August 26, 1939…Major League Baseball Comes To Television

75 years ago today, the first professional baseball game was televised over NBC’s W2XBS in New York City. The game was between the Cincinnati Red and the Brooklyn Dodgers…the announcer was Red Barber.

Here’s an interesting side note. Realizing the significance of the broadcast, Barber asked NBC to memorialize the event with some sort of memento. A week later, NBC sent Barber a beautiful silver cigarette case with the date and event inscribed on the front. They also sent him the bill for $22.19.

In the photos, we see Barber doing the first ever pre game interview with Dodgers manager Leo Durocher. There were two cameras there. the one you see here on the third base side and one in the press box on the first base side. Barber called the game from the stands sitting by the this camera so he could get instructions from the truck via the cameraman.

Earlier In 1939, RCA designed and built the first mobile television production units ever. There were two telemobile trucks…one contained standard rack-mounted equipment for two cameras and the other housed a 159 megacycle, 300W transmitter with a hinged antenna mast on top of the unit.

Each unit was about the size and shape of a 25-passenger bus and weighed 10 tons. The total power required to operate both units was approximately 20KW. The signal was sent to the transmitter in the Empire State Building.

It must have been a challenge for the sports camera operator to frame a shot. RCA had three Iconoscope camera models…one for studio use and two for the field. The field cameras didn’t have viewfinders. The camera we see here looks like it may have a small eyepiece that would have probably been a metal tube from the front to the back of the unit. The other field model (with a rounded back) had a foldout wire frame viewfinder on the left side of the camera, similar to still photography cameras of the time.

Intercom equipment was new as well. The mic was a contraption that had a small curved horn for a mouthpiece and was worn on the chest which was borrowed from the telephone company. The headsets were borrowed from radio and it really was appropriate to call them “cans” because the round metal earpieces didn’t begin to approach the quality of today’s headsets. By the way, the Reds won that day.
Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

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