753 pages long.....and about half of it was the business end of ESPN. Ok, that was not what I was looking for. I did get some inside dirt, but all the deals and figures and counter offers and buyouts really bored me. Worth picking up for the other stuff....stories are told by the tv personalities own words, and it's interesting to see (for example) how Kornheiser says "A" and then Tirico says "B", one paragraph right after another. Too bad we won't know which story is true. ( )

Bit on the long side, but not sure what could have been cut ( )

This is a fascinating history of ESPN - and it takes the reader thru a fun journey of the past 3 years for the network. The personalities get proper attention, but so do the seminal business moments facing the network at each turn. It is part gossip, part-business case study, part-biographical and part-history.

It is HORRIBLY edited and the book has no logic other than being roughly chronological. Reading on a Kindle, you lose some of the flow and sometimes find yourselves horribly confused on transitions from one topic to the next. It is also way way too long and could benefit from a serious cut and edit. ( )

This wasn't as definitive as a 750-page oral history should have been. I would have enjoyed more background on many of the narratives, as well as more regarding ESPN's baseball coverage (which fed my addiction growing up as a Dodgers fan in Southern California). But it was an interesting read overall. ( )

So much better than I thought it would be. Really this is a book about business and media, or the business of media and not about sports. It helped that I listened to it. It is group oral history so it flowed very smooth. It probably would help if you did watch a little ESPN and know who the on air personalities are. Non-sports fans might be surprised to learn that mainstream media personalities Craig Kilborn, Keith Olbermann, Hannah Storm, Michelle Beadle, and Robin Roberts all got their start at ESPN.

Big takeaways: with the exception of the NFL, ESPN is so wealthy and powerful it often dictates terms to sports leagues as opposed to the other way around. But it wasn't always that way. Once it was a tiny struggling family business. This is a great general interest nonfiction read. ( )