Joe Aceti On Sports Television Directing

(Working Title)

 

 

The director should know everything the producer knows, plus a great deal more about Avisual language@ and technical equipment. . . . his main responsibility will be creating the final look and sound of the program. . . . His ability to master movement, composition, light, space, and to select angle, and to emphasize facial expression, body gesture, word, music, object, and locale will enhance or leave flat or destroy each fragile moment in the flow of time that is the nature of television. In sculpture, painting, the written wordBthere is a fixity of the perceived image and it is the perceiver who moves. In television (as in film, music, and dance), the perceiver, or viewer tends to be static and the image is in motion.

 

B From, The Cool Fire: How to Make It In Television by Bob Shanks, 1977, pp. 21-22.

 

Let the nothingness into yer shots.

 

B From, The Little Zen Companion, by David Schiller, 1994, p. 157.

 

The essential ideas of television directing were formed hundreds of years before the medium was ever conceived. More than five centuries ago, the Greeks found that a good theater performance depended on artistic organization and that it took someone who could see the performance from the standpoint of the audience (Hickman, 1991).  This paper focuses on a modern day director of sports television who embodies these ancient ideas.

Most people would not know of him, but Joseph A. Aceti is one of the pioneers in sports television.  He was there at the beginning when Roone Arledge took a floundering American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and, through its sports broadcasting division, made it into a network television leader.  In 1999 we had the privilege of spending two days with Joe Aceti. Near retirement, Aceti took some time to reflect on his career with us.  This paper represents a portion of the interview we conducted with him over that two-day period.

Through Aceti’s reflections we not only hope to shine light on an individual’s career in television, but also gain understanding of the television production process as seen through the eyes of a masterful television director. Some of the ideas and tricks of the television directing trade that Aceti addresses can not be found in a television production text book.  They can only be found through years of practical, professional work in the field.  In addition, Aceti highlights important historical events and perspectives that only a television insider would know.

 

Personal Background and The Start of His Career

In many ways Joe Aceti’s life models the classic American tale. Raised along Upstate NewYork’s Hudson River in Highland Falls, New York, he started from very modest beginnings to become one of sports television’s most successful behind-the-scenes personalities. He was the son of a trash collector who taught him the virtues of standing up for oneself, being modest, and doing the right thing. An All-American baseball player, his bachelor’s degree at Colgate University was in fine arts.  His study of painting and sculpture would later shape his approach to television production and the visualization of sporting events.

His television career started in 1964 at ABC film on West 54th and 10th in New York City. As Aceti puts it,

 

It was an awful job, but after being there a year ABC got Saturday afternoon baseball and I was interested.  ABC sports did not exist, it was called Sports Programs, a Subsidiary of ABC and it wasn’t even in the ABC building.  It was a little tiny place with three or four floors.  I interviewed for a production assistant (PA) job working with the great Jackie Robinson.  He was going to be an announcer, and to show you how business has changed, there were only three or four guys interviewing. Today there would be 400.  I got the job because I could spell Carl Yastzremski’s name, it’s Y-A-S-T-Z-R-E-M-S-K-I.  Most people put the Z in the wrong place. I did my first game with Jackie Robinson in Forbes Field, Pittsburgh. Friday night we went to the game together and had popcorn.  I was in awe of Jackie Robinson. I could never call him Jackie.  I always called him Mr. Robinson, or sir.  After the game we went back to the Hilton Hotel and I called my wife.  I told her that going to the game with Jackie Robinson is like going to church with Jesus Christ.  If you could pick a guy living or dead to go to a ball game with, he would be the choice of many people.  He’s the man. He was more than a player, he was a part of history. Certainly I would rather go to a game with him than Babe Ruth.  I liked that job.  I told my wife I liked that job so much I’d do it for nothing and my wife said, “You are doing it for nothing.”  I was getting about 85 bucks a week.

 

Because the job was temporary, Aceti almost didn’t take it. However, being that he was formerly an All American catcher at Colgate, he and his wife Barbara felt that the job was a good fit.  At the end of the baseball season he and everyone else at the division of ABC was supposed to be terminated. But the temporary job lasted 35 years.  After three years of production assisting for Robinson, Aceti became assistant director (AD) and held that position for eight years.  During that time he directed 30 to 35 shows a year.  In the 1970s he was AD in charge of Wide World of Sports. During this time ABC was television sports and no expense was too great for sports production.[1] As Aceti remembers it,

 

Not once in 21 years did I hear the word budget.  If someone had said the budget’s 50 thousand, I wouldn’t have known what they were talking about.  If I had five cameras and I wanted 10, I’d get five more, no questions asked.  It’s not like that today.

