Richard Levine

There are other curious similarities between the two men. Both are genuine individuals in an industry whose top executives often seem to have been born at Groton and bred at Yale. Both seem to have some mysterious umbilical relation to popular taste — the so-called “golden gut” syndrome. Both watch the shows they produce with genuine absorption and infinite attention to detail. (When Arledge is not at an ABC Sports event he unfailingly views the broadcast in his Central Park South apartment or his weekend retreat in Sagaponack, L.I., calling in instructions to the truck on a special “Roone phone” that is set up at every location for his exclusive use.) And both are essentially adaptors rather than creators, people able to exploit the innovations of others for mass appeal. Arledge did not invent a single one of the technical innovations with which his name is so closely linked — including his most famous electronic toy, the instant replay — but he saw their uses. (In television, a medium invented by one Philo T. Farnsworth,