April 29, 1961…ABC’s “Wide World Of Sports” Debuts
April 29, 1961…ABC’s “Wide World Of Sports” Debuts
This video is from the last episode of ABC’s “Wide World Of Sports” debut season which started April 29, 1961. This clip highlights some firsts in football coverage.
This is the first use of a crane camera over the field, microphones on the quarterbacks and possibly, handheld sideline coverage in a professional football game. (NBC used RCA’s Walky Looky on some college games in the late 50s).
In January of ’62, WWOS was given a permanent time slot where it remained for over forty years. The show was the creation of Edgar Scherick, through his company, Sports Programs, Inc. After selling his company to the American Broadcasting Company, and joining them to run ABC Sports, he hired a young Roone Arledge to produce the show.
Around 1956, after graduating with a masters degree from Columbia College, Arlidge got a stage manager’s job at NBC’s New York City station, which was then WRCA. One of his assignments there was to help produce a children’s puppet show hosted by Shari Lewis.
Sometime in late 1960, Arledge convinced his superiors at WRCA to let him film a pilot of a show he called “For Men Only”. While his superiors liked the pilot, they told him they couldn’t find a place in the programming schedule for it. But the WRCA weatherman, Pat Hernon, who hosted the pilot, began showing it around, and Edgar Scherick was one of the people who saw it.
While Scherick wasn’t interested in “For Men Only”, he recognized the talent Arledge had. Arledge realized ABC was the organization he was looking to join. The lack of a formal organization would offer him the opportunity to claim real power when the network matured, so, he signed on with Scherick as an assistant producer for WWOS.
Several months before ABC began broadcasting NCAA college football games, Arledge sent Scherick a remarkable memo, filled with television production concepts which sports broadcasts have adhered to since. Previously, network sporting broadcasts had consisted of simple set-ups, and focused on the game itself. The genius of Arledge in this memo was not that he offered another way to broadcast the game to the sports fan. The genius was to recognize television had to take the sports fan to the game.
In addition, Arledge realized that the broadcasts needed to attract and hold the attention of women viewers. At age 29 on September 17, 1960 he put his vision into reality with ABC’s first NCAA college football broadcast from Birmingham, Alabama, between Alabama Crimson Tide and the Georgia Bulldogs. Sports broadcasting has not been the same since. Go Dawgs! -Bobby Ellerbee
I always loved that signature opening theme and the iconic words “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” It was brilliantly phrased.
Arledge turned sports broadcasting into theater, adding the human element that was previously missing. He knew that the game was not the whole story; that athletes are the real heart of the game. That’s why in the 60’s and 70’s, ABC was the first real sports network.
Wide World Of Sports was a great show. I never missed it simply because you would see sports that you never saw normally, like barrel jumping lol.
Two thoughts: Who was the poor devil who had to run camera dangling from that crane? And… when was the last time you heard a sports announcer say “beneficent?”