> FRED GAUDELLI Fred has the respect of the League, the coaches, the players and the production team. SNF is the number one show in Primetime for more than a decade due to Fred’s strong leadership, dedication, preparation and relationships. – Mark Lazarus, NBCUniversal Fred has the most brilliant eye for telling a threehour story. Like the most talented filmmakers, he introduces the characters, hooks you on intimate storylines, and artfully rides those storylines to unpredictable conclusions. The difference is, Fred is doing it in real time without a script. There will not be another one like him, so enjoy his artistry while you still can. – Cris Collinsworth, NBC Sports Watching a game that Gaudelli produces is unbelievable. Listening to the conversation back and forth between Fred Gaudelli and Drew Esocoff, [it’s as if] their language was almost without words as decisions got made in the truck. – Dick Ebersol, Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer 40
F
ew — if any — individuals have had as indelible an impact on the look and feel of NFL broadcasts over the past three decades as Fred Gaudelli. The producer of NBC’s Sunday Night Football, ABC’s Monday Night Football, and ESPN’s Sunday Night Football has reimagined how viewers watch pro football, deploying groundbreaking technical innovations, inimitable storytelling tactics, and an impeccable sense of style to bring the game into the modern age for millions of fans. “There’s no one better than Fred Gaudelli,” says Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer John Madden, who worked with the 24-time Emmy Award winner at ABC and NBC. “He’s the hardest-working person in TV, and he’s a great coach.” Adds Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Dick Ebersol: “Fred is unquestionably the finest and most honored NFL television producer in history. A native of Harrison, NY, Gaudelli grew up obsessed with sports and was a fan of Knicks and Rangers announcer Marv Albert and ABC Sports’ Keith Jackson, Chris Schenkel, and Howard Cosell. “I figured out that I wasn’t going to be a professional athlete around 13 or 14,” Gaudelli explains, “but I still had this great passion for sports, and I grew up constantly listening to sports on radio and watching on television. I thought it would be a fun job to call games and get paid for it. That’s when I really started thinking hard about it and paying attention to the broadcast of games.” After graduating from Harrison High School, where he served as PA announcer for basketball and baseball games, Gaudelli headed to Long Island University – C.W. Post. As a communications major, he was extremely active at the campus radio station, calling football and basketball games and serving as sports director his senior year. However, he soon came to realize that his future was behind the scenes rather than behind the mic. “I just didn’t feel like my voice was the kind of voice that you would hear at a Super Bowl or a
SPORTSTECHJOURNAL / SPRING 2022
World Series and realized that would put a pretty quick ceiling on how far I could go,” he remembers. “So I took an internship at Channel 5 in New York City in the production department. I fell in love with it right away and thought that it would be a better path for me because I would still get to use my sports knowledge and satisfy my passion for sports, but my success wasn’t going to be incumbent on something I couldn’t control: my voice.” After graduating and while working on a weekend sports-radio talk show at WFAS White Plains, NY, Gaudelli heard via the station’s owner about potential job opportunities at a fledgling cable sports network in Bristol, CT. He soon found himself working in the mailroom at ESPN and, by 1983, had worked his way through the ranks of ESPN’s remote-production department to become an associate producer on a variety of sports, including college football, basketball, and baseball; the USFL; the U.S. Olympic Festival; and the NFL Draft. “I was extremely fortunate to work closely with Fred from the very beginning of his career at ESPN,” says Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer and former ESPN exec Steve Anderson. “Right from the start, he was the most talented, hardest-working, and best-prepared producer I have ever known. He always set incredibly high standards for himself and for everyone on his team. In my opinion, Fred has developed into the best live-event producer in the history of television sports.” Gaudelli got his first front-bench gig in 1986,