 

In 1975 he became a director at ABC Sports,[2] but could never direct the shows he wanted. So, in 1982 he left ABC and went to CBS.  He was there for 10 years and did all their major events: baseball playoffs and four World Series, World Championship Figure Skating, the Olympics, and pro-football. It was a perfect match for Aceti and he loved it.  But he left CBS in 1993 primarily because they were out of money due to a bad, 1.1 billion dollar deal they made to acquire the rights to major league baseball.  Besides losing Aceti, CBS lost 600 million dollars, NFL football, the World Figure Skating Championships, and college football.  The only thing they had left was college basketball. 

The day after he left CBS, Aceti was working for Fox, directing NFL football. In fact, everyone from CBS was hired by Fox.  At Fox’s first meeting, Ed Goren who was a producer at CBS, also now at Fox, said, AIt’s good to see all you people here at CBS.@  He went on for five minutes before he finally said, AYou know I didn’t realize this is not CBS,@ and nobody else did either.  All the commentators, producers, and directors were from CBS. Aceti has spent the last five years working at Fox directing 16 football games a year. 

Bob Shanks (1977) said this about sports directing (and he may well have been talking about Aceti indirectly):

 

Sports might seem a straightforward area, beyond a director’s ability to improve. Not true. Sports directors, of course, do not get performances out of the people in their pictures, nor do they choose the settings. Still, the ABC directors who worked the Olympic Games in Montreal elevated sports coverage to enlightening and aesthetic heights seldom realized by their entertainment counterparts. The rigors of this competition and the struggles for victory among the participants were made personal and vivid, and the home viewer’s understanding was intensified while his emotions were deeply stirred. (p. 22)

 

Besides working with Jackie Robinson, Mohammed Ali, and other great personalities in and out of the sports arena, one of Aceti’s great joys was directing figure skating. The next section examines Aceti’s approach to directing figure skating.

 

Ice Skating: Television’s Creative Outlet

Aceti loved figure skating because, in his words, Ait’s a true form of directing.@ Skating is the creative sort of outlet that Aceti enjoys. He says that,

when you’re doing a taped skating show, you’re doing two things, you’re listening to music and cutting picture.  It’s sort of like rubbing your belly and patting your head, because you want to cut on the music but you want to also cut on screen direction.

Skating’s a very subtle kind of directing.  It looks easy but it really isn’t. He tells the story of a television executive who told him that it looked easy because there was only one person on the ice and ten cameras to follower her around and take whatever shots you needed. So, Joe said to the executive,

 

You sit down here. You direct and I’ll be the TD (technical director) and I’ll cut the cameras. I’m going to show you why it’s difficult.  So, the executive starts and says, >Take four,’ and I said what’s next? He couldn’t make a decision and you know why?  Because they (the camera shots) all looked the same.  So I said, here’s what you have to do, tell camera two to widen out, frame her on the left, tell three to pan right--you have to make the camera shots different--different in size, different angles, and so forth. It’s a very subtle and very difficult thing.  Like I said, you have to be able to rub your belly and pat your head; you have to cut on the music, but not incorrectly like when the skater is jumping in the air.  You never cut anything when it’s in the air. You don’t cut in the middle of a jump.  Maybe the beat hits as she jumps and if you’re late, you cut the shot when she’s in the air.  You never want to cut with anything in the air, a baseball, a basketball, a football.  It’s not good television. You have to keep screen direction all the time and you should not over-cut.

 

Some directors rehearse the camera shots for figure skating.  They watch the skaters practice and script the camera shots to the skater’s routine. Aceti does not believe in this practice. In fact, his approach is exactly the opposite. He never sees them rehearse.  He won’t even walk into the arena before the show. As he puts it,

 

I don’t want to see them skate. I want it to be a spontaneous thing.  It has a lot more feeling to it that way. They skate for four minutes and it’s just music and your creativity.

 

Joe never scripts the event.  He lets it happen and cuts the show based on what he sees happening.  If there’s a great shot of a skater he’ll stay with it even if it’s a minute long.

Another directing tip Aceti provided was,

 

If you shoot close-ups in pairs skating, the first one should be of the woman.  I tell the cameraman when the two split, if you have to pick one, go with the woman because people don’t pay to see the guy.

