Bill Rasmussen wasn’t trying to revolutionize media. Or sports. He was just trying to get to his daughter’s sweet-16 party. Bill and his 22-year-old son, Scott, were 30 minutes into a five-hour drive from rural Connecticut to South Jersey and already parked on I-84 West in a traffic jam on a sweltering August 1978 weekend. Confined to an un-air-conditioned Mazda GLC, Bill was three months removed from getting fired … from two jobs. Conditions that day would make anyone irritable.
Sitting shotgun, Scott, too, was growing testy as Bill pitched ideas for a new venture he’d been considering after, on a lark, acquiring rights to a recently launched RCA transponder that enabled 24-7 broadcasting via satellite. “I knew there was value but wasn’t sure what to broadcast.... Scott was getting tired of my pitches,” Bill recalls. “We had decided we weren’t going to talk business that day ’cause we were getting mad at each other,” Scott says. “So at one point I burst out: ‘I don’t care what you do with it, Dad. It’s your transponder—show football all weekend, see if I care.’”
Jackpot.
Traffic subsided, and as the highway opened up, so, too, flowed the ideas: remote production teams with a skeleton crew in the studio to tie things together; two big-name anchors, maybe three; ample space for a control room, edit bays, a tape room; and a 30-minute roundup show each evening. Later that night, father and son drew up designs for a building with pencil and ruler. “One inch equaled eight feet,” Scott remembers. “The building that was ultimately designed followed that original layout.”
“We could touch it. We could taste it … We thought we had an idea that could change the world,” Scott says. Just over a year later, ESPN (the Entertainment Sports and Programming Network) would officially launch, and it hasn’t signed off since its seven P.M. debut on Friday, September 7, 1979. “ESPN was born on that drive,” Bill says.
If that car ride saw the birth of ESPN, insemination occurred earlier that decade, when a Getty scion’s suicide collided with the lackluster playoff performance of hockey player Gordie Howe.
The Big Idea
Born in the same year and city as Babe Ruth’s famous “called shot” home run (Chicago, 1932), Bill Rasmussen grew up a sports fan, and at 91, still views life through a sports lens: “You’ll see my house about a football field and a half away once you make the right turn,” he advised as I approached his bungalow in a master-planned community north of Tampa.
After a stint in the air force during the Korean War, Rasmussen began his career in the advertising department of Westinghouse’s lamp division. In 1962, he responded to an ad in Broadcasting, a trade magazine, and soon held dual roles as sports director and ad salesman for a local radio station in Amherst, Massachusetts. Rasmussen would deliver the morning sports show at 7:45 A.M., hit the road to sell advertising midmorning, return for the midday sports show, sell more advertising in the afternoon, then race back to the station to deliver the evening report. He also negotiated a deal with the University of Massachusetts Amherst to broadcast its football games on radio.
A succession of radio broadcasting roles in baseball, football, basketball, and hockey followed. Even his short stint as a weatherman was infused with his sports spirit: “It’s snowing and 28 degrees in Springfield, where the Indians topped the Quebec Aces, 3–2.”
“At one point I burst out: ‘I don’t care what you do with it, Dad. It’s your transponder—show football all weekend, see if I care.’” Jackpot.
After refusing the mandate to wear a hairpiece on-air (“my hairline was receding quickly”), Rasmussen moved on and connected with the New England Whalers hockey team. Because of space constraints in the arena, Whalers co-owner Howard Baldwin and Rasmussen banged out his employment agreement in the men’s room of the Eastern States Coliseum, in Springfield, Connecticut, in 1974.
Rasmussen quickly rose to communications director of the Whalers, ultimately recruiting Scott, still only a teenager, who became the arena announcer. Stationed rink-side in between the two penalty boxes, Scott became friendly with his idol, Hall of Famer Gordie Howe, whose ruthless style of play frequently landed him in the Whalers’ sin bin. “Gordie gave Scott advice on his girlfriends,” Rasmussen recalls with a smile.
The Rasmussen and Howe families grew so close that Bill was appointed executive director of the Howes’ family investment arm, Howe Enterprises, led by Gordie’s wife, Colleen. Before the 1978 playoffs, Bill and Scott produced Gordie’s champagne-soaked, celebrity-studded 50th-birthday party at the Springfield Civic Center.
But after the booze comes the hangover.
A month later, the Whalers were beaten in the World Hockey Association finals by the Winnipeg Jets in a four-game sweep. After leading the team in regular-season scoring, Howe registered just a single point in the final series.
