Veteran TV Sports Producer Don McGuire Passes Away

Longtime TV sports producer Don McGuire died Thursday of a heart attack. McGuire was a Turner Sports Exec Producer in the late '80s and early '90s, where one of his most notable achievements was to launch “Inside the NBA” and hire Ernie Johnson to host it. He produced the first Olympics that appeared on cable TV in '92 and '94, plus the NFL’s “Sunday Night Football” games that appeared on TNT when that network shared a package with ESPN.

“He was a tall booming presence who stayed in touch with all of us over the years after he moved to the Dallas area,” said NBC Sports’ Greg Hughes, who worked with McGuire at Turner. “He had a big impact on a lot of us.” On Twitter last night, Newsday sports writer Greg Logan wrote, “My friend Don McGuire was brilliant. Had faults, but he was visionary in sports production, which is why it tickled me that his favorite movie line from ‘Butch Cassidy & Sundance Kid’ was: ‘I have vision & the rest of the world is wearing bifocals.’”