In his various executive positions, Duncan Dickie Ebersol has contributed several innovations to the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). He shepherd Saturday Night Live onto the air, then returned as producer to “rescue” the show in the early 1980s. As president of NBC Sports, he pursued several inventive and sometimes risky programming packages, such as the Olympics “Triple Cast” and the Baseball Network. Throughout his career, he has been recognized as one of television's more creative programmers. 

Ebersol became hooked on television sports when he saw the debut of ABC’s Wide World of Sports in 1963. Later, when that show was shooting in his area, he got errand jobs with the crew. By the winter of 1968, he was working as a research assistant for the American Broadcasting Company’s (ABC’s) coverage of the winter Olympics in Grenoble, France, and while finishing his studies at Yale, he worked full-time as a segment producer. in 1971, following graduation, he became an executive assistant and producer with Roone Arledge, vice president of ABC Sports and creator of Wide World of Sports.

NBC tried to hire Ebersol in 1974 by offering to name him president of their Sports division, but at the age of 27, he decided he was not ready to compete against Arledge. Instead, he moved to NBC with a new title: director of weekend late-night programming. At that time, the programming slots followed the Saturday and Sunday late news were a dead zone for all three networks. Affiliates made more money with old movies than with network offerings– in NBC’s case, reruns of The Tonight Show. The network charged Ebersol with finding something, anything, to replace the Carson reruns.

Ebersol conceived of a comedy-variety review aimed at young adults, an audience generally thought to be away from home–and television–on weekends. He assumed that enough of them would stay home to watch a show featuring “underground” comedians such as George Carlin and Richard Pryor, especially when supported with a repertory cast picked from new improv-based, television-savvy comedy groups, such as Second City, the National Lampoon stage shows, for the Groundlings. Ebersol also discovered Lorne Michaels, a former writer for Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, who had produced specials for Lily Tomlin and Flip Wilson and had been lobbying for just the kind of programming Ebersol was thinking of.

As Michaels assembled the cast and writers, Ebersol ran interference for Saturday Night Live before nervous network management and affiliates. The pair spurned NBC's suggestion for safe hosts such as Bob Hope and Joe Namath and secured Pryor, Carlin, and Tomlin for that role. As Saturday Night Live took off, NBC promoted Ebersol to vice president of late-night programs, with an office in Burbank and responsibility over every late show that did not belong to Johnny Carson. Ebersol had become, at 28, the youngest vice president in NBC history.

By 1977, he had become head of NBC's comedy and variety programming. Unfortunately, this was a fallow time for comedy, especially for NBC. Ebersol has said that his only success in this period was hiring Brandon Tartikoff away from ABC to be his associate. After a confrontation with new programming director Fred Silverman, Ebersol quit his position at NBC, and Tartikoff replaced him. He went into independent production, taking over The Midnight Special and various sports programming. Shortly afterward, however, NBC asked him to rescue  Saturday Night Live.

Lorne Michaels had left Saturday Night Live after the 1979-80 season, and the original cast and writing staff left as well. Replacement producer Jean Doumanian’s tenure proved a disaster: the show’s daring, edgy satire went over the edge with sketches such as “The Leather Weather Lady.” NBC Executives had seen enough with Doumanian’s 12th show, when cast member Charles ROcket absent-mindedly said “fuck” on the air. Doumanian was fired, and Ebersol agreed to produce the show if NBC would end Midnight Special.

Ebersol took Saturday Night Live off the air for a month of “retooling.” Following this hiatus, only one show was broadcast before a writers’ strike in early 1981 halted production until fall. Meanwhile, he fired all the cast except rising stars Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy and hired Christine Eberole (no relation), Mary Gross, and Tim Kazurinsky. He also brought back the head writer from the first season, the brilliant but intimidating Michael O’Donaghue (who was fired by the following January).

Critics considered Ebersol’s Saturday Night Life an improvement over the previous season, but the ratings were still lower than in the Documarian era. The show’s guest hosts developed from hip comedians to NBC series players or stars of current movies.

In 1983, No Sleep Productions, Ebersol’s production house, had brought Friday Night Videos to NBC, where Michael Jackson’s groundbreaking “Thriller” video debuted. The next year, Ebersol took over Friday Night Videos full time and shared the reins on Saturday Night Live with Bob Tischler. For the 1984-85 season, the two shored up Saturday Night Live’s ratings with experienced comics such as Billy Crystal, Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, and Martin Short. Afterward, Ebersol quit to spend more time at home, and Brandon Tarkitoff, now his boss, hired Lorne Michaels as producer.

Ebersol continued to produce  Friday Night Videos for NBC, while his wife, the actress Susan St. James, starred in the Columbia Broadcasting System’s (CBS’s)  Kate and Allie with Jane Curtin. In 1985, he produced The Saturday Night Main Event, a series of World Wrestling Federation matches, to rotate in  Saturday Night Live’s off weeks. In 1988, he produced the very late-night Later with Bob Costas.

Ebersol returned to NBC in April 1989 as president of NBC Sports. That July, he was also named senior vice president of NBC News, a position that paralleled the situation of his mentor, Roone Arledge, at ABC. As the executive for the Today Show, Ebersol presided over Jane Pauley’s removal from the anchor dust in favor of Deborah Norville. He took the heat for the resulting bad publicity and was relieved of his Today Show duties.

Ebersol has enjoyed much greater success in sports programming. He helped NBC snare several Super Bowl contracts, then brought the National Basketball Association back to the network at the height of its popularity. NBC’s coverage of the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona received excellent ratings, but the network lost money, largely from its “Triple Cast” coverage offered on three pay-per-view cable channels. Corporate parent General Electric expressed its commitment to the Olympics though, when they announced that Ebersol would be executive producer of the 1996 Atlanta games.

Ebersol aided in the formation of the Basketball Network, an unusual joint venture between NBC, ABC, and Major League Baseball. The league produced its own coverage of Friday or Saturday night games; ABC or NBC alternated  scheduling Baseball Night in America, and Affiliates chose games of local interest to carry. The Baseball Network opened after the 1994 All-Star Game but was cut short by that year’s players’ strike. In 1995, as the delayed baseball season opened without a labor agreement and no guarantee against another strike, both networks pulled out of the venture. 

In 1998, Ebersol was named chairman of NBC Sports and NBC Olympics. The following year, he gained the right to NASCAR coverage for NBC, with a six-year contract starting in 2001. With the World Wrestling Federation, NBC under Ebersol co-founded the XFL, a professional football league that was both a critical and a popular failure and that folded after only one season. In 2002, Ebersol’s division suffered another blow win the 12-year relationship between NBC and the National Basketball Association came to end; in 2003, professional basketball games began to be aired on ABC and Entertainment and Sports Network (ESPN).