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Mark Shapiro had to scratch and claw to get Around the Horn on the air.
Shapiro, now the president and COO of Endeavor and TKO, was the ESPN programming chief who spearheaded the creation of Pardon the Interruption in 2001. The network’s great success with PTI helped lead to the launch of Around the Horn the following year. The “Happy Hour” block from 5 to 6 p.m. ET has endured for more than two decades, a profound rarity in TV.
With Around the Horn set to conclude in late May, Shapiro reflected on the process of getting the show off the ground in an interview with Front Office Sports.
“It was really the same process as Pardon the Interruption,” Shapiro said. “I laid out a template of what I was looking for—opinions, debate, and news—from various corners of the country.”
Similarly to how PTI’s Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser were affiliated with The Washington Post, Around the Horn worked with newspapers like The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun-Times, The Denver Post, and The Dallas Morning News to get writers like Bob Ryan, Jackie MacMullan, Bill Plaschke, T.J. Simers, Jay Mariotti, Woody Paige, and Tim Cowlishaw to appear on the show. The logos of their newspapers appeared on glass behind them on the screen.
“What we knew we wanted is—sports is argument,” Shapiro said. “Look at the power and success of sports radio. We wanted that on TV … so we built it backwards.”
Shapiro said he was met with ample internal resistance to the idea, but nonetheless plowed ahead.
“All the sales guys were telling us, ‘It’s gonna hurt SportsCenter. We can’t sell it. It’ll never do ratings. It’ll never hit critical mass.’ I can’t tell you what we were up against,” Shapiro said. “If I wasn’t running programming—and don’t get me wrong, the success of a show has to do with talent and format, and a lot of people deserve credit for that—but in running programming, I was able to kind of stuff it through.”
The success of the “Happy Hour” block with PTI and Around the Horn led to another hour of talk programming preceding the programs, with Jim Rome Is Burning and 1st and 10, the predecessor to First Take that was part of the Cold Pizza morning program featuring Jay Crawford as moderator with Skip Bayless debating Stephen A. Smith, Woody Paige, and others.
Around the Horn was originally hosted by Max Kellerman—who got the job before his 30th birthday—and produced by Bill Wolff, who later went on to produce Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show.
Shapiro credited Jim Cohen, who worked for him at ESPN and later was an NFL Network executive, with hammering down a lot of the details, bells, and whistles on turning elements of sports-talk radio into a game show on TV.
“I’m not gonna call them misfits, but Jim threw in a collection of eccentrics. Some experts, some not so expert. He put them in a conference room for a week, and they came up with a bunch of ideas. We debated them and ultimately came out with a format that we thought was workable,” Shapiro said, recalling that Cohen even brought his sports-fan dentist in for input.
Reached by phone, Cohen said, “That sounds like me.”
As for how Kellerman became the first host, Shapiro said that he was “an up-and-comer. He’s got a lot of personality. He’s extremely bright and articulate. We just thought he’d be somebody good for that show, and once we got into auditions, it was abundantly clear that he was the right kind of central command to move forward.”
“He wasn’t afraid to bring it,” Shapiro continued. “He wasn’t afraid to put forward a controversial take. He didn’t shy away from opinion. He knew how to speak in sound bites. We knew he’d be terrific at directing traffic, and he was driving one hell of a niche and personality for himself in boxing and we thought he could go broader.”
Kellerman and Wolff left Around the Horn to launch a new show called I, Max on Fox Sports Net (the collection of former Fox Sports RSNs) in late 2003.
“We were in a contract dispute with Max. His deal was up and he wanted too much money!” Shapiro recalled. “It was that simple. He wasn’t moving, and I wasn’t bluffing, and ultimately it was a divorce. I don’t know if at the time he took us seriously and thought ultimately we’d cave and he was too integral to the success of the show, but we didn’t believe that was the case. Woody had obviously blossomed, and Plaschke was a big voice, and Bob Ryan in Boston really worked.”
“It became true we just needed an air traffic controller—one with opinions, personality, and humor who could hold his own with some of those big names,” Shapiro continued. “But the central reason you were tuning in wasn’t for the host.”
Shapiro said that Cohen recommended Tony Reali—who at that point was “Stat Boy” on PTI—to replace Kellerman.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, go ahead, do it! See how it goes!’” Shapiro said. “ESPN had so much wind at its back. It seemed like we could almost do no wrong when it came to live events or original programming. Whatever we put up there, we were in such a position of strength and drew viewership.”
Shapiro said that Reali “worked better than I ever could have anticipated” and added that it made “a lot of sense” to tab Erik Rydholm, the PTI executive producer, to also oversee Around the Horn when Wolff departed.
“He’s been not just an amazing caretaker, but an amazing executive producer and a creative force to his own,” Shapiro said.
