Joe Aceti, Influential Sports Director
Aceti, who covered major sporting events for three decades, was known for bringing a distinctly human perspective to athletic competition.
Joe Aceti, a television director who helped shape network coverage of major sports events over a career spanning 30 years, died October 4, 2011, in Kirkland, Washington. He was 76.
According to news reports, the cause was complications from a stroke.
Pivotal sporting events Aceti directed included the heavyweight boxing championship match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier billed as the "Thrilla in Manila.”
Aceti, who worked primarily for ABC, CBS and Fox, was known for covering events from atypical points of view — including overhead shots, tight close-ups and quick glimpses of athletes on the field anticipating a key play.
Born on May 2, 1935, in West Point, New York, Aceti, whose father was a sanitation worker, grew up in the nearby community of Highland Falls.
After graduating with a fine arts degree from Colgate University, where he was a star catcher on the baseball team, he began his television career at ABC in the mid-1960s. He began as a production assistant working with baseball legend Jackie Robinson, who was a commentator for professional ball games.
In 1982 he went to work for CBS, and moved to Fox in the early 1990s. He retired in 2001.
Aceti, who contended that his arts background influenced his expressive camera positions, also covered college and professional football, figure skating, Olympic events and contributed segments to ABC’s long-running series Wide World of Sports.
Among his legacies is a practice he called “sequencing,” which involved the use of multiple cameras to cover a single moment, allowing him to cut dramatically to heighten the experience.
In 2006 Directors Guild of America in 2006 honored Aceti with its Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Direction.
Upon his passing, DGA President Taylor Hackford released the following statement:
“We are saddened to hear of the passing of Joseph R. Aceti, beloved DGA member and the ninth recipient of the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Direction. Joe received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, capping a career that by all measures placed him in the pantheon of sports direction. Present at most of the seminal sporting events since the late 1960s, Joe worked for all four major networks on every type of major sporting event including: the 1968, 1972, 1976, 1980 and 1992 Olympic games; the 1990, 1991 and 1992 World Series and numerous Playoff Series; World Figure Skating Championship from 1983-1990; the U.S Open Tennis Tournament from 1984-87; NBA and NCAA basketball; NFL and collegiate football; Major League and Collegiate baseball; and 10 years of directing ABC’s Wide World of Sports with some 300 shows as the coordinating director. With 80 major boxing matches to his credit, Joe was also the guiding hand on broadcasts of some of the all-time greatest bouts, including: Ali vs. Frazier aka ‘The Thrilla in Manila;’ Ali vs. Spinks II; Cooney vs. Holmes; and Hearns vs. Duran.
By all accounts, Joe was a kind and dedicated teacher and mentor to many he met along the way. After Joe was announced as recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Direction in 2006, he told us, ‘I think I did a good job, but the thing I’m most proud of is that I was able to help so many young people during my career. I’ve never been afraid to pass on what I know and I tried to be fair and kind to people. My wife has a saying, “You can’t be a teacher and not be kind.” I think she’s right.’”
He is survived by wife and a daughter. Another daughter died in 1993.