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.
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.
"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
