead: It was difficult because he was an absolute perfectionist. He wanted to make sure that every fact was correct ... that he mentioned everyone who was involved in the story and the anecdotes and it was very important to him that the writer capture the tone and inflections in his voice and that it was transferred to the printed page. Eventually this was all accomplished but it took a lot of work, especially on the part of the collaborator-writer Peter Israel.
He did finish it. He finished it quite a few weeks before his death but he still wasn't satisfied with the last chapter and wanted to make a few changes to it and he was able to do that. It was really just days before he died that he gave the green light through his wife and his literary agent that we could go ahead and publish the book.
Washington, D.C.: How closely did you work with Arledge? Were you editing as he went along or did he deliver the book to you and then you began the editing process? Lawrence Ashmead: The book was delivered more or less, chapter by chapter and then I would read it and make suggestions.
I wouldn't say I worked closely with him as I often do in a book because we had the writer Peter Israel who worked with him and he was a good editor himself and he had been a book editor so he knew what he was doing.
Bethesda, Md.: The book is obviously an insider's view of broadcasting. Will it appeal to the average person on the street? Lawrence Ashmead: I think it'll have great appeal outside of the broadcast fraternity because Roone has so many interesting stories about so many interesting people and these are people you see on television all the time -- like Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Peter Jennings and many, many others. And these are not only business stories but personal stories. And there's great suspense to them.
If I had to single out one quality that made Roone Arledge a genius it would be his perseverance and a great example of that would be when he was trying to woo Diane Sawyer to ABC. It wasn't just one dinner. It was a series of dinners and phone calls and meetings and you could just read how he persuaded Diane Sawyer to make this move in a very, very friendly way. And he was a wonderful negotiator and those stories in the book are very, very exciting.
So to get back to the original question about appealing to the general public, yes, I think there's appeal. There are many stories that are not only behind-the-scenes but some of the great drama that is captured by the camera and actually how it got on the television screen.
Alexandria, Va.: What role did Arledge's health play in his later years at ABC after they brought in a new president of news and made him chairman? Lawrence Ashmead: It was dicey. He was not feeling well. He had prostate cancer and a few years later it reappeared as a more general cancer. It made everyday activity very difficult for him. But most days he went to the office and he didn't miss any important meetings until the very end. I think he showed great braveness.
Washington, D.C.: As an admirer of Roone, I'm pretty familiar with his accomplishments. I'd like to know what kind of a manager and leader of his people he was. Thanks. Lawrence Ashmead: I think probably Barbara Walters summed it up the best when she said that he was a mastermind of keeping people happy and managing them successfully. If you did something right, he was always the first one there to tell you you did it right. I think everybody that worked for him felt that way. I think he was a great manager of people. That was one of his great gifts.
Arlington, Va.: How do you think the book will be received? Are there things in it that bad mouth the industry or ABC? Lawrence Ashmead: Not really. I think the only place he gets really critical is when ABC was bought by Capital Cities and they had rather a smalltown attitude towards television. They were more interested in local news than world news and he's quite critical of that in the book. But on the whole, it's a positive story. He's a man who had very few failures in his life and he therefore had a little reason to criticize people. It's generally a rosy picture about how this man took ABC Television in the 1960s from being the third major network to the first and it wasn't just sports, it was news as well.
Virginia: Was Roone Arledge an athlete? He sure knows his sports. Lawrence Ashmead: I don't think he was much of an athlete but he certainly loved and understood sports and he certainly knew how to televise it. Things that somehow we take for granted, like instant reply, were his innovations.
Washington, D.C. : Ted Koppel said Arledge created more "anchor monsters" than just about anyone else. What did he mean by that? Lawrence Ashmead: I think anybody who's going to anchor news has be a dominating personality. And sometimes that person will appear as a monster to some people and not to others. I like to think of them as a news authority and I think Roone felt the same way. And I don't think really any of them characteristically acted like monsters. They just acted like important people and they were important.
Harrisburg, Pa.: The kidnapping and deaths of the Israeli athletes at the Olympics was one of the tragic stories of the 20th century that was followed by the world on their television sets. How did this event impact Mr. Arledge? Lawrence Ashmead: He was there and he filmed it. They stayed up night after night for 24-hour coverage so it was one of the great television coups of all time. There he was with a team to cover the Olympics and it just turned out to be one of the great news stories. When you look back, it was the first major terrorist activity that was live and shown around the world.
Washington, D.C.: When Arledge took over the news department at ABC he wasn't wholeheartedly accepted by some die-hard news types. They feared his style was too much like a showman. But this perception changed, didn't it? How did he win his detractors over? Lawrence Ashmead: I think because he was essentially an honest man, he loved news and he made sure he got absolutely the best news people over to ABC to deliver the news. And ratings were sky-high so that's one way to win over your colleagues. It's difficult to go from one division, like from sports, to news. There's going to be a little resentment but that soon disappeared because he delivered and had the best news on television.
Washington, D.C.: Arledge had his hands in so many things: Sports, news, celebrity, etc. What his most satisfying accomplishment? Lawrence Ashmead: I really think it was the wooing of Diane Sawyer. I think he was most proud of that because it was done with such class and honesty and he genuinely liked Diane Sawyer. I think it was one of those great negotiations he handled with real flair and genius. And Diane Sawyer has let us know that she loves the book and misses Roone dreadfully.
Bethesda, Md.: What did Arledge think of the proliferation of news outlets (I'm thinking cable) that's led to today's wall-to-wall news coverage? Lawrence Ashmead: He didn't talk about that much but I did talk to him a little about it. We agreed that cable news like CNN was wonderful at certain times but for the most part it was just treading water and it's very difficult to fill 24-hours with important or very interesting news.
