Michael Weisman

Summary

Michael Weisman (born January 13, 1950) is a 24-time Emmy-award winning producer. A 2017 inductee into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame, he has succeeded in television at the sports, news and entertainment levels.

Early life

Michael Weisman was born in Queens, NY, the middle of three children to Edward, a publicist at ABC and NBC Sports, and Dorothy. During his sophomore year at the University of North Carolina his father passed away suddenly from a heart attack. Weisman returned to New York to help support his mother and graduated from Queens College in 1971.

Career

After college, Weisman became a page in the NBC guest relations program, working on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" when it was filmed in New York. In 1972, Weisman was hired as the first assistant to the producer in NBC Sports history. He was promoted to associate producer in 1974 and then to producer in 1976, giving him the chance to work with iconic producer Don Ohlmeyer. Weisman became NBC's coordinating producer for baseball in 1979, where he learned baseball production from legendary director Harry Coyle , whom Weisman calls his idol and mentor. Weisman was tapped to produce the opening ceremonies and the track and field portions of the 1980 Winter Olympics in Moscow before the U.S. decided to boycott the Games. Journalists were quick to recognize his success: the Denver Post called Weisman “an NBC Wunderkind." The Boston Globe characterized his rise at NBC a “meteoric” success story.

Weisman became the executive producer of NBC Sports in 1983, making him just the third person to serve as NBC Sports EP, and also the youngest ever. He led a team of 1,100 people that produced 179.5 hours of Olympic coverage for the network. One of those employees was current CNN president Jeff Zucker, who Weisman hired as a researcher. Weisman considered producing the Olympics a challenge, saying, "my mandate is to shatter the mystique that only ABC can do the Olympics." A watershed moment for the Olympics was Weisman's assembly of the "Seoul Searchers," a group of specialized sports reporters tasked with following breaking news during the Games. Some criticized the journalistic-focus to the games. Weisman, however, defended the tone, saying "The criticism we hear is that people want to hear positive news . . . we are not the American team. We are clearly rooting for the American team, but we're not going to whitewash anything." The Washington Post said the reporting "brought an almost unprecedented honesty to network Olympic telecasts." Sports Illustrated said Weisman deserved credit for "elevating Olympic coverage to the level of true journalism." Other ideas Weisman introduced for the Olympics included miniature “point of view cameras” for specific events such as pole vault and gymnastics, the “Olympic Chronicles” profiles, which highlighted athletes and moments from Olympics past, and an Olympic soundtrack which included an original Whitney Houston song, “One Moment in Time”. Weisman's leadership and production of the Olympics coverage would earn NBC 7 Emmy Awards.

In May 1989, Dick Ebersol, one month after becoming the president of NBC Sports, fired Weisman, who had two years left on his contract, and replaced him with Terry O’Neil. Ebersol explained the move, saying he had decided to form his own team and went with O’Neil because of his 20-year association with O’Neil. The firing sent shock waves through the industry as Weisman was considered untouchable because of his success at NBC. One former NBC producer said at the time “Who ever thought Michael Weisman would be fired? He was the boy wonder.”

In November 1989, Weisman headed to California in a bid to overhaul the struggling CBS late-night talk show program, "The Pat Sajak Show." Weisman's experience in live television was cited as a key reason for the hire.

In 1991, Weisman was hired as the president and the executive producer of Davis Sports Entertainment, a division of the Davis Companies, whose president was film producer John Davis and whose owner was former 20th Century Fox owner and Davis Petroleum Chairman, Marvin Davis. The company produced sports programs for network specials, cable, and pay-per-view.

Weisman became president of NMT Productions in 1994, which at the time, was the country’s largest company for providing trucks, cameras, and crews to televise events.

In 1996, Fox Sports asked Weisman to help launch its televised baseball programming. Weisman was in the control room to produce two of Fox's biggest sports broadcasts: the 1999 All-Star Game at Fenway Park, featuring 50 baseball legends, which scored an Emmy for Best Live Sports Event; and the emotional 2001 World Series in New York just weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks, for which President George W. Bush threw out the first pitch.

In 2000, Weisman was recruited by WWE owner Vince McMahon to be a broadcast production consultant for the XFL, which aimed to be a no-holds-barred version of the NFL. The XFL only lasted one season due to poor ratings, but it is credited with several innovations that are used regularly in the NFL today, including putting microphone on players during games and the "sky cam", which spans the length of the field overhead and gives viewers a unique perspective of the game. Weisman, however, first used “sky cam” during the 1983 Orange Bowl.

In 2001, 12 years after Weisman was fired by Ebersol, the two men reunited to work together on the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Weisman returned to the entertainment side of the TV business and to New York in 2004, serving as the executive producer for the syndicated daytime "Jane Pauley Show" for one season.

In 2005, NBC Universal Television Group hired Weisman as the group’s first ever executive producer at large. His first assignment was working with new executive producer Jim Bell on “Today.”