Then, just as he was about to head to a Memorial Day golf tournament, Rasmussen received a call from Colleen Howe. “She was at the airport and in a rush,” he says. “She didn’t waste time and says, ‘Hi, Bill. The Whalers don’t want you back next year. Also, we don’t need your services at Howe Enterprises any longer, either. Have a plane to catch. Gotta run.’”
“We no longer had a spot for him,” Baldwin says. “But I knew he was a talent, so I told him the Whalers wanted to be involved in whatever he did next.” Two years later, ESPN’s first broadcast National Hockey League game featured the Whalers hosting the Washington Capitals at Eastern States Coliseum.
But that reunion wouldn’t happen until 1980. It was still 1978, and Rasmussen was an unemployed, married 45-year-old with three children, two in college. So he did the prudent thing: cripple himself on credit-card debt to pursue a high-risk gamble.
“We could touch it. We could taste it … We thought we had an idea that could change the world.”
During his Whaler days, Rasmussen had met Al Parinello, an RCA salesman who was selling the rights on Satcom I, a newly launched transponder. “RCA had been experimenting and actually put a couple satellites in space,” Rasmussen says. “Only 2 of the 24 [transponders on Satcom I] were spoken for—Ted Turner and HBO each had one.”
The kooks followed the visionaries. Parinello thought he was close to signing a third client, a pastor. When asked which geographies he intended to reach via satellite, the pastor revealed he wanted to beam his sermons into space to reach God. Parinello politely declined. He needed clients with a market greater than one.
So when Rasmussen called with a rough idea about broadcasting Connecticut sports statewide, Parinello sold him on a future of providing 24-7 programming across varied markets. The next day, Rasmussen committed to leasing a transponder on Satcom I. “I told Al, We’ll take that thing, that ‘transplant’ thing flying around in space. I didn’t know the word ‘transponder.’ None of us did.”
A few weeks later, Bill and Scott were in that traffic jam on I-84, spitballing what to do next. They’d have to figure out what to program—and how exactly they were going to finance the $2.6 million, six-year transponder commitment they’d signed with RCA.
Bill took out a $9,000 cash advance on his Mastercard and cobbled together another $30,000 from family to make the first month’s payment. They had 90 days to prove they had funding for the remainder of the contract, or they’d lose the rights to the transponder.
The Golden Opportunity
Behind every family of dynastic wealth, there’s a fixer. A trusted insider born outside the family, tasked with cleaning up the pieces (and bodies) when generations two and beyond run amok. For the Gettys, that man was Stu Evey.
Born in Montana to a social-climbing mother whose heavy-drinking husband had no ladder to ascend, Stu Evey found solace and fraternity in military life after joining the army at age 15. He studied business at the University of Washington, then joined Tidewater Oil as a management trainee in 1958. His first task: move furniture for his boss’s relocation.
Amid the lifting and loading of midcentury-modern leather sofas and Art Deco armoires, Evey struck up a conversation with George Getty, the eldest son of J. Paul Getty, the world’s richest man at the time. In short order, George hired Evey as his junior executive assistant.
No job was too small for Evey, whether it was procuring toilet fixtures or women. By the mid-1960s, he had an office right next to George’s and oversaw everything from his Thoroughbred-racing interests to the sale of J. Paul Getty’s unsellable Sutton Place estate in England.
But his real coup came in the late 1960s, when he sold the Hotel Pierre Marques, in Acapulco, to the shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig for $13.5 million, $11 million in cash and $2.5 million as a one-year loan, making Ludwig indebted to Getty. Not only could he execute—Evey knew how to please.
Behind every family of dynastic wealth, there’s a fixer. For the Gettys, that man was Stu Evey.
Just as Evey was settling into life among the glitterati and jet-setting aristocrats, he received a call one night from George’s wife. After a weeklong bender and a cocktail of uppers and downers, George had taken a barbecue fork to his stomach and locked himself in the bathroom. First, Evey coaxed a breathless Getty out of the bathroom. After disposing of the fork, Evey shooed the police away, knowing the maelstrom that would ensue if word got around, and brought George to Queen of Angels Hospital, in Los Angeles, where he was admitted under an alias. Evey’s moral compass didn’t always point north, but it always pointed toward Getty.
A few days later, George succumbed to his self-inflicted wounds, and it fell to Evey to inform J. Paul of his son’s suicide. Rather than deliver the truth on one call, Evey massaged the news. On the first call, Evey told him that George had suffered a stroke but that there was hope. On the second call, Evey said the stroke had ultimately been fatal.
