Shales Tom - Those guys have all the fun: inside the world of ESPN

Copyright 2011 by Jimmy the Writer, Inc.

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ISBN 978-0-316-12576-5

A revelation: what goes onto the TV screen turns out to be just the glossy tip of an iceberg of ugly backstage drama. Miller and Shales must be extraordinarily talented interviewers, because their subjects are surprisingly uninhibited and frank and willing to dish and slag. [They are] good at zeroing in on a debacle and getting everybody involved to weigh in. By the end of the book youre amazed at the disconnect between the chaos behind the scenes and the relatively slick end product.

Lev Grossman, Time

What a story: larger-than-life personalities, salacious gossip, backstabbing and corporate intrigue set against the backdrop of the rise of cable television as an economic and cultural force. The quotes flow seamlessly, and the voices are fresh and vibrant. The depth and breadth of the interviews make it not only the definitive account of ESPNs first three decades but one of the best books yet on how cable shaped American culture.

Andy Lewis, Hollywood Reporter

Perhaps the most anticipated book in sports media history.

Neil Best, Newsday

Those Guys Have All the Fun delivers a hell of a narrative [and is] an outstanding work of journalism. Easing interviewees into such comfort that they said what they did on record is an enormous achievement for Miller and Shales.

Daniel Roberts, Fortune

A fascinating little-engine-that-could tale of money, power, and the early days of cable television.

Clint OConnor, Cleveland Plain Dealer

A rollicking oral history of [ESPN]. Its the candor of the more than 550 people interviewed that makes the book a breezy read.

Chad Finn, Boston Globe

[Those Guys Have All the Fun] offers a nuanced look at ESPN, does some top-notch TV-biz reporting on the early days of the cable industry, and offers compelling behind-the-scenes stories. [Its] packed with huge egos and bad behavior [and is] a serious, impressive piece of work.

Rob Brunner, Entertainment Weekly

Those who work in the business of sport will devour the book. The reader is ultimately granted the kind of behind-the-scenes access that sports media junkies are rarely given.

Richard Deitsch, SI.com

A fascinating and compulsively readable history.

Tim Marchman, Wall Street Journal

Those Guys Have All the Fun is a de rigueur read for sports fans who wonder how a fired hockey announcer used a $9,000 credit card advance to start a broadcasting empire that changed what we think about sports and how we view them.

Woody Paige, Denver Post

This treat for sports fans has a cast of characters that is huge and varied.

Janet Maslin, New York Times

Theres plenty that would interest loyal viewers, mostly programming and personnel decisions and conflicts between ESPN personalities.

Barry Jackson, Miami Herald

One of the best aspects of Those Guys is the willingness of several personalities to talk about their errors along with their hits.

Jack McCallum, Sports Illustrated

A rollicking glimpse behind the guys and gals who sport around at ESPN, Americas sports church. Amen.

Publishers Weekly

There are enough entertaining imprints to go around for the sports and nonsports fans alike. Shales and Miller take great pains to include ego clashes aplenty, not the least of which was the saga of the talented but incorrigible [Keith] Olbermann.

Pete Schulberg, The Oregonian

Running in Place: Inside the Senate

Live from New York: An Uncensored

History of Saturday Night Live

On the Air

Legends: Remembering Americas Greatest Stars

Live from New York: An Uncensored

History of Saturday Night Live

James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales are the authors of the bestselling Live from New York, an uncensored oral history of Saturday Night Live. Miller, also the author of Running in Place, has worked in virtually all aspects of journalismas well as on the entertainment side of television production and developmentfor more than twenty years. Shales is Americas foremost television critic, having won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1988. His books include On the Air! and Legends. For twenty-five years, he was a film critic for National Public Radio.

For Elizabeth Miller (19592010) with love

To love what you do and feel that it mattershow could anything be more fun?

Katharine Graham

It is the 27th day of August 2009, and a happy horde has gathered in remote Bristol, Connecticut, to celebratewith equal parts sentimentality and pridethe thirtieth birthday of a television network. Not many broadcasting companies inspire this level of devotion, but this one is different.

The sun smiles down obligingly on ESPNs sixty-four-acre campusthe rolling, semiverdant site on which ESPNs buildings sit and from which its twenty-seven treasured satellite dishes suck signals from the sky, spewing others back into the ionosphere and out through much of the world. The grass all but glows green, something that couldnt have happened thirty years ago, when this place had less in common with a university than with the LaBrea Tar Pits, except that Bristols primordial ooze was just plain miserable mud.

The thirtieth-birthday festivities are going to be much more understated than celebrations for the twenty-fifth. Then, cars full of ESPN stars motorcaded through Disney World, and even if you couldnt get to Florida, you could probably score one of the 1.3 million bottles of Gatorade produced in a special flavor called ESPNor grab one of 300 million Bud Light cans with ESPNs twenty-fifth anniversary logo printed on the label. In the weeks leading up to the celebration, network nabobs chose what they thought were the top sports moments of the previous twenty-five years and aired a series of specials keyed to the anniversaryall the hoopla climaxing in one of the hottest tickets in the companys history: a blowout at the ESPN Zone restaurant in Times Square.

Because 2009 is turning out to be a brutally cruel recession year, ESPNs president, the unflappable George Bodenheimer, wisely elects to tone things down this time around. In a brief state-of-the-clubhouse speech, he looks to a rosy future before an audience that includes many of the companys senior executives and about fifty members of both old and new media.

So self-confident are the leaders of ESPN at this point in their history that they have even invited the head raccoon of