Roone Arledge's extraordinary career of more than a half century mirrors the history of the television industry he helped create. Roone is the vivid, intimate account of his own rise to fame and power as the head of both ABC Sports and ABC News as well as an up-close-and- personal story of his era, peopled with friends and foes alike. “[He] left a mark on his time. Sometimes [he] left a few marks on me.” - Henry Kissinger “Anyone interested in sports, news, or television in general will have difficulty putting this valuable book down.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Arledge has turned out a page-turner that is entertaining and riveting.” - Detroit Free Press “A fascinating, incisive chronicle of his four decades in network television. His legacy is about as impressive as anyone could hope for.” - Los Angeles Times “Arledge puts a worthy exclamation point on a remarkable career....His book, like his life, can best be summarized in one word: eventful.” - New York Times Book Review “He was the very best at what he did that there ever was.” - Jim McKay, former host ABC's Wide World of Sports “Roone didn’t just see the big picture, he was the big picture.” - Peggy Fleming “Even those of us who had to compete against Roone were constantly in awe.” - Tom Brokaw “He makes you dream that you can do things you didn’t know you could do.” - Diane Sawyer “All the big money in sports, none of that would be happening if not for Roone.” - Dick Ebersol “In the immortal words of the great Cole Porter, Roone. ‘You are the top.’” - Bob Iger “The top television producer of all time, the very best in our business.” - Sam Donaldson “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee: you’re great, Roone Arledge, but you can’t beat me.” - Muhammed Ali “Roone Arledge has been the star in the sky for as long as I’ve been associated with ABC.” - Michael Eisner “When I was just a little pup at NBC, Roone Arledge was a news and sports god.” - Katie Couric Roone Arledge's extraordinary career of more than a half century mirrors the history of the television industry he helped create. Roone is the vivid, intimate account of his own rise to fame and power as the head of both ABC Sports and ABC News as well as an up-close-and- personal story of his era, peopled with friends and foes alike. Roone Arledge began his career at WRCA in New York City, an NBC affiliate, and rose to become head of ABC News and one of the shining lights in television programming. He lived in New York City. He died on December 5, 2002 at the age of 71. Roone By Arledge, Roone Perennial ISBN: 0060536012 Chapter One Growing Up I wonder what he'd have made of me. I'm talking about the little boy with the thatch of red hair and the funny-sounding first name who grew up on suburban Long Island in the middle of the twentieth century: Roone Pinckney Arledge. What would he have thought of this full-grown graybeard in the next century, walking with a cane? What would he have made of my thirty-six Emmys and my directorships ranging from ESPN to the Council on Foreign Relations and Columbia University ( ESP-what? he might ask), and my three wives and four children and five grandchildren? And the Lifetime Achievement Emmy I'm to receive for News, the first of its kind to be given by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences? And, last but far from least, my late-life disease that now afflicts so many human beings? A "legend in television," did you say? I've been called that, much to my chagrin. Legends are the dead, people like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig whose images are carved in relief in deepest center field at Yankee Stadium. And I'm very much alive despite the cane, still chairman of ABC News and working on these memoirs in my spare time. But which would be stranger to the little boy? The idea that he might grow up to win a lifetime achievement award in television? Or television itself? (Until I was eight, I don't think I had ever even heard of television.) I have an equally hard time relating to the little boy I once was, the one his schoolmates nicknamed "Genius." (Whether he was or wasn't one he once lost a spelling bee because he muffed the word! That's right: "g-e-n-i-o-u-s"!). "Roone" was safer. The good thing about being called Roone, my father told me, was that people always remembered who you were. There are a lot of Johnnys, he said, a lot of Jims, Bobs, and Bills, but I've never run across another Roone. He knew wherefrom he spoke: His name was Roone, too. Dad was right, as he was about nearly everything. In all the years since, I only encountered one more Roone, and that's my son, who soon became known in the family as Boss and who christened his own first son ... Benjamin! Of course, there's always an exception, somewhere. In what was once East Berlin, an ABC crew once came across the statue of a Prussian field marshal who'd served as Bismarck's chief of staff. His inscribed name? "Roon." My ABC colleagues took a picture of the sta