![]() Bob Costas and Joe Buck hosted interview shows that offered them more time to talk sports in-depth than they got from their regular employers. Lampley, whom ABC let go in 1987, was hired to be “the Babe Ruth of HBO broadcasting,” one executive tells Miller. HBO styled itself as the home of Play-by-Play Man After Dark, where an announcer could sling his network blazer over his shoulder, take out his notepad, and tackle a thorny subject. ![]() Some announcers chafed when bosses told them they can’t criticize the leagues. But it was an ambitious project for the time.īy the ’80s, HBO Sports became an ark for network announcers. I don’t remember much about 61*, the Roger Maris–Mickey Mantle movie directed by Billy Crystal, other than Keith Olbermann correcting its factual errors on TV a few nights later. HBO Sports had creative freedom and big budgets when it needed them. HBO Sports had the same relationship with its network that HBO had with its then-parent company, Time Warner. ![]() A second type of documentary ( Hard Knocks, 24/7) straddled the now heavily straddled line between journalism and in-house promotion. It turned out a doc about Arthur Ashe Dare to Compete, a film about women in sports and Ezra Edelman’s Brooklyn Dodgers: Ghosts of Flatbush. They were acting as in-house bullshit detectors, often in real time.Īt its height, HBO Sports made better sports documentaries than just about anybody. That gave Jim Lampley and Larry Merchant’s ringside work on HBO an extra edge. But as Miller’s book shows, executives spent a great amount of energy throwing money at boxing promoters. HBO liked to brag that it had few relationships with sports leagues that would handcuff its journalists. Without commercials, viewers could hear chatter in the corners between rounds that the TV networks had missed. (HBO’s subscriber base was so small that there was little fear of fans ditching closed-circuit showings of the fight to watch it there.) The network unveiled new champs as it now does quality dramas: Muhammad Ali, Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard, Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Oscar De La Hoya, Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather Jr. HBO carried the Rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manila during the 1970s. HBO became boxing’s house network, its shadow promoter, its bank teller. ![]() The network, Miller notes, scored a coup. But HBO promised to air the fight in prime time. HBO offered promoter Don King a smaller fee for the fight ($125,000 versus an alleged $750,000 from ABC). In 1979, ABC wanted to stash a heavyweight championship bout between Larry Holmes and Mike Weaver on a Saturday afternoon. HBO arrived at the perfect time to grab boxing. It was the Fox network’s good luck to rise up in the ’90s when NFL rights were ripe for the taking. A Paul Newman movie aired after the game. The network’s first program of any kind was a New York Rangers–Vancouver Canucks game called by announcer Marty Glickman. “In programming, our primary interest is in live, professional sports,” Charles Dolan, who helped create the network, wrote in a memo before HBO went on the air in 1972. One of the surprises of Miller’s book is how much of early HBO was built on sports, rather than movies or TV dramas. Bill Simmons had a show on HBO in 2016, and continues to produce documentaries for the network.) (Disclosure: HBO was an early investor in The Ringer. As far back as the ’80s, HBO Sports had a pleasant, we’re-all-adults-here vibe. Airing on premium cable without commercials, its boxing and tennis and studio shows ( Inside the NFL, Costas Now) felt like bonuses. For 50 years, game rights have been dominated by well-heeled networks and ESPN. To understand what made HBO Sports unique, you have to understand its place in the world of TV. HBO Sports isn’t the same division it was when Tyson was annihilating challengers with nicknames like “Blood” and “The Truth.” Just as he did in his ESPN book, Those Guys Have All the Fun, Miller put announcers, producers, and executives on the record to find out why. But as Miller was working on the book, HBO abandoned boxing coverage after more than four decades. In his heyday, Tyson was as important to HBO as Cersei Lannister and Tony Soprano.įor his new book, Tinderbox, James Andrew Miller reported on the rise of HBO as a prestige-drama factory. When HBO executives contemplated giving Tyson a $60 million contract extension, it barely merited a discussion. In 1989, long before HBO created The Sopranos and Game of Thrones, 20 percent of subscribers said they paid for HBO to see Tyson. When naming HBO’s greatest antiheroes, it’s easy to forget Mike Tyson.
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