In 2007, Weisman returned to NBC Sports to serve as the Executive in Charge of Production of "Football Night in America”. Making the announcement, Ebersol, the chairman of NBC Universal Sports and Olympics, called Weisman "one of the most talented sports producers of this era."

In February 2015, as the 2016 presidential election campaign was ramping up, Weisman was named the Executive in Charge of MSNBC's Morning Joe.For the fourth quarter of 2015, ratings for “Morning Joe” were up 47% in total viewers and 18% in the 25-54 demo over last year.When Weisman stepped aside from the show in January 2016, co-host Joe Scarborough hailed his contributions to the show saying, "Michael was a great help in revitalizing the show and doing exactly what we brought him on to do."

In total, Weisman received 24 Emmy awards during his career and is a member of the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. He has also produced 23 World Series and MLB Championship Series, and more than a dozen Super Bowl and NFL Championship games.

Weisman was also awarded a lifetime pass by MLB to any ballpark in the country for his contributions to televised baseball.

Weisman also changed how sports was produced on television and peers began to call him "the godfather of funk at NBC Sports" and "the most creative force today in network sports television."

In boxing, Weisman introduced the use of the three minute clock on-screen to mark how much time remained in a round and placed microphones in the boxers' corners between rounds.

In football, Weisman created the ten-minute ticker, which was used to display scores from around the league six times an hour. This innovation became the precursor for the score ticker now ubiquitous in various sports telecasts.He also was responsible for the creation of the "Silent Minute" in the pregame show of Super Bowl XX, during which NBC only showed a black screen with a clock on it. It was the highest-rated minute of pre-game coverage that year. Explaining the concept to the New York Times, who called Weisman a “sly genius” for the idea, Weisman said, “Hey, in the middle of all the hype, let's catch our breath. Change the diapers, make a sandwich. My eyeballs are buggy from all the sports. Let's poke some fun at ourselves and let the screen go blank.

In baseball, Weisman introduced split-screen baseball coverage, which allowed fans to watch two games simultaneously. The technology was met with instant praise; Newsday called it "the future of televised baseball." Weisman also was among the first producers to have baseball players introduce their team lineups, which helped personalize the game to viewers. In 2000, Weisman produced a “turn back the clock game” between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs to mark the 61st anniversary of the first televised baseball game. The broadcast began in black-and-white, with one camera and no on-screen graphics, and with each inning the broadcast technology advanced.

Explaining his passion for taking gambles, Weisman told the Los Angeles Times, "I've always had the feeling that if I was curious about something, the public is probably curious too… I found in sports that the more chances I took, even if they didn't work out, people liked the fact that we took chances and we tried. Because so much of the business is a copycat business."

Weisman was also credited with hiring and developing A-list talent in front of the camera, including the decision to tap regional play-by-play announcer Bob Costas to host the Sunday pre-football game show on NBC in 1984. Said Costas: “He gave me a chance to prove myself on big assignments. I hope I made him proud, because I am proud to have worked with him and to have been his friend.”

Weisman hired former Knicks, Giants, and Jets radio broadcaster Marty Glickman to coach former athletes to work as on-air talent.In his autobiography, Glickman shared a story of a middle-aged man approaching he and Weisman and saying, "'I gotta tell you Marty, you're the greatest. And by the way, I love what you're doing with the announcers at NBC.' It gave me great satisfaction to say, 'Sir, meet my boss at NBC, Mike Weisman.'"

It was under Weisman's leadership that the first female announcer reported the play-by-play in a regular season NFL game. Weisman said, "I wanted to break that glass ceiling." He chose Gayle Sierens, a sportscaster turned news anchor, to call the Seattle Seahawks - Kansas City Chiefs game on the final Sunday of the 1987 regular season.Sierens was prepared by Glickman for the broadcast and received positive reviews. Weisman then offered her the opportunity to call six more games, but Sierens chose to focus on her news career instead.

John Filippelli, the president of production and programming for the YES network, called Weisman "the best producer ever in sports television."

Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN, said Weisman “was the most talented producer imaginable, someone I learned so much from.” (Weisman to exec producer ‘Pauley’ talker - Hollywood Reporter Jan 8 2004)

Noted sports media writer Bob Raissman said Weisman was considered “among the best producers of all time when it comes to latching onto the story line of a sports event and capturing it for the TV viewer.

Michael Weisman is always looking for new angles in sports coverage - Advertising Age April 4 1985

Muhammad Ali's fight doctor, Ferdie Pacheco, who later became a boxing analyst for NBC Sports, described Weisman as, "the only true genius I ran into in 25 years of television . . . Weisman didn’t give you the impression that he thought he was the best. He moved with the grace and ease of a man who knew in his bones he was the best."

Personal life

Weisman lives in Manhattan with his wife of 39 years Carol, a vice president and partner of Enterprise Asset Management in New York, a board member of the Lupus Research Alliance and a patron of the Whitney Museum. They have two children together and three grandchildren.