Athens, Ohio: When he became president of ABC News, Mr. Arledge had to contend with the pairing of Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters. Their evening news program had flat lined with viewers and brought the news department embarrassing publicity because of perceptions that the co-anchors disliked each other. Mr. Arledge revamped the newscast, gave Ms. Walters other assignments at ABC, and allowed Mr. Reasoner to return to CBS. Why was there a place for Ms. Walters at ABC but not Mr. Reasoner, who was more popular with viewers and more experienced as a newsman? Lawrence Ashmead: That's an interesting question and I don't think he goes into it in great detail. I do know they were like oil and water on-camera. In fact they never appeared together on camera, it was always a split shot. It's a trick that he learned from his early days in television when he filmed Shari Lewis and Lambchop and he applied it to Harry and Barbara just to offset their incompatibility on the screen. But I don't know why -- he may explain it in the book but I can't remember -- why Reasoner left and Barbara stayed and went on to be a major, major star and her popularity increased.
McLean, Va.: Is there dish in the book about some of the personalities he put on the air and made stars of, like Peter Jennings, Diane Sawyer, Howard Cosell, Barbara Walters, etc?
Lawrence Ashmead: There's a lot of dish about Barbara Walters ... because she was a very difficult person but Roone always got along with her and smoothed feathers. Although there are some negative things about her in the book, she called and asked us to change only one thing after she read the proof copy of the book. In the book, he said "in order mollify Barbara Walters ..." in a contract negotiation, he agreed to give her a pink office and a pink typewriter. She called up after she read the proof and said she only one had one change to ask for and that was she didn't ask for a pink office or a pink typewriter, she asked for a beige office and a beige typewriter.
Charlottesville, Va.: Mr. Ashmead, Roone Arledge was my great uncle, and although I only met him once when I was a child, I feel a strong link to him because of our shared love of journalism, as well as our red hair. He was highly esteemed by the television community; how do you think he is regarded by the general public? Lawrence Ashmead: I think that he was a behind-the-scenes person to the general public and therefore he didn't have as much visibility as the stars he worked with. But I think anybody who knows his shows knows that he's totally responsible for Monday Night Football or Wide World of Sports, Nightline, World News Tonight, 20/20 and This Week With David Brinkley ... they're all quality, wonderful, memorable shows. I don't know anyone who wouldn't admire him for those great accomplishments.
Reston, Va.: Last night on ABC's 50th anniversary, Jim McKay said that Roone Arledge was the biggest influence on how sports programming has evolved in the last fifty years. He said Roone was responsible for creating the "behind-the-scenes" glimpses into the "real" lives of the athletes. Could you please comment on Roone's pioneering efforts to introduce us to the personalities of international sports figures? Lawrence Ashmead: It's clear in his memoir that this was an innovation ... examining the lives of sports figures and eventually people who were in the news. It was an innovation nobody else had done on television. It wasn't at all tabloid-like or demeaning. It was to better understand the people and it was generally just very interesting information about the people.
Washington, D.C.: This is from Sam with the Maui Writers Conference. You've edited dozens of books by well-known figures. What was the most challenging -- and the most rewarding -- aspect of editing Roone Arledge's book? Lawrence Ashmead: It is true, I've edited a lot of celebrity books and I have to confess that most of them were not very successful. But I can honestly say this is probably the best written memoir I've ever edited and because Roone was such an important figure and had such great stories to tell, it's one of the most interesting autobiographies that I have edited. I'm very proud of Roone's book.
Lawrence Ashmead: If this is the Sam that I clearly remember from Maui, I remember you with great fondness.
Sterling, Va.: Did the disastrous pairing of Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters on the "ABC Evening News" in the mid-'70s happen on Arledge's watch, or was that just before he came aboard and created "World News Tonight"? How honest was Arledge in the book about his rare misfires? Also, how much did he go into his relationship with Howard Cosell? Lawrence Ashmead: I think it happened on his watch. It certainly says clearly in the book and as I remember it, it did.
I think he's very honest in the book. I don't think there's anything that could be construed as negative that he left out of the book. He was certainly very honest about everything.
There's a lot in the book about Howard Cosell. He was a very difficult man but he was an absolute genius and a great draw on television and I think Roone recognized these qualities and forgave him for whatever faults he had. I remember clearly Roone talking in the book and saying that the man (Cosell) was an absolute perfectionist about timing. Roone would ask him for a two and half-minute piece and Cosell would start and end exactly on the second hand of two and a half minutes. That's genius. And he never had notes and he never needed any props. I think Howard Cosell is one of the most interesting people in the book and there are many, many wonderful stories about him.
Washington, D.C.: As an editor, how do you approach authors like Arledge who are well-known? Do you try to it with a blank slate or does you familiarity with the subject help? Lawrence Ashmead: I think it can work either way. When you're working with a celebrity whose life is well-known, like Ann Miller or Guy Lombardo or Ethel Merman, you already bring a lot of information as an editor to the book. But I would much rather have the author tell the story the way they see it rather than the way I see it. And with Roone, I actually knew very little about his life. I certainly was aware of his television accomplishments but I knew very little about the rest of his life.
There's an interesting angle here because in the early 70s I owned a beach house in the Hamptons and Roone bought a house two houses away and the first thing he wanted to do was have a helicopter land in our backyards and I was very active in getting this prevented. And when Roone and I met for the first time about his book I knew he knew that I was one of the people that prevented this but he never mentioned it. He probably didn't want to get off on the wrong foot but I certainly think he remembered it.
Lawrence Ashmead: I will further add that the one thing about this book is that there's very little of his personal life and that was strictly his choice because this is a book about his career and he really didn't want to go into his marriages or even his children. But I know from conversations with him that he loved his children dearly and certainly loved his wife Gigi.
washingtonpost.com: That wraps up today's show. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion.
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