ESPN : The No-Holds-Barred Story of Power, Ego, Money, and Vision that Transformed a Culture

Chicago, Illinois:: Triumph Books, 2004. A bright, shiny, clean, square, tight copy. The Dust Jacket is NOT price clipped (27.95). No chips. No tears. No creases. No remainder mark. Pages are fresh, crisp and unmarked. Illustrated with 8 pages of photos. Bound in the original black boards with tan spine, lettered in gilt. From the Dust Jacket: "Boasting four sports channels with more than 200 million viewers worldwide, a sports magazine with a circulation of more than 2 million, a network of radio stations, and a successful chain of theme restaurants -- to say nothing of an estimated net worth of $15 billion -- ESPN is a veritable media empire. It is one of the most instantly recognizable brands in the world. But in 1978, when Stuart Evey, then a top executive for Getty Oil, heard the pitch for funding a new cable network from Bill Rasmussen, a former play-by-play announcer for a minor league hockey team, he had good reason to be skeptical. An all-sports network whose programming would consist of events like slow-pitch softball, Australian-rules football, and day-old college basketball games that couldn't make it on to the major networks? It shouldn't have been a tough call: eight other companies had already said no. But Stuart Evey said yes, and the rest, as they say, is history. But it's a history of a most remarkable and dramatic sort, and a history that has, until now, gone largely unreported. Evey's life at the helm of ESPN plunged him into a world of intrigue, backroom negotiations, and duels with executives at Getty, the major networks, and Hollywood studios. There were schemes to merge ESPN with CNN, create a cable movie channel that would have put HBO out of business, and start a pay-per-view channel with Don King. Make-or-break decisions were made on a seemingly daily basis and involved a cast of characters including Howard Cosell, Ted Turner, and Roone Arledge." . First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine condition./Fine dust jacket.. 8vo. xvi, 224pp..