Jock Around the Clock: The Story of History’S First All-Sports Radio Network

By John Birchard

Jock Around the Clock takes you back three decades to a time when satellite broadcasting and the concept of all sports all the time were brand-new. Its the story of how ESPN founders Bill and Scott Rasmussen, having been forced out of their TV sports network, turned to radio and gave birth to the all-sports network, Enterprise Radio. The story features names familiar to American sports fans as they gather to launch the network that would flash across the sky for a brief few months, then flame out, leaving behind the blueprint so many others have copied since.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 29, 2010
• ISBN: 9781456822613

John Birchard

John Birchard reti red from the Voice of America’s English language news division in Washington, DC, following a 51-year career in broadcasti ng. A long-ti me automoti ve journalist with experience in the print media, radio and television, he worked for Enterprise Radio as the network’s auto racing reporter during the network’s brief life and is uniquely qualifi ed to write about this forgott en chapter in broadcast history. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with his wife, Donna.

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Copyright © 2010 by John Birchard.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Dedication

This book is for my wife, Donna, who doesn’t care a fig

about sports—but for nearly 40 years has demonstrated how

deeply she cares for and supports me in my work and in every

other way. She is the love of my life.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

THE IDEA WAS IN THE AIR

CHAPTER TWO

A CROWD GATHERS

CHAPTER THREE

AIR TIME

CHAPTER FOUR

THE DEBUT

CHAPTER FIVE

OFF AND RUNNING

CHAPTER SIX

JOHN CHANIN: HERO OR VILLAIN?

CHAPTER SEVEN

FROM INDY TO WIMBLEDON

CHAPTER EIGHT

ESPRIT DE ENTERPRISE

CHAPTER NINE

ROAD TRIP

CHAPTER TEN

DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HANGING BY A THREAD

CHAPTER TWELVE

PULLING THE PLUG

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

POST MORTEM TIME IN THE PRESS

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE AUCTION

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ENTER THE LAWYERS

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE STAFF SCATTERS

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE POST GAME SHOW

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

WFAN, SON OF ENTERPRISE

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE RASMUSSENS

CHAPTER TWENTY

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

EPILOGUE

End Notes

CHAPTER ONE

THE IDEA WAS IN THE AIR

We made broadcasting history. And then, all too soon, we WERE history. We were Enterprise Radio, the world’s first all-sports radio network. Before ESPN Radio, Fox Sports Radio, The Sporting News network and WFAN in New York, before them all, there was Enterprise.

The New York Times, October 21, 1980

A 24-hour, all-sports radio network—an offshoot of the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network on cable television—will go on the air on Jan. 1.

The network, called Enterprise Radio, will be transmitted from the network’s studios in Avon, Connecticut, via the Westar satellite to radio stations across the country. The on-air personalities have yet to be signed, but network officials expect the format to resemble that of the cable sports network: live, play-by-play coverage, brief sports updates 48 times daily and a number of sports features and trivia quizzes.

It was the summer of ’80, the year the United States boycotted the Olympics. That was President Jimmy Carter’s reaction to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Ronald Reagan was on the campaign trail leading to the White House. Saddam Hussein was preparing Iraq to invade Iran. Inflation and interest rates in the U-S were high and would go higher.

I was a free-lance auto racing reporter, living in New Haven, Connecticut. I ran into an old friend, Arnold Dean of WTIC Radio in Hartford, who told me about a job interview he’d had with a guy who was starting an all-sports network that would be carried on satellite all over the country. They were hiring people, Arnold said, and could maybe use somebody with an auto racing background.

The guy was John Chanin, the executive charged with creating Enterprise Radio Network. Twenty-four-year-old Scott Rasmussen had lured Chanin away from ABC Radio, where he was head of network sports programming. Scott and his father Bill founded ESPN.

In 1978, the elder Rasmussen was fired from his job with the Hartford Whalers hockey team. At that point, he was looking for a way to sell University of Connecticut basketball games to cable TV operators. Bill, in his explorations, learned that one could rent satellite time at bargain rates.

Hartford Attorney Dan Blume has had a long-standing interest in broadcasting and is author of the book Making It In Radio. Blume recalls in a conversation with Bill that, I pointed out to him that when you get satellite space on a transponder, what you’re able to do is transmit to a footprint that’s equivalent to one-third of the face of the globe.

Suddenly, the U-Conn plan was displaced by something much bigger. Thus was born the idea that became the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, financed for $9,000 on Bill Rasmussen’s credit card.

ESPN began broadcasting in 1979, bolstered by an early investment of 10 million dollars from Getty Oil. The Getty money bought a controlling interest in the new network. The oil company hired Chet Simmons and Scotty Connal from NBC to run the show. The folks at Getty had learned that the fledgling network was close to shutting down and was in dire need of able management.

In his book ESPN The Uncensored History, Michael Freeman writes, When Simmons came on board, he viewed Rasmussen and his son as amateurs. Rasmussen considered Simmons a product of an arrogant network system. Rasmussen knew that Simmons was gunning for him and soon a fierce power struggle would erupt, pitting Simmons and (Getty Oil’s Stuart) Evey against his son and him. After a brief struggle, the founding father and son were eased out the door.

Despite the setback, the Rasmussens were considered rising stars in a still-new satellite broadcast business. The pair then looked to radio as the next medium to conquer. As Scott tells it, The idea was in the air. It seemed a natural extension (of ESPN). I was the one who put the format together of a 13-hour talk show block, twice-hourly updates, etc. The new venture would rent space from the Associated Press on the Westar satellite and provide free first-class sports programming to stations from coast-to-coast.

Enterprise would make its money by selling time to national advertisers, and local stations would make theirs by selling the availabilities or time allotted to them in the Enterprise shows to local advertisers. The stations’ costs would be nil, since the programming arrived free from outer space, as it were.

Three basic types of programming would be provided to affiliate stations. The first and most important was the all-night 13-hour talk show, divided into four host-segments. Stations were offered maximum flexibility. They could take one hour of the show, two hours, whatever they needed.

The second offering was sports updates every half-hour around the clock. The updates would include the latest scores, live inserts from games in progress, breaking news and interviews with the sports newsmakers of the day. Again, stations could take as few or as many of the two-and-a-half minute reports as their schedules dictated.

The third program service was sports features, covering a wide variety of sports-related subjects. There would be a minimum of 20 a week, with topics such as sports medicine, auto racing, sports law, the outdoors, sports spouses and commentary by the outspoken Hall of Fame basketball star Bill Russell.

Then, as an added attraction, special events—live broadcasts of major boxing matches, important college basketball games, the Stanley Cup finals, even the Olympics—were promised along with other major dates on the sports calendar. Enterprise was negotiating with the U.S. Olympic Committee for broadcast rights to the ’84 Olympics and with Major League Baseball for radio rights to important games. Stations could pick and choose events of interest to their local audiences.

The Rasmussens hired John Chanin to assemble a staff and make the concept work on a