Guess What Else Was Happening 50 Years Ago Today…

The Winter Olympics From Innsbruck, Austria

The 1964 Winter Games marked the beginning of the ABC era of Olympic broadcasting, encouraged by the man who would pioneer the coverage of sports on television, Roone Arledge. ABC paid $597,000 for the broadcast rights, which produced 17.5 hours of programming. Arledge, who created ‘The Wide World of Sports utilized much of the staff from that show to cover the games including the host, Jim McKay, who was lured to ABC from CBS in 1961. Like the 1960 summer Olympics from Rome, coverage required flying the black and white video tapes back to the U.S. in order to be broadcast. Fortunately, with many of the events taking place in the morning in Austria, the folks in the States often got to see them broadcast on the same day. As an aside, CBS had the broadcast rights to the Rome summer Olympics in ’60 and as they played the air couriered tapes back in New York, Jim McKay was the anchor (as there was no host in Rome) and that started his long run as Olympics host. On the February 8, 1964 TV Guide pages below, notice the 3:30 listing. As you see in the special ad on the left bottom, the Olympics came to an end Monday, February 10 1964. They had started in the last week of January. Thanks to David Schwartz at Game Show Network for the photo.

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