Roone Arledge

"Now we're going to take the viewer to the game!"

Roone Arledge (1931–2002)
Broadcaster
Columbia College 1952
Trustee 1999-2002

Television innovator Roone Arledge created some of the most widely watched and emulated news and sports programs, and popularized now-common practices such as slow motion and stylized graphics. At ABC Sports, which he joined in 1961 and served as president from 1968 to 1986, Arledge created Wide World of Sports—the longest-running sports show of all time - and Monday Night Football, in addition to producing ABC Olympic broadcasts. He assumed the presidency of ABC News in 1977 and in that capacity built up the news organization while creating the programs World News Tonight, 20/20, PrimeTime Live and Nightline. Arledge's shows have won 36 Emmy Awards and four Peabody Awards, among other honors. In 2002, he received the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences's first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award.

As a Columbia undergraduate, Arledge was a staff member of the Spectator, along with other members of his 1952 Columbia College class who would go on to successful journalism careers: Larry Grossman (former president of PBS), Max Frankel (former executive editor of The New York Times) and Richard Wald (former city editor of the New York Herald Tribune, former president of NBC News, former senior vice president of ABC News, and currently the Fred Friendly Professor of Media and Society at the Graduate School of Journalism). Arledge also edited the 1952 Columbian. After graduation, he remained attached to the College; he received the John Jay Award in 1979 and the Alexander Hamilton Medal, the College Alumni Association's highest honor, in 1998. He was presented with the Gold Baton at the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards in 1995, and was elected a University Trustee in 1999. In April 2000, he dedicated the Roone Arledge Auditorium and Cinema, which has been called the "most versatile space on campus."


	Receiving the Alexander Hamilton Medal


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