J. Paul Getty didn’t mourn long, asking Evey on that same call who he thought should replace George in the company. Evey suggested Sid Peterson, the then C.F.O. After the two hung up, J. Paul Getty officially hired Sid Peterson to assume his deceased son’s role within the corporation.
Over the next five years, Sid Peterson expanded the Getty empire, diversifying it further away from the energy sector. At the helm was Stu Evey, now vice president of all diversified (non-oil-related) investments.
So it was only fitting that Evey was sipping bourbon at the Kona Surf Hotel, checking in on the Gettys’ Hawaii real-estate portfolio, when he was introduced to a new sports-media venture that was in dire need of funding to continue operating. During his tumultuous tenure at the family business, George had always sought to make a name for himself outside the oil patches. Now, Evey spotted an opportunity to fulfill the dream of the man who had made him.
Making Contact
Meanwhile, Bill and Scott Rasmussen were zigzagging the country from Shawnee Mission, Kansas, to San Diego to King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, trying to woo the N.C.A.A., cable operators, and advertising partners. Skepticism abounded at these meetings: 24-7 programming in a single area of interest (sports)? Not to mention, the Rasmussens pitched an entirely ad-supported network, unprecedented at the time. But Bill was a master salesman, an idealist possessing “optimism with a capital ‘O,’” says Chris Berman, ESPN’s legendary and longest-tenured broadcaster.
Stu Evey and Bill Rasmussen met on December 11, 1978. Despite already striking out with seven investors, Rasmussen still harbored hope for his nascent project. He detailed the progress made, from navigating the bureaucracy of the N.C.A.A. to eliciting interest from multi-national advertisers. The University of Connecticut was especially interested in gaining national exposure for its athletics, and Anheuser-Busch was considering a potential ad partnership.
The idea showed promise. But Rasmussen’s persuasive skills could only take things so far. He needed $10 million within three weeks, or the option on the RCA transponder would expire.
Evey had logistical concerns: Might Satcom I fall from the sky? Would satellite radiation result in litigation? It all sounded very futuristic. Moreover, Evey knew owners of professional teams who’d told him that the N.C.A.A. feared broadcasting events nationally would result in fans no longer showing up to games. At that time, revenues were generated primarily from ticket sales—no one could anticipate the massive TV contracts that were on the horizon.
But at the same time, Evey believed in sports. He was a season ticket holder for the Los Angeles Rams and the Los Angeles Dodgers. He loved the glamour of it all, and he knew that George Getty would have, too. “Stu wanted to be in the movies or television. He wanted to be part of the Hollywood scene,” Bill Rasmussen says.
Evey was sold, and asked Rasmussen to deliver a pitch directly to key members of Getty’s investment committee aboard a private jet en route to Midland, Texas.
Rasmussen was as convincing at 30,000 feet as he was on the ground. Once they deplaned, Getty’s C.E.O. spotted Evey next to a limo on the tarmac and gave him a small nod. Getty was officially on board, committing $10 million to start. Within the month, Anheuser-Busch committed to a $1.38 million sponsorship package, the largest TV deal at that time. The N.C.A.A. signed on as well.
Bill Rasmussen was an unemployed, married 45-year-old with three children, two in college. So he did the prudent thing: cripple himself on credit-card debt to pursue a high-risk gamble.
By the summer of 1979, ESP-TV, as the company was known until then, had rebranded as ESPN and established headquarters in the hamlet of Bristol, Connecticut. “It was a dump,” Bill says. “An actual dump. A reclamation area.”
It didn’t take long for friction to start brewing. Just prior to signing, Evey had upped Getty’s ownership from the agreed-upon 80 percent to 85 percent, further diluting Rasmussen’s ownership stake. But when the press descended on ESPN’s headquarters, their eyes were on him as the founder of the upstart media company.
Adweek declared Rasmussen one of the 12 biggest headline-makers of the year. He and Scott were quoted in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Then came a Connecticut Magazine cover featuring a full-length photo of Bill alongside the headline Why Are ABC, CBS, and NBC Afraid of This Man? There was no mention of Stu Evey in the story.
A dispute arose over the Rasmussens’ company-leased Cadillacs, which Evey demanded Bill and Scott return. They didn’t. What had started as healthy tension between business partners quickly ballooned into a crusade by Evey to dethrone the Rasmussens.
