Up Close and Personal: The Inside Story of Network Television Sports

With the focus on ABC, the other two major networks, CBS and NBC, appear only as minor players in this history of sportscasting by ABC-TV former vice-president Spence and coauthor Diles (Duffy, etc.). They begin with a portrait of Howard Cosell, whom Spence purports to admire but who nevertheless emerges here as one of the more obnoxious humans of our time. Then the authors proceed to the telecast negotiations for the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, for which ABC was stung for $309 million, contract talks with the National Collegiate Athletic Association, a discussion of Wide World of Sports, and the career of Roone Arledge, to whom Spence and Diles accord the appellation ``Mr. Sports Television.'' Finally, they question whether sportscasters are overpaid, surely one of the overworked subjects of the day. (June)