 

Football: Mechanized Television

The antithesis to skating is football. Aceti says,

 

In a pro football game even I’m mechanical in some ways because you have so much technical, mechanical stuff to do: you mat Chyron, you isolate on players for replays, you replay your videotape machines, you roll back replays, and you’re just bogged down by the mechanics of it. In between each play there’s 25 seconds and during that time you’re doing a replay, a shot of the guy, a Chyron, etc., and there’s no chance for any creativity, plus you have to get back for the snap of the ball and that’s just a shot high and wide.  That’s your coverage. It just eliminates a lot of creativity.

In sports production today, the story is very important and arguably more so in football than in other sports.  What is the story of the game? the team? the players?  One of the major problems as Aceti sees it is that most producers and directors do not recognize a game’s story. Too often a director is afraid to be spontaneous and allow the game to unfold and tell its own story.  As Aceti puts it, 

When you do college football, for example, you have to find the story. You don’t want to impress your thumb on it.  You don’t want to say, this is the story like some guys say in the open.  You don’t want to force it.  You can’t make a story happen. You have to let it happen and then you have to document it and follow it to its conclusion.  I think that a lot of the non-truth in sports comes from directors and producers not following what really is happening on the field. They become too mechanical and follow some sort of scripted storyline.

 

I wish I had the Army-Navy tape.  It shows what the story of Army-Navy is not: it is not that these guys are working to become professional players, and not that this game is good and they’re on scholarships and they’re playing for the scholarship. These guys are playing for nothing.  They’re out there because they love it.  This is their last game.  After it they’re going into the army and into the navy and they give it their all.  So, the story of the game is not the score.  One team will win and remember it forever, and one team will loose and remember it forever.  They’re not going anywhere in post- season. They’re average teams.  The real story is that it means everything to them and the fans. It’s a great game. You have to have confidence in your ability to tell that story. You don’t produce a football game.  It produces itself and you just put the commercials in.

In his own way Aceti changed the coverage of college football. In order for the real story to be told, he insisted that his cameras be down on the field where the stories were happening.

You can’t have all the cameras up in the stands.  I used to direct the game with eight cameras, four of them were minis.  Why? Because they could be down where the players were.  With them I could show their faces crying at the end of the game when the team was losing.  That was the story of the game. You could see the guy who was the hero who, prior to the game, was never heard of.  You got that in my games, whereas in most games you just get the plays and who made the touchdowns. That doesn’t mean anything with Army-Navy.

The Army-Navy game was always looked down on as a property by the other networks. Then CBS and Aceti got a hold of it.  Not only did Aceti make it a good property, he made it get good ratings. 

It was our highest rated college football game and they were always the two worst teams.  They’d have records of 5 and 6, or 8 and 4.  They were not great teams.  But that one game meant everything.  To win that game was a winning season to the players.  It didn’t matter how many they won or lost.  So, it was not a throwaway game.  I’d say to my crew, okay, let’s go in and cover it and do a nice job.  I knew there were a lot of good things there.

I’d show a play, then the fans, then a kid on the sidelines.  I wouldn’t show so many replays because they’re not part of the game, it’s not a pro-football game.  Pro-football is totally different. For example, if the Giants play Minnesota and they win by six, but they’re favored by seven the fans boo them.  Why?  Because they didn’t cover the spread.  They’re there for betting. It’s good football, it’s professional football and it’s a better technical game, but it’s dull.  And the players don’t care.  You might see three or four guys on the sideline and their team is losing by 25 and they’re laughing and kidding around.  In college, if you were on the sidelines for Notre Dame and Ara Parseghian was your coach and you were losing by 25 you’d have his foot up your butt. I’ve seen it happen.  I was on the sidelines in 1966 in the 10-10 tie with Michigan State B a famous game B and I saw Ara put his foot up a guy’s butt.  They were sitting there laughing about something when they were losing.  I often teased him about that incident. I worked with him, he’s a good friend. I’d say to him, everyone thinks you’re Mr. Nice Guy, and he is, but I saw you put a foot up your player’s butt.  He said, when?  And I told him, and he’d say, oh yah, I remember that.  He’s a tough guy and he’s a great coach.

