During his distinguished career at ESPN, which spanned more than 30 years, Wildhack held a number of leadership roles and was responsible for several firsts at the network. Those firsts included producing ESPN’s first live regular-season college football game in September 1984 and its first live NFL game in August 1987.
Before joining the Orange, Wildhack most recently served as the network’s executive vice president for programming and production. He was responsible for oversight of all ESPN and ABC game, event and studio production work for domestic and international television and radio, as well as programming acquisitions, rights-holder relationship management and scheduling. He managed all league and conference relationships, negotiated all live sports television rights and was responsible for 50,000 hours of on-air content annually.
From 2007 to 2012, Wildhack was ESPN’s executive vice president for programming and acquisitions. In that role, he oversaw all rights negotiations and managed relationships with rights holders for all ESPN entities. These included ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, ESPNews, ESPN Deportes, ESPNU, ESPN International, ESPN Radio, ESPN.com, ESPN3, ESPN Mobile Properties, print and more. In 2009, he began leading strategic program planning for all ESPN television networks, ESPN on ABC and ESPN’s digital platforms.