Chris Berman, Bob Ley on ESPN at 30

BRISTOL, Conn. -- ESPN is just days away from celebrating its 30th anniversary, and it goes without saying that the once-derided idea of a 24-hour cable channel devoted exclusively to sports has been a success.

But does ESPN's greatest success come from its ability to entertain, or to enlighten? Chris Berman and Bob Ley, two broadcasters who have been with ESPN from the beginning, had slightly different takes on that. And surprisingly, it was the jovial Berman who stressed the importance of journalism to ESPN's success, while the evenhanded Ley insisted that ESPN needs to entertain.

Berman said that when he looks back on the early days of ESPN, it bothers him that people refer to him as a "personality," which, he thinks, implies that he wasn't also doing serious work.

"The 'E' was for entertainment -- Entertainment and Sports Programming Network," Berman said. "That being said, nothing annoys me more than reading, 'ESPN personality Chris Berman.' Who is that? A 'personality' is a morning DJ -- which I was for a year -- but no, we're here to get the story right, now. My style is different from Bob's, but we're here to tell the story. If we do it in an upbeat manner because that's our personality, OK. But the minute we allow our personality to get in the way, we become an entertainer, and we're failing you, the viewers."

But Ley, whom Berman referred to as "the utmost journalist here," said that he thinks viewers will turn the channel if they're not entertained by what they're seeing.

"Any good journalism for television has to have an entertainment quotient," Ley said. "You can't put together a Sunday morning Outside the Lines feature without some music, a nice effects shot, and maybe some posed shots. Years ago the rules were different, but we evolve. We change. We have all these tools available to us to tell stories fairly and correctly and we don't let the entertainment portion overwhelm the journalism, but it does no good to do outstanding journalism if nobody's going to watch it. To do that it has to be attractive and well produced."

Ley said what makes him proudest about his work at ESPN is finding the right mix of entertainment and journalism.

"At the end of the day, it's a clear-cut call: The journalism comes first here. It always does," Ley said. "If you don't get that right, the rest of it falls by the wayside."

Shortly after ESPN celebrated its 10th anniversary, Berman and Ley both covered the Bay Area earthquake that interrupted the 1989 World Series. Both recalled feeling terror the moment the earthquake hit, but then immediately rushing into covering the story as newsmen.

"Anyone who wondered if we were journalists, there you go," Berman said. "No one who saw that would ever ask that again."