NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 12: Honoree/TV and Sports Manager Dick Ebersol speaks at The Tom … [+]
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Talking to Dick Ebersol, “the most powerful person in sport,” is like taking a master class in the art of storytelling.
Ebersol recently came to me via video from his home in Telluride, Colorado to talk about his new book, From Saturday Night to Sunday Night.
Ebersol’s memoir takes readers from behind the scenes of co-creating Saturday Night Live with Lorne Michaels to seminal Olympics and sports coverage on NBC. I contacted Ebersol after noticing the frequency of “storytelling” in his book.
While Ebersol’s book provides a compelling history of telesport, it also provides valuable insight for professionals in any field who need to create content and present ideas that engage, motivate and move their audiences.
“My priority was story, story, story.”
Sports on TV is very different today than it was before Ebersol has put its stamp on NBC’s sports and Olympics coverage. It is difficult for most viewers to imagine that college football games were once broadcast by just one camera positioned in the broadcast booth. That changed under Ebersol’s first boss, ABC President Roone Arledge. Ebersol credits Arledge with pioneering the reinvention of television sports into a storytelling medium.
Arledge reinvented sports broadcasting in 1960 with a now-famous memo that read, “We will add show business to sports.”
“Each game would have an epic story to tell,” says Ebersol. “The way to engage audiences in unfamiliar sports was to tell the stories of the athletes who competed: pique their curiosity and give them a rooted interest.”
ABC Sports’ mission was to tell viewers a story. To this end, Arledge added cameras mounted on risers to provide different viewing angles. Meanwhile, roving handheld cameras recorded action to the sides and giant boom mics picked up sounds on the field.
“He [Arledge] wanted the crowd to see and hear the cheers in the stands, players celebrating their touchdowns on the sidelines, coaches yelling at umpires for making poor decisions,” writes Ebersol.
Dick Ebersol’s memoirs From Saturday Night to Sunday Night
Simon & Schuster
Ebersol played a part in creating these epic stories when he took his first job at ABC as an Olympic researcher, a position none of the networks had. It’s 1967 and the internet doesn’t exist yet. It meant Ebersol had to travel across the US and Europe to find the best stories for announcers like Jim McKay to share with the public about Wide World of Sports and the 1968 Olympics. Ebersol interviewed athletes, coaches and their families to learn as much as possible about their personal stories, stories that would resonate with more viewers.
“You couldn’t ask for better storytelling teachers than Jim and Roone,” recalls Ebersol. “They were my mentors. I was blessed.”
The lessons Ebersol learned from those teachers came back to him years later when NBC asked him to head up the network’s sports division in 1989. Ebersol called a meeting of about a hundred people and articulated his vision: “From now on, NBC Sports will make storytelling a priority.”
He said viewers should know the athletes, their backgrounds and the challenges they’ve had to overcome to play on the big stage – whether it’s the NBA, the World Series, the Super Bowl or the Olympics.
“Storytelling wasn’t a class they taught at NBC,” Ebersol recalls. “My priority was story, story, story.”
Storytelling is collaborative.
Ebersol’s experiences and insights should remind leaders that storytelling is collaborative, “a team sport.”
Storytelling plays an important role in every organization. Universities share inspirational alumni stories to attract high-quality applicants. Startup entrepreneurs share their creation stories to attract investors and motivate teams. And companies of all sizes share customer success stories to attract more customers.
As a leader, you might be the one sharing stories in presentations, memos, articles, and interviews. But since storytelling is a team sport, the task of finding those stories and stitching them together into compelling narratives should be everyone’s responsibility.
Yes, marketing and advertising departments can turn these stories into assets they can share across platforms, but executives should help identify stories from their journeys, and salespeople should come back from their meetings with fresh client stories and case studies.
According to Ebersol, the Olympics are “the melting pot of storytelling” because most viewers only tune in when they care about the athletes and when they hear stories that touch their hearts. A similar formula applies to any business—customers and employees are more likely to connect with a brand when they are moved by the story.
Build a storytelling team to stay ahead of the competition.
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