Ross Greenburg Productions
Ross Greenburg (founder)
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By the time Ross Greenburg arrived at HBO at age 23 in 1978, he’d already adopted a storytelling mentality thanks to his time at Roone Arledge’s ABC Sports, which produced Olympic athlete profiles around its broadcasts of the Games. He also had a love for Bud Greenspan’s Olympiad series and Steve Sabol’s NFL Films projects on figures like Dick Butkus and Vince Lombardi.
But at HBO, which beyond boxing and a smattering of tennis had no live sports rights, Greenburg was given a unique opportunity to focus entirely on the niche of unscripted features. HBO’s output across his tenure — a 33-year run, with over a decade as president of HBO Sports — is in many ways responsible for paving the road for today’s sports content boom.
“The turning point for us probably came in 1990 when I found ‘When it Was a Game,’ a documentary that looked back at the infancy of Major League Baseball through color home movies,” Greenburg said. “That’s when we kind of created a style of documentary at HBO, and from that point on we were churning out four high-profile docs a year. That’s when I began to look for other forms of programming to emphasize our new model that was pretty fresh on the scene.”
In addition to that long-form, unscripted storytelling, Greenburg oversaw the launch of news program “Real Sports,” executive produced scripted hits like “Miracle” and “61*,” and pioneered the all-access documentary format. HBO launched “Hard Knocks” with NFL Films in 2001 and followed that with “24/7,” which chronicled the run-ups to major events like Oscar De La Hoya vs. Floyd Mayweather and the NHL’s Winter Classic.
Greenburg has now been at the helm of Ross Greenburg Productions for over a dozen years and remains a leading storyteller. He executive produced this year’s “Bill Russell: Legend” for Netflix and last year directed “Hidden Dynasty: The Story of Carolina Women’s Soccer” for ESPN and the ACC Network. And for all the contemporary focus on viewership data, he still cares most about each story’s emotional impact.
“At the end of the day, producers and directors of documentaries just want to know that they touched people’s lives,” said Greenburg. “If it’s five people coming up to you, or a hundred people through your lifetime saying that, that’s the satisfaction. Numbers are nice, but I made a couple movies also. When you can hear back from people acknowledging that one of their favorite movies was ‘Miracle’ and I can hear that the rest of my life, that’s all I need.” — Chris Smith
