The House That Roone Built: The Inside Story of ABC News (ISBN 0316331511)

An Enigima:
People who follow the television industry closer may rate this book higher than I do. I saw Roone's funeral on C-SPAN and learned a couple of interesting things about him (he never returned phone calls), so when I saw this book at the library I thought I'd read it. Roone Arledge was an enigima. He was a television genius, but if you read a physiological profile on him before interviewing him you might never hire him. Okay, maybe that can be said about many high level executives. Roone couldn't make decisions, didn't like commitments (didn't sign a contract for his new job as President of ABC News until three years after he took the job), hated adversial positions, and let business problems fester until he had absolutely had to intervene. Doesn't sound like the type of pro-active executive that I'd want running my business. People skills weren't Roone's strong suit either, and he claimed he had nothing to do with a business or television mess where he had been an active participant or arrange for somebody else to take the blame. Okay, a lot of managers could plead guilty to these sins if their egos would let them. Roone also liked stars (one female correspondent referred to it as star-f****** in the figurative not literal sense), but for his own career reasons. By hiring the big name star from another network he felt that he couldn't be second guessed if the star flopped (Katie Couric?). Promote somebody within the network and that person flopped, he was afraid that he would be second guessed forever. Go the safe route not the risky route regardless of the upside. Roone also broke the industry pay scale when he first hired a correspondent Cassie Mackin (never heard of her)from NBC. The standard network correspondents was $50-$75K at the time and Roone gave Mackin $100,000. Of course, this filtered through the industry and in time the industry pay scale increased substantially. Only the correspondents, anchors, and producers liked this. This made Roone the George Steinbrenner or Ted Turner of his industry. In short I'm not sure if Roone would have been a successful in any other industry except maybe the movie industry, but he sure struck gold in TV.