ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS

No Viewers

Premiering in April 1961 as a summer replacement series, ABC's Wide World of Sports later became the first year-round weekly sports series on network television. Choosing to show sporting events that were uncommon for television at the time—auto racing at Le Mans, soccer in Great Britain, track in the Soviet Union—ABC's Wide World of Sports was an immediate critical success that attracted little or no viewer support in its first season.

Arledge

The man behind the show was executive producer Roone Arledge, who had joined ABC Sports as a field producer of NCAA Football in 1960. This assignment gave Arledge the idea of a "sports potpourri" to fill the network void when college football games were blacked out locally. ABC brass responded positively to the idea because, although initially the sporting events were to be taped and shown with a week's delay, commercial satellites were to be launched in the mid 1960s and the experience gained from producing ABC's Wide World of Sports would be invaluable in presenting live sporting events.

Regular Slot

After its short run from April to September 1961, ABC's Wide World of Sports returned to the air in January 1962 in its regular Saturday-afternoon time slot. Among its first shows in 1962 were water-ski championships from Acapulco, Mexico; surfing from Hawaii; and the Grand National horse race from Aintree, England. Arledge was given the opportunity to develop innovative production techniques that made ABC a leader in sports television. The ninety-minute weekly shows were in the beginning produced on a fifty-thousand-dollar budget, each sporting event edited down to eight-to ten-minute segments of highlights.

World Sports

Producer Arledge, announcer Jim McKay, and production assistant (later producer) Chuck Howard traveled around the world searching for the types of events that became a trademark of ABC's Wide World of Sports: cliff diving from Mexico, demolition derbies, European skiing, dog-sled racing, and such. The show became a Saturday-afternoon institution and Arledge a powerful executive at ABC.

Olympics

In 1965 he was promoted to vice-president in charge of sports programming, winning the rights for the network to broadcast both the winter and summer Olympics in 1968. In 1967 The New York Times television critic Jack Gould praised ABC by saying that their "expertise clearly shows that the coverage of sports on TV can be increasingly inventive, and perhaps also teach a lesson or two to the producer of entertainment programming." Arledge was named president of ABC Sports in 1968.

Sports Strategy

ABC's Wide World of Sports raised the level of sports programming and showed the networks that it could be an integral part of their scheduling and business strategies. Arledge was a visionary in the television business, and ABCs Wide World of Sports was his first great triumph.

Sources:

"Shoot Craps," Newsweek, 59 (1 January 1962): 52;

Christopher H. Sterling and John M. Kitross, Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting, second edition (Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth, 1990);

Huntington Williams, Beyond Control: ABC and the Fate of the Networks (New York: Atheneum, 1989).

"A VAST WASTELAND"

Federal Communications Chairman Newton Minow's address to the 39th Annual Convention of the National Association of Broadcasters on 9 May 1961 started a fire of controversy over the content of broadcast television. Minow's characterization of early 1960s programming as "a vast wasteland" entered the public language.

When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better.

But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you—and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience-participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western badmen, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials—many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it.

Is there one person in this room who claims that broadcasting can't do better?

Well, a glance at next season's proposed programming can give us little heart. Of seventy-three and a half hours of prime evening time, the networks have tentatively scheduled fifty-nine hours to categories of "action-adventure," situation comedy, variety, quiz and movies.

Is there one network president in this room who claims he can't do better? Well, is there at least one network president who believes that the other networks can't do better?

Gentlemen, your trust accounting with your beneficiaries is overdue.

Source:

Newton Minow, Equal Time: The Private Broadcaster and the Public Interest, edited by Lawrence Lauret (New York: Atheneum, 1964), pp. 52-53.