 

As a master of sports directing, Aceti displays an incredible range of visual acuity. From boxing and wrist wrestling to all the Olympic sports, he’s directed them all.  Ice skating, football, and baseball are three of his favorites.  The three sports can be divided into two pairs of diametrically opposite sporting activities. One pair, ice skating and football, represent wholly different sports. One is a team sport and the other is an individual sport. Also diametrically opposite are baseball and football. Football is a clock-bound sport with well defined time limits.  Baseball has no such time frame to bound it. Additionally, in football you generally know where the ball is and where it’s going.  In baseball, once the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand, it could go in any one of an infinite number of directions.

 

On TV Today

Today if you want five cameras, they give you four.  And then if you want an extra camera it’s a big to-do.  It’s not good any more.  It’s a business now because the economics forced it to be.  The networks lost about half their audience because of cable, VCRs, digital movies, everything.  They probably have 50% of their normal audience--of the earlier audience when there were only three networks.  They can’t compete any more, it’s difficult.  There’s less money.  Less  money means less for your production costs.  Rights went up and production costs went up and the income from advertisements was cut in half and so somebody’s got to give up something so it’s always production.  But they try, in those parameters, they try to make it as good as they can.

 

On Honesty in Television Production

Most people who have worked with Joe Aceti will attest to his honest way of handling the production personnel and treating everyone from the on-camera stars to the lowest paid person as equals.  He has been an outspoken advocate for equality across race and gender lines. If Aceti is remembered for anything, this might be it because in the world of television network production, race and gender issues have been notorious problem areas. Television production is primarily a white man’s domain and Aceti fought this image in subtle ways throughout his career. Why? Some of this comes from his family background and the neighborhood he was raised in.

 

He is well-respected amongst television production crews because Aceti himself respects all the crew members from the most to the least in importance. Yet the Director’s Guild has failed year after year to recognize Aceti for his accomplishments. 

One of the key ideas in this area as Aceti says, is to know your crew, who they are, their names, and their capabilities with the equipment, emotionally, intellectually, and interpersonally. You have to trust your crew because they can see things that you as a director can’t. As he puts it,

I can only see X number of shots from X number of cameras. If  I have ten cameras I see ten pictures.  The cameraman on the field and in the stadium can see a thousand pictures with their eyes.  They have to contribute that.  I tell them jokingly before the game, “You’ve got two choices, you can make me look like a great director, or I gotta yell at you all day.”  So, they make me look like a good director. 

For example, Joe invited us to watch him in the production truck during preproduction before a football game between the New York Giants and Phoenix Cardinals in Phoenix, Arizona.  Uncharacteristically, it was a miserable day in Phoenix. It was cold and rainy for much of day. At one point Aceti told his camera crew to give him Aweather shot.@ And without missing a beat up popped six or seven different shotsBone was a close-up of a rain puddle with the rain falling into it, another was an unfocused shot of rain against the camera lens, another was a shot of the gray cloud cover overhead, another of rain dribbling off the roof of the stadium, and more. It was an amazing lesson of trust in the crew to provide the director with a set of pictorial choices.

As he says,

I’m tough, but not on a guy for making a mistake. I tell my crew, “don’t worry if you make a mistake.”  I don’t want to do a perfect show that’s boring.  I want one with five or six mistakes that makes great impact because of the great shots, so don’t worry about the mistakes. You can’t be an artist without making some mistakes.

 

Aceti’s Innovations

Arguably, Joe Aceti may have introduced the use of close-ups in sports broadcasting.  At a time when it was considered a no-no to shoot any closer than from the waist up in baseball, Aceti was using close-ups.  Even when producers were telling him that close-ups were wrong and they should never be used, Aceti was saying,

I don’t use the word never when I direct, there are no nevers.  For example, if there’s a situation where a batter is facing a 3 and 2 count and the game’s 3 to 2 in the ninth with the bases loaded and he gets a hit and they win, I want to see the face of the pitcher and the face of the batter--not in a split-screen--I wanna see them separately in a close-up, not head-to-toe in a long shot, not even in a medium shot.

He also devised something he called sequencing in television sports production. What it consisted of is a series of six shots that he uses between pitches.  He would show 1) the catcher face-on, looking into the dugout, then 2) the manager giving signs and calling pitches.  Then cut to 3) the third base coach, then 4) the batter, then 5) the catcher close-up giving the signal, then 6) the pitch.  It was very innovative at the time and showed a savvy knowledge of game. One of the keys to this process, Aceti told us,

is to trust your camera crew because, if they know the game, they can improve the overall production. For example, if the centerfield camera person knows the catcher’s signs, he can tell the director what sort of pitch is coming up so that the director can plan how the batter might hit the ball, or if there’s going to be a pitch out, or a throw to first base. The crew can enhance the look of the show and make the director look good, or bad if there is not a mutual sense of respect and trust.

