Daily Inspiration Quote by Roone Arledge

Power, in media, often hides behind a busy signal. Roone Arledge's line is funny because it admits the trick out loud: being "hard to reach" is not an inconvenience, it's a curated brand asset. The word "sensitive" does double duty. It pretends to be vulnerable, even slightly neurotic, while actually signaling control. He isn't worried about missing calls; he's worried about losing the mystique that makes people call in the first place.

Arledge, as the executive mind who helped turn sports and news into high-stakes television theater (ABC Sports' glamour, "Wide World of Sports", later ABC News), understood that access is currency. In that ecosystem, availability can read as neediness. Scarcity reads as importance. So the "image" becomes the point: he wants the social proof that says, I am in demand, I am managing something too consequential to be interrupted, you will wait.

The subtext is managerial and slightly paranoid: prestige is fragile, and it has to be maintained with small acts of distance. It's also a wink at how institutions manufacture authority. If the public rarely sees the machinery, it assumes the machine is sophisticated. If colleagues can't get you on the phone, they assume you're making decisions, not dithering.

There's a cultural tell here, too: late-20th-century media bosses weren't just administrators; they were celebrities of competence. Arledge captures that self-conscious performance in one sentence, exposing how modern power is often less about what you do than how unreachable you can credibly seem while doing it.