Yesterday afternoon, Little, Brown announced that it had signed up Tom Shales and Jim Miller, the co-authors of Live From New York, a behind-the-scenes oral history of Saturday Night Live, for a new project currently known as The Untitled ESPN Book. “The authors have already interviewed many individuals present at the creation and growth of ESPN,” according to a press release, “as well as those who are involved with the company now. Many are speaking on the record for the first time, and there will be hundreds more interviews conducted.” The pair will work, as they did on the SNL book, with editor-in-chief Geoff Shandler.
In the release, Miller also notes that, although based in Washington, D.C., he moved to Virginia in the 1980s specifically because the region had a better cable system, one where he could watch ESPN. We confess to our own unobjective anticipation of reliving the days of checking SportsCenter before going off to elementary school, or coming home to watch Australian rules football back in the days when the network, lacking its current major league affiliations, showed a very diverse mix of sports.