 Aceti’s Rules of Television Directing

C           Never see where the game is being played, i.e., never go far beyond the production truck and never, ever goes into the stadium itself.  Aceti said,

I did 16 football games, pro-football last year.  I saw zero stadiums.  I never went inside.  You know why?  My theory is if I have eight cameras, I have to look at what they see, not what I see.  I see the limits from those cameras and the television truck.  The camera men see the rest and it works perfectly.  And it’s a superstition now with me, I just don’t so it.

C           One of the keys in sports production is to do your homework. You need to know the game and you need to know the minute details of the game.  For example, Aceti memorizes the name and number of every player on the field. This is a important for telling the story and especially for the commentary that accompanies the game.  The announcers have to have enough confidence in the director to know that when they start to talk about a particular player, that player’s image will appear on the television screen. Aceti tells the story about how he had a hard time convincing one of his announcers:

 

I had a hard time convincing Jerry Glanville that he could talk about anybody he wanted and I would show them.  He said in the past, every time he did nobody got shown and I said, I’m tellin ya, I will show >em.  Finally, after two weeks he felt free to go because I’m gonna show ’em.  I memorize 88 names and numbers.  I don’t do that for fun.  If he says, “Robert Smith . . .” I say 26, Minnesota, which is his number.  I tell the cameraman and he gets it.  They get it within two seconds.  They’re fast.  I tell the camera operators in the pre-game meeting, don’t memorize the names the numbers because I know them.  If we’re gonna make any mistakes let me make ’em.  It’s a joke, and it’s a way to relax them, but the truth is I don’t make many because I know those numbers.  I spend a lot of time on that.

C           As a caveat to the above point, there is such a thing as doing too much homework. For example, Aceti never reads newspapers for information and opinions about teams, players, or coaches. It has the potential to Acloud your vision.@  It’s a Zen thing for Aceti:

I don’t believe it because my philosophy is the more you clutter your brain the worse it is.  Look what happens to you during the day, you get bombarded by TV commercials, you get bombarded by print ads, you get bombarded by information in newspapers.  My theory is, if it’s important enough to know about it, you’ll know about it.  So, I know there’s a war, I don’t have to read the papers to know that.  I watch a little TV once in a while, but all that stuff just distracts you.

A lot of producers and directors try to make reality. This is a problem.  They want to imprint themselves on it.  To me what’s reality is what comes out of a game, and I don’t know what it will be before the game.  That’s why it’s bad to clutter your brain with all the little articles and, as the producers like to say, lock it up. You don’t want to lock it up before the game.  You just don’t know what the reality of the game will be.  You think you know.  You got all these ideas of how it’ll go and it never does.  What a director should do is let reality come out of the game.  You let reality reveal itself to you.  It sounds like bullshit, but it’s not.  The truth of the game will reveal itself to you if you’re paying attention and you have the ability to see it.  A lot of directors don’t.

 

C           Along the same line as the above point, unlike other directors, Aceti never talks to the players or the coaches before a game.[3]  Essentially, he sees the game from the average audience member’s perspective. The average person would not have access to the players and coaches, so Aceti avoids them.  If he does talk with them, he does not talk about sports, or whether or not they are injured, or anything related to the game. Aceti said,

If I knew every play, it wouldn’t be any better if I did know every play. I don’t like to do anything that’s not spontaneous because that takes away from my energy and I won’t do it right. 

C           Aceti also reminds us that the director should not be egotistical about his or her shots.  You never should show a shot just to show it.  Each shot should ultimately serve a purpose to the larger story of the game and follow the commentary of the announcers.  Aceti says that many of his best shots never get on the air, AA lot of my best shots don’t get on the air, but I’m not sad about that, because I got the right ones on the air.@ As a director, you have to listen to what the announcers are saying.  That sounds obvious, but it’s trickier than you might think. In fact, directors and even the camera operators often get so engrossed in the story of the game and the choosing of the right shots that when all is said and done, they done even know what the score of the game was.

