Dick Ebersol, once hailed by the Sporting Journal as “the strongest man in sports,” was never a player. An “average forward” on the high school basketball team, he admits that he was “basically distinguished by thick glasses and my limited ability.” He prefers to watch instead, finding the first broadcast of sports on television “magical,” even on the black and white of his childhood. As a child, he recalls on video from his home in Telluride, Colo., “Everything that happened behind the camera changed him. I want to learn as much about it as possible.”
Mr. Ebersol’s success behind the camera as a producer and executive for NBC has earned him a place in the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame and Broadcast & Cable Hall of Fame and the 2009 Sports Emmy for Lifetime Achievement, among other honors. He was responsible for securing NBC’s status as the home of the U.S. Olympic Games and the creation of “Football Sunday,” the program’s first ratings hit since its launch in 2006. He also helped create a long drawing. comedy “Saturday Night Live.”
Dick Ebersol (left) on the set of Saturday Night Live with cast member Brian Doyle-Murray, November 1981.
As Mr. Ebersol, 75, wrote in his new book, “From Saturday Night to Sunday Night,” out next week, he loved almost every part of his job running NBC sports from 1989 to when he retired in 2012. comfortably in what he calls “retired world” — spending time with his grandchildren and shuttling between homes in Maui, New York City and Litchfield, Conn., with his wife for over 40 years, Emmy Award-winning actress Susan Saint James-Mr. . Ebersol was relieved to stop broadcasting. This may interest you : The Charge Airs Episode 5 in NBC Sports Bay Area on Friday. He insists that audiences still come out for big plays and “anything that puts you in an unexpected world.” However, he admits that he is happy to no longer be in the hot seat. “There are so many things to look at, so many ways to look, the look of everything is getting smaller today,” he said. It hardly helped, he said, that no one knew who was watching what and on which platform.
“Secret stories about unknown players can capture their hearts, minds and, as we say on TV, their eyeballs.”
Growing up in Litchfield, Mr. Ebersol was a hustler who held down three jobs by the age of 9. He was 10 years old when games featuring his beloved New York Yankees and New York Giants began airing on television. Mickey Mantle’s 1956 baseball games “were like my lucky numbers,” he said.
When ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” first entered television rooms across the United States in 1961, Mr. Ebersol was successful. The weekly show revolutionized sports broadcasting by introducing camera angles and booming mics that put viewers in the action. He also showed how personal stories about unknown players can capture “their hearts, minds and, as we said on TV, their eyes.”
As a high school exchange student in France, Mr. Ebersol traveled to the famous Le Mans racetrack and found ABC trailers to introduce himself. His new stint as an intern allowed him to get more coffee and cigars for the ABC staff in New Haven, Conn., while he studied history at Yale. When ABC asked him to travel around the world covering the athletes who competed in the 1968 Olympics, he put his studies on hold. As he watched the games unfold from behind the scenes, he said he knew “this is what I really want to do for the rest of my life.”
Dick Ebersol’s new memoir, ‘From Saturday Night to Sunday Night,’ covers his long career as a TV producer and executive.
Within hours of receiving his Yale diploma in 1970, Mr. Ebersol returned to Le Mans as a production assistant. His work on other issues caught the attention of ABC president Roone Arledge, who made Mr. Ebersol his assistant and gave him “a master’s degree in industrial business.”
In 1974, Mr. Ebersol accepted an offer from NBC to create a new show for Saturday nights. A 30-year-old “hip” writer named Lorne Michaels impressed him with his vision of what the future of comedy could sound like on television. To see also : Kroenke Sports Charities celebrates its signature community scholarship partners. “Saturday Night Live” was not an instant success when it debuted in 1975, with a new cast including Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner. But still young people are listening more and more, and in 1976 “SNL” bagged three Emmys and a rabbit from President Gerald Ford.
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Mr. Ebersol left the show after the first year, but when Mr. Michaels left in 1980 and Countdown began, he was brought back to save it. His solution was to give 19-year-old actor Eddie Murphy as much time as possible and to hire a few stars, including Billy Crystal and Martin Short. On the same subject : Mattress Mack on his latest game: a site for sports news and games. In 1985 “SNL” was on its feet and Mr. Ebersol—who met his wife when she hosted the show in 1981—was happy to return it to Mr. Michaels. “I’m fine with comic writers, but he’s got a special interest,” Mr. Ebersol said.
He had been out of sports television for about 15 years when NBC asked him to lead the network’s sports division in 1989. With the support
At home, Ebersol displays handmade banners commemorating each Olympics he produced for NBC.
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