Hall of Fame 2007 Ceremony
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Chet
Forte first captivated audiences on the court as a college basketball
star and, throughout a three-decade career as producer/director, never
let them go. In 25 years at ABC Sports, the tenacious Forte told
stories through the events he covered, upending established norms for
camera angles and graphics usage and, on his trademark Monday Night Football broadcasts, creating the low, intimate coverage that is now an NFL standard.
The
directorial talents of Fulvio Chester Forte Jr. surfaced in his
broadcasts of NBA games, where the consensus All-America’s skills on
the court helped him weave a narrative of the action off of it.
“Chet
was a great athlete, and maybe that should have been the tipoff for
everybody,” explains Dennis Lewin, former SVP of production for ABC
Sports. “Chet’s ability to anticipate a moment and be one step ahead of
the action came through his knowledge of sports.”
Forte’s
signature two-handed set shot was deadly throughout his college years
at Columbia University. Standing 5 foot 7, “Chet the Jet” averaged 28.9
points per game his senior year, beating out 7-foot Kansas star Wilt
Chamberlain for college basketball’s Player of the Year in 1957. After
an unsuccessful NBA tryout, Forte landed a job with CBS, where he spent
five years before beginning his career at ABC in 1963.
“Chet’s
real strength was understanding the moment, understanding the shot that
was called for at that moment, and being one step ahead in getting that
shot,” Lewin says.
In 1970, when ABC Sports President Roone Arledge tapped Forte to direct the first season of
Monday Night Football,
Forte knew that the shots he would need were impossible to get with the
three- to five-camera setup that was then standard for NFL games. Forte
wanted at least 10 cameras for his broadcasts, and he wanted them
positioned where cameras had never before been placed: the 25-yard
line, a cart along the sideline, the shoulder of an on-field camera
operator.
“Everywhere
we went with the NFL, we would inevitably meet some resistance when we
laid out our plans because ‘this isn’t the way it’s done,’” Lewin
explains. “Chet fought hard to change the way the games were covered.”
Before
his broadcasts, the volatile director personally supervised camera
placement throughout the arena, fighting stadium officials unhappy with
camera carts blocking players’ sideline views or hand-helds getting too
close to the bench.
“I think Chet was one of the game-changing people in the history of the business,” says Don Ohlmeyer, former producer of
Monday Night Football.
“Chet brought a visual style that constantly pushed the medium forward.
Our goal in the early years was to get the coverage lower and more
intimate.”
Such
intimate coverage was no easy task with a hand-held camera that weighed
20 pounds and required an 80-pound support pack. Forte’s demands to
pick out the perfect reaction shots, along with his trademark
ground-level views of high-kicking cheerleaders, compelled
manufacturers to make smaller equipment that would allow this ebullient
game-changer to, in his words, “get it right.”
“The
push of camera manufacturers to address what we needed led to what you
have today: smaller, more portable equipment,” Ohlmeyer says. “The same
was true with switchers, slow motion, still store; all these were part
of the effort to try to get the look that Chet was striving for.”
A student of Arledge’s story-first approach, Forte concentrated as much on the big picture as he did on any single shot.
“Maybe
Chet’s greatest strength as a director was that he was a talented
producer,” Lewin says. “When sitting in the directing chair, Chet was
thinking as much about producing and storyline as he was about
individual shots.”
To
annotate the chapters of his stories, Forte implemented a host of
technical innovations. He complemented the game images with graphics
and statistical information that had never been used in football
broadcasts but have become standard practice today.
Forte’s innate ability to capture the stories that turned a sporting event into entertainment made
Monday Night Football
a social phenomenon. In his 25 years at ABC, with the same commitment
as any athlete or coach, Forte passionately produced and directed
events ranging from the Kentucky Derby and Indianapolis 500 to two
Olympic Games and countless Wide World of Sports shows, earning 11 Emmy Awards in the process.
Forte
spent the final chapter of his career hosting a sports-radio talk show
on XTRA in San Diego. The early-morning hours allowed him to become a
family man alongside his wife, Patricia, and daughter, Jacqueline,
whose elementary-school basketball team was fortunate to have a former
All-America as a coach.
Several
decades after Forte left the director’s chair, his work continues to
captivate audiences in the sports broadcasts that carry the mark of his
innovations.
—Carolyn Braff
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