 

C           Having rapport with the announcers is key for developing a good story.  There has to be a clear line of communication between the director and his or her announcers.  The announcers, for example, should never be surprised by a shot or a slow motion instant replay.  It is the director’s job to let the announcers know if and when an important shot is coming up.

C           Always remember for whom it is you are doing your job.  You are doing it for an audience who is at home in a livingroom.  Besides making sure that you do a good job, you can not be egotistical about television directing.  It’s about those who are seen and heard on the television screen and ultimately for the audience who watches.

C           Even though the audience is important, Aceti never thinks of the audience as he directs.

As he tells it,

I do the shows for the audience, but I’m not thinking about them.  If I did it would distract me from what I’m doing.  Guys who get nervous are think too much about the huge audience watching the show. For example, for the World Series, a billion people are watching.  If you’re thinking, “if I make a mistake a billion people see it from all over the world,” then that can distract you.  If you think about it too much you’re going to fail.  I have the responsibility audience to do the best job I can for the audience.  And I do my telecast based on what I think people want to see, being one of them myself.  I’m a member of the audience, I watch.

Aceti suggests that thinking of it as a sort of video game also helps him forget about the huge audience who is watching the show.

 

C           Never look at the line monitor.[4]  You never take your eyes of the black-and-white camera monitors.  Aceti says that it’s enough to see the line monitor flash, because then he knows that the shot went up.  If you look at the line monitor you are, in an instant, behind the action and risk losing the continuity of the game’s story.

C                       If you make the pictures good enough you don’t have to have any sound with them.   If you make the pictures important and dramatic enough you don’t need to narrate the story, it will tell itself.  I try to make pictures embellish the announcer’s audio.  I try to make them so good that if the announcer never spoke you’d understand it.

C           On editorial judgment:

Your judgment comes in how you see the final thing looking.  You have to see way in advance of the edit you’re making.  I always tried to see ahead three or four edits. The creative part is knowing what the picture will mean to the guy who’s watching it.  For example, you don’t want too many wide shots in a row because that’s dull.  You don’t want too many short cutaways.

You need a variety of shots to keep the audience interested.

C           On directing a live show:

There’s two ways to direct a live show.  A good way and a bad way.  A bad director holds onto the tail of the dog and lets the dog wag him around and get out of control. A good director is three shots ahead. If you are just taking a shot and looking for the next shot, you’re not doing a good job.  You’re not a good director.  You could be a victim of bad camera work, but you’re just not good if you struggle all the time, or what I call getting blood out of a stone. It’s got to flow. A good director visualizes ahead and thinks, the play is over what happened in the play, who do I want to show, what do I do to take up the forty seconds between plays?  You make your money in pro and college football between plays.  Anybody can shoot a play. 

It’s the shots you choose between each play that makes or breaks the show.

C           Regarding having a preset plan for a game: Aceti never has one.   He says,

 

I give cameramen responsibilities, or areas of coverage.  They should always know when they’re on the air.  We go into a production with priorities, or what we think a team is going to do.  But I have little regard for that because they tend to be obvious.

C           Stringing shots together is important, not seeing one good one.

 

References

 

Hickman, H.R. (1991). Television directing. Santa Rosa, CA: Cole Publishing.

 

Leitner, I.A. (1975). ABC’s Wide World of Sports: A panorama of championship sport. New York: Golden Press.

 

O’Neil, T. (1991). The game behind the game: High stake, high pressure in television sports. New York: HarperCollins.

 

Schiller, D. (1994). The little zen companion. New York: Workman Publishing.

 

Shanks, B. (1977). The cool fire: How to make it in television. New York: Vintage Books.

 

 


[1]See Leitner,1975, for historical background.

[2]See O’Neil, 1991, for background on ABC Sports with some specific mentions of Joe Aceti’s work and influence there. A[His] physical presence belied his gentle soul. Joe was so genuine, such a humanist in the political underworld of network television, that people rallied to him instinctively. He had endless patience with the pickup crews and malfunctioning equipment that we seemed to draw every week.  A mainstay of ABC Sports all the way back to the ‘68 Grenoble Olympics, he was the ideal director for . . . AB@ baseball@ (p. 256).

[3]One exception is John McKay who coached the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their early expansion years. Aceti would make it a point to go to listen to McKay primarily for the coach’s frankness and honesty regarding his team’s poor abilities and also because he thought McKay was very funny.

[4]The line monitor is the one that shows the picture that the home viewing audience sees or will see. It is the primary, or main monitor.