00:00When Rupert Murdoch came to you and said that he wanted you to start Fox Sports, how daunting of a
00:09task was that for you to start what we see Fox Sports is today?
00:13Well, it was, given that at that stage, I knew my knowledge of American football, you could write in the
00:23back of a very small stamp.
00:25I'd seen one game of football, that was my wife is from Nebraska, and we'd gone to it, I was
00:31working in London, set it up, Sky Sports and the EPL and all that, and we'd been to see one
00:38game, and I said, so what am I looking at here?
00:41She said, watch that guy, he's the quarterback and he'll make the play.
00:44So that was my understanding of American football.
00:47So when Mr. Murdoch, and I love being in London, I had the time of my life, it was, we'd
00:52got the EPL up and running, we'd started to turn a profit, it wasn't kind of like, you weren't worrying
00:59about making payroll.
01:00It's like, it's so funny now, any HR comes to you and says, oh, well, we're a bit worried about
01:09morale.
01:10And I say, and I would say, can we make payroll next week?
01:14They go, yeah.
01:15I said, there's no morale problem.
01:16Morale problem is when you can't make payroll next week and you don't know how you're going to do it.
01:22So I was, the word terrified doesn't sum it up.
01:26Not only that, Fox had nothing, nothing.
01:30They didn't have a logo.
01:31It was, and I had to get it up and running in six months.
01:35So, so I looked back and it was, it was terrifying.
01:43It was exhilarating.
01:48It was fun.
01:49And I, you couldn't separate yourself.
01:52Man, incredible that you were there with that role there.
01:56How important was Madden and Summerall getting those guys to the NFL on Fox?
02:04Overall, I think that, that the role of the commentator is so vitally important in sports.
02:11And without a doubt, John and Pat were so far in front of any other broadcast teams because John Madden
02:20was a remarkably intelligent and a remarkable human being, John.
02:27I don't think anyone realized the depth of the way his mind worked.
02:33So for us, it was vitally important because like quite rightly, I'll tell you a quick story about, about NFL
02:40on Fox.
02:40My grand, my, my father-in-law, Wilbur Bakey rang me up from Omaha and he said, David, what's going
02:49on?
02:49What's this NFL on Fox?
02:52And I said, well, yeah, Wilbur, I'm coming out.
02:55And he said, I don't get Fox on my, I don't get Fox on my cable system.
03:01I said, but you will come the start of the season.
03:04So Fox went from this tiny little, like 50% coverage to 100% coverage.
03:10No one took it seriously quite right to, but as soon as we got John and Pat and people like
03:17Terry and Jimmy and Howie Long, that all of a sudden it was, this is real.
03:23This is, this, this, this, this isn't going to be the Simpsons.
03:27This is going to be like a decent broadcast.
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