Newsday, May 18th 1988

 Jim Spence, the former executive who has written "Up Close andPersonal," an entertaining, biting expose of his days in the ABC Sports cage, says it is not a "kiss-and-tell" book. He need not protest. There's nothing wrong with a "kiss-and-tell" book by people in the know about situations and policies of interest and significance to the public because it puts us on the inside of government or business, if it is truthful.

Spence was long the No. 2 man to ABC Sports boss Roone Arledge. He was a team player who said little or nothing against his fellows or the corporation. Now he is out and free, no longer biting his tongue. He takes off on many people in the business, notably Arledge, Howard Cosell and agent Barry Frank. He tries to give these devils their due, but the anger in him spills over into some robust venting of his spleen. It is, as an ABC executive said, Spence's catharsis.

Arledge is pictured ungrudgingly as a brilliant programmer, the major force in ABC Sports' success and a titan in sports television. But he is also limned as a cold-hearted, popinjay, calculatingly reclusive, uncaring of people's feelings, infatuated with stars and glamour. Spence writes, "Arledge loves the thrill of victory, but he cannot abide the agony of defeat." Arledge, as long as Spence knew him, "listened only to the sound of his own voice." He quotes Masters golf chairman Hord Hardin saying, "ABC will never get the Masters as long as Arledge is there. He's kooky. He went Hollywood with those funny suits and that dyed hair."

Spence has Cosell down to a T as brilliant, charismatic, a major reason for ABC's success. But Spence says Cosell was also a hypocrite, a liar, a bully, a vindictive man who craved the spotlight. He tells about Cosell's frequent drinking while broadcasting and goes into exquisite detail about the celebrated incident in Philadelphia when Cosell was drunk for a "Monday Night Football" telecast and threw up on Don Meredith.

The irony here is that Spence came to be disillusioned with Cosell at least 10 years after Cosell had alienated many in the media and a good portion of the public. Spence's disillusionment came only when Cosell's aspersions about Spence as an "errand boy" became public, and when Cosell wrote a book criticizing ABC, his people. There is an element of sadness in reading all this about Cosell now when he is down; it most merited airing when Cosell rode highest.

Spence is overwrought about the way ABC was duped by the Calgary Organizing Committee into paying a whopping $309 million for the rights to the 1988 Winter Olympics. The reader will have a hard time summoning up sympathy for ABC's position, which seems to be that it deserved favored treatment from the International Olympic Committee because it helped build the Olympics. In view of Spence's admission of dirty tricks by ABC - the network had an inside spy at some negotiations who tipped it off to what the other networks were bidding for Olympic rights - his cries of foul against Olympic and other network officials are laughable.

I found Spence courteous, but so unrevealing during his days at ABC that I felt somewhat lacking reading this book for never having been able to mine some of the rich lode of information and opinions that spill out here.

He corroborates the reports that the new Capital Cities owners of ABC pulled out of bidding for National Basketball Association rights in the belief that the dollars would go to the players and lead to a proliferation of drug use in the NBA.

He reveals that Alabama coach Bear Bryant, who mumbled through some broadcasts as an analyst for ABC, once called to suggest he would be a fine addition to ABC's "Monday Night Football" announcing lineup.

He reveals that Jim McKay's wife Margaret was a fierce protector of McKay's position and that Cosell's wife Emmy made clear that she wanted Howard to be spotlighted as much as McKay on a Kentucky Derby telecast.

Spence has a way of praising a person before setting him up for a fall. He praises Al Michaels as the best allaround play-by-play announcer in the business, always prepared and on top of his assignments. Yet he says Michaels may never achieve "the superstar status he craves" because he "lacks the presence of a McKay or Dick Enberg or a Brent Musburger", that "he needs to display more warmth . . . be a bit more natural."

Spence presents some admirable, ethical postions about what ought to be done in TV sports, though admitting that ABC often has been lacking in those areas. Yet, while he lobbies for the cleaning-up of bigtime college sports on one hand, he argues for a revenue-rich football playoff to determine the No. 1 team in the country, just the kind of thing that symbolizes the distortion and perversion of the academic process by the college mercenaries.

Co-author Dave Diles has done a good job making this a lively and readable book. It is juicy and fascinating, a must for anybody in TV sports or students of the craft.
Word count: 865