jrn 362 - lecture sixteen

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of FootballRich Hanley, Associate ProfessorLecture Sixteen

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football

Review• The startling shift in the United

States during the post-war period beginning in 1946 is best illustrated by the movement of millions of people from cities to suburbs, to single-family homes featuring driveways and living rooms.

• The nature of entertainment shifted, too, as a result.


Review• The move to suburbia and the

emergence of the car culture alarmed political leaders such as president Dwight Eisenhower.

• Ike issued warnings similar to Walter Camp’s entreaty in the second half of the 19th century that the country’s physical courage was waning and needed a boost..


Review• President John F. Kennedy

echoed Eisenhower’s remarks, starting the President’s Council on Physical Fitness.

• He enlisted the great Oklahoma football coach Bud Wilkinson to promote it.


Review• The 1950s and 1960s also

marked the end of one era of football and the start of a new one, driven by these changes.

• For college ball, Yale, the college that invented the modern game under its famed alumni Walter Camp in the 1870s, deemphasized football and, with similar schools, formed the Ivy league in 1954.


Review• The pro game rode one of the

most profound changes in American life to establish the foundation for its ascendancy to the top of America’s sports and entertainment realm, creating an empire that not even the most powerful political and corporate forces in the United States could challenge.


Review• The reasons behind the changes

are many but all converge one a single device that not only changed football and all sports but also altered the nature of the nation itself: television.


The Age of Television• The first televised football game

occurred on Sept, 30, 1939 when NBC telecast the Waynesburg – Fordham game in New York.

• Fordham was coached by one of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame, Jim Crowley, and won the game with betwween 500 and 5,000 people watching on television.

•


The Age of Television• On Oct. 22, 1939, the first pro

football game was broadcast, also by NBC and also from New York,

• Some 500 people watched the game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Eagles at Ebbets Field on their television sets but it was also broadcast to the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens.

•


The Age of Television• World War II interrupted the

advance of television as research and manufacturing turned to producing war materials.

• Yet the people who saw television for the first time knew they were watching the future of entertainment.


The Age of Television• In 1946, a writer for the

Washington Post composed this after watching a boxing match on TV:

- “Television looks good for a 1000 -year run.”


The Age of Television• Four years later, writer Raymond

Chandler exclaimed:

- “Television is really what we've been looking for all our lives.”


The Age of Television• In television’s first decade from

the end of World War II to 1955, networks struggled to define what type of programming to broadcast.

• From 1946 to 1950, the networks saw sports as a subject to lure audiences to their new gadget. During this period, the strategy worked.


The Age of Television• Initially, sports on televisions

attracted people to bars and restaurants and then to the home.

• During 1946-1951, coaxial cable was installed from the hub of television broadcasts, New York, to the West Coast, creating the opportunity to offer truly national programming.


The Age of Television• On the surface, sports seemed to

fit well with the new medium.

• It was a convenient, inexpensive source of programming for the networks

.• Most importantly of all, networks

saw sports as a way to sell televisions.


The Age of Television• Why did this interest the

networks?

- Both CBS (color television in particular) and NBC (RCA) manufactured television sets as did DuMont (now extinct)


The Age of Television• “What some people forget is that

television got off the ground because of sports,” said long-time director Harry Coyle in 1988.


The Age of Television• America, meanwhile wanted its

television. - 1947 sales: 14,000 (8,000 in New York)

- 1948 sales: 172,000

• In 1948, networks devoted almost 10 hours a week of prime-time to sports such as boxing and wrestling.


The Age of Television• This concerned baseball and

college football executives, who blamed declining attendance on televised games.

• Baseball commissioner Ford Frick, for example, tried to limit camera coverage, demanding that cameras be placed in the worst seat in the house.


The Age of Television• Television critic John Drebinger

concluded in 1948 that sports officials, particularly in baseball, missed the point of television.

• “The majors seem unable to resist the lush profits that the expansion of television promises to yield,” he said in anticipating the role television would play in expanding audiences.


The Age of Television• Pro and college football entered

prime time in 1950 when ABC aired two half-hour programs of game highlights.

• The Game of the Week featured highlights of college games on Tuesday nights.

• Pro Football Highlights aired on Friday nights and featured game football of New York Giants’ games.


The Age of Television• Both were canceled after one

season as TV sought to present more entertainment in a live format.


The Age of Television• College football occupied a key

component of the schedule of local broadcasts from 1946 to 1951, so much so that the NCAA became alarmed at declining attendance sought to restrict television schedules.

• But the decline was relative.


The Age of Television• Attendance fell primarily in the

East at three schools: - Penn - Columbia - Yale

• In the West and South, where television had yet to make firm inroads, attendance increased.


The Age of Television• Nevertheless, the NCAA moved

as national body regardless of the lack of national games.

• The head of the ECAC was charged with overseeing new rules that restricted the televising of college games.


The Age of Television• In 1951, the NCAA:

- Approved telecasting of regional games and blackouts. - Seven games were selected and given the regional designation for broadcast outside the so-called originating area.


The Age of Television• A Big 10 game could be viewed

in the East while a Yale game could be viewed in the West.

- Televised games were banned for three Saturdays.

- Only Army-Navy would be televised nationally


The Age of Television• Penn ignored the NCAA and

scheduled seven television games but the NCAA threatened schools that played Penn with sanctions.

• Notre Dame likewise rebelled against the restrictions, because it had sold rights to its games for $300,000.


The Age of Television• Still, the NCAA went ahead and

accepted a $1.2 million payment for a television package from NBC.


The Age of Television• By 1951, the number of sets sold

in America had reached 14 million.

• The NCAA decided to permit local broadcasts of sold-out games, which created odd outcomes.


The Age of Television• In 1953, for example, one station

in Oklahoma was permitted to broadcast the Oklahoma-Notre Dame game. The rest of the country saw Holy Cross play Dartmouth.

• The decision angered Oklahoma university and state officials who threatened legal action under anti-trust provisions of federal law.


The Age of Television• The Big Ten, meanwhile, issued

its own threats, as did mighty Harvard.

• Harvard refused to permit the Harvard-Yale game to be included in a new NCAA-ABC package.

• The NCAA package changed slightly, permitting a program if nine national and four regional games in 1957.


The Age of Television• Toward the end of the 1950s,

some 42 million homes had television, including some with multiple sets.

• As colleges struggled with the question of what to do with this new instrument, the NFL embraced it.

• In 1958, that decision transformed the NFL.

jrn 362 - lecture sixteen

Education