“Evey always reminded us he could turn off the dollar faucet at any time,” Bill says. In July, Evey poached Chet Simmons, president of NBC Sports, and installed him as president of ESPN, replacing Rasmussen, who was named chairman. It wasn’t a promotion.
Simmons had overseen the birth of ABC Sports and the rebirth of NBC Sports, so sharing a cramped office with Bill and Scott Rasmussen in Bristol (“the clock-making capital of Western Connecticut”) was an adjustment. Over the next few months, several seasoned executives and on-air talent figures followed Simmons. In media circles, ESPN became known as NBC Sports North.
The summer of 1979 wound down, and launch was just weeks away. Around headquarters in Bristol, the joke was that ESPN now stood for Evey Sports Programming Network. Despite the ominous signs, Bill and Scott remained steadfast in executing the grand idea they’d dreamed up the prior summer on I-84.
The internal storm was rivaled only by the weather. “It rained every day. The parking lots weren’t paved. It was a fuckin’ quagmire. Noah’s ark,” says anchor Chris Berman. “We had a TV producer, heavyset guy. He was late one day. We went outside to look for him. He was sinking, a good foot or two, into the parking lot. Caked in mud. Took a few guys to save him.”
As a non-union network, ESPN attracted young, hungry talent, and each person was doing the job of three. “We were 24, 25 years old. We were Lewis and Clark—didn’t know where the hell the Pacific was. We were just going that way,” Berman says.
The paint was still wet when Lee Leonard introduced ESPN to the nation at seven P.M. on September 7, 1979. Like all the anchors, Leonard wore a red blazer. “Bright red, Marriott bellhop red,” recalls Berman. Actually, it was Getty red, as mandated by Evey.
Following the hour-long premiere show, ESPN’s first televised game featured the Kentucky Bourbons versus the Milwaukee Schlitz in the Slo-Pitch Softball World Series (ESPN’s sponsor Anheuser-Busch wasn’t thrilled). Next up was N.C.A.A. soccer, the University of California at Los Angeles versus the University of St. Louis. There were some early bumps, such as audio that cut out during a pre-game interview. “It wasn’t a Rembrandt painting every night,” Berman says of the early days. “Might be some finger painting, but you knew you were gonna get something.”
“We were 24, 25 years old. We were Lewis and Clark—didn’t know where the hell the Pacific was. We were just going that way.”
While a launch party was underway at the Plainville Holiday Inn, Bill and Scott Rasmussen took a walk to reflect on the past year. Despite a successful start, they knew their time was up. “Companies like Getty don’t do a lot of freewheeling the way we did,” Bill Rasmussen says.
Within a month of launch, Scott Rasmussen was gone, after he rejected Evey’s offer to take a 75 percent pay cut and start in an entry-level job at ESPN. After a series of small entrepreneurial endeavors of varying success, Scott founded Rasmussen Reports, a polling company, in 2003.
Bill Rasmussen’s last day at ESPN was December 31, 1980. Getty sent a platoon of lawyers to negotiate settlement terms. The Rasmussen family ended up with a $3.4 million payout. Bill continued his entrepreneurial pursuits within sports and media, but nothing compared to ESPN. Today, he runs his Web site, ESPNFounder.com.
As for Chris Berman and the rest of the on-air talent, they were on a rocket ship. Round-the-clock single-interest programming, once ridiculed, was now all the buzz. CNN launched in 1980, MTV in ’81, and the Weather Channel in ’82. “There were seven of us originally on SportsCenter,” Berman says. “They called us the Mercury astronauts. We were hoping to land in the ocean. We ended up on the moon.” Today ESPN reaches sports fans in 71 countries across all seven continents, and is valued at around $24 billion.
As for Evey, his comeuppance took place at a 1982 Playboy mansion party, when he got into a physical altercation with Ted Turner. A stay at the Betty Ford clinic followed, and once discharged, he was served divorce papers. Within the year, Getty was out of ESPN, and Evey was out at Getty. (Texaco eventually bought Getty, then sold ESPN to ABC.)
J. Paul Getty is widely credited with saying, “Money is like manure. It’s most effective when spread around widely.” After decades of helping spread it, Evey had finally stepped in it.
Bill Keenan is the chief operating officer at AIR MAIL and the author of two books, Odd Man Rush: A Harvard Kid’s Hockey Odyssey from Central Park to Somewhere in Sweden—with Stops Along the Way and Discussion Materials: Tales of a Rookie Wall Street Investment Banker