Jimmy Burnette ended his career at Fox, retiring in 2007.Mitchell Reibel
Jimmy Burnette, the former television network executive who helped shape the modern TV ad sales landscape, died Feb. 6 at age 81. He had battled Parkinson’s disease for 19 years.
A New York City native who retired in 2007, Burnette earned a reputation for his meticulous attention to detail and innovative approach to sports ad sales during a storied 41-year career that included stints with ABC, NBC and Fox. He delicately toed the line between tough-as-nails negotiator and affable, blue-collar exec who enjoyed grabbing a drink with those he worked with — and, if they were lucky, using his dulcet tones to swoon them with a rendition of the Irish folk song “Danny Boy.”
“He was the most influential sports salesman ever,” said David Hill, former Fox chairman.
Many fixtures in modern sports advertising can be traced back to Burnette creating demand where there had previously been only white space. He was the first to create inventory before kickoff in NFL games, and first to give automakers category exclusivity by quarter for NBA games.
“Jimmy never wanted to be the guy who was out there just satisfying demand. He wanted to create it,” said Ray Warren, the former president of Telemundo Deportes who found a role model in Burnette while the two overlapped at ABC early in their respective careers.
While with Fox, where Burnette served as executive vice president of sales until his retirement, he introduced home plate signage to MLB.
“It was a win-win for everybody: the league, the network, the sponsors,” said Tom McGovern, president of Optimum Sports, who worked on the advertising with Burnette on behalf of his MLB clients. “He could be tough sometimes, of course, but he was also a teddy bear at heart. A very creative man in what some consider a non-creative space.”
Colleagues describe an executive who was always prepared and always looking to produce value for sponsors.Courtesy of Steve McKiernan, Rick Kloiber and Gavin Flickinger
Ed Goren, the former president of Fox Sports, also considers it an example of Burnette “not just being a salesman, but a producer. … He knew how to produce value for sponsors.”
His chief objective: overdelivering.
“He would always make sure that we would get that extra value,” McGovern said, “because his goal was not to create a one-time deal. His goal was to create long-term partnerships, and the way to have those long-term partners come back every year is to give them the value so that it’s an easy sell.”
Burnette also had Budweiser sponsor the opening kickoff for NBC’s AFC telecasts in the early 1990s by putting the brand’s label around the entire frame, though that innovation did not stick.
“Jimmy was two things: He was immensely creative in trying to look at selling national advertisers differently,” said Tony Ponturo, the former vice president of global media and sports marketing for Anheuser-Busch, “and he was willing to take risks.”
After Fox acquired rights to NASCAR in the early 2000s, for example, Burnette looked to gain leverage over would-be sponsors by telling them Fox was going to use new technology to blur out the brand logos on race cars that did not also buy ad space on the telecast.
Thing is, that technology did not actually exist, Hill said.
“It was a myth. He just made it up,” the former Fox chairman recalled with a laugh, noting that the network’s NASCAR ratings were so successful during its first season that sponsors wound up lining up to negotiate with Burnette.
Burnette served in the Marines before breaking into the TV industry with ABC in 1966. He spent time in sports ad sales for the network but also was heavily involved in news, including serving as the division’s head in 1981. Burnette moved back to sports in 1982 upon joining NBC as director of sports sales before ascending to become the department’s vice president. He facilitated significant revenue gains for the network by pioneering quarter exclusivities with automakers on NBA telecasts. NBA Commissioner David Stern told SBJ in 2007 that those efforts “should get [Burnette] into the advertising hall of fame” because of the way the development enabled the league to raise its rights fees.
“I don’t want to throw around the word ‘genius’ too loosely, but that’s what he was with the way he thought about this business,” said Keith Turner, who worked under Burnette at NBC from 1989 until 1992 before going on to become the network’s head of sales.
The ace up Burnette’s sleeve was always his level of preparation. Turner saw it firsthand in the form of a notebook, which Burnette took with him everywhere. He was always jotting down notes, thoughts and ideas, Turner recalled, while acutely monitoring developments across the industry.
“With Jimmy, it was all about, ‘I want to be more prepared,’” Ponturo said. “Maybe that was the Marine in him, that desire to be more prepared in a negotiation than the person on the other side.”
Burnette left NBC in 1992 to join sports marketing company Dorna USA. Turner continued to keep in close touch with his former mentor, even as he left Dorna and joined Fox in 1994.
“He was a phone call away,” Turner said, “and I relied on him for a long, long time.”
Marianne Gambelli worked for several years under Burnette at NBC, where she stayed until 2012. Gambelli, who recently retired after serving as Fox’s president of advertising sales, marketing and brand partnerships, credits Burnette with being progressive in his hiring of her at NBC.
“I was one of the first women to actually sell sports — and that was his choice,” Gambelli said. “He was smart enough to see the advantage of bringing in a woman to a place where women really didn’t go before.”
After retiring, Burnette spent his remaining years in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., with his wife, Norma. But his glory days never really left him.
“Every time I would talk to him, he would bring up deals that we did 25 years ago and he remembered every detail,” Gambelli said. “It lived within him. I don’t think you can separate Jimmy from sports and sales. It was his life. It was him.”
Burnette is survived by Norma, his wife of 56 years, and his son, Thomas Burnette. His survivors also include his two daughters-in-law, Carol Ann and Susan, and eight grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his eldest son, Jimmy.
