Chuck Howard

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For other persons named Chuck Howard, see Chuck Howard (disambiguation).

Charles (Chuck) Howard graduated from Duke University in 1945. He was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity.

Howard was a production assistant at Edgar J. Scherick's company, Sports Programs, Inc., in 1961 when Roone Arledge charged him with scouting sports events throughout the world in an effort to discover sports that had a loyal following but might be unknown to American television viewers. The result was the April 21, 1961 debut of Wide World of Sports on ABC Sports, the groundbreaking television sports program.

Arledge, Howard and commentator Jim McKay created the show on a week-by-week basis during its first year of broadcast, establishing a sports television tradition in the process.

Howard went on to become a vice president for programming at ABC Sports and covered nine Olympic Games, the Super Bowl, World Series, British Open, Kentucky Derby, Indianapolis 500 and NCAA football -- as well as Acapulco cliff diving, Demolition Derby, rodeos, bobsled racing, arm wrestling and Evel Knievel's daredevil antics.

On April 8, 1967, due to an AFTRA strike, Howard and director Chet Forte filled-in as commentators for Game 4 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals between the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers. He oversaw the broadcast of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, notable for the massacre of 11 Israeli team members by Palestinian terrorists.

In 1986, Howard left ABC and became executive producer at Trans World International.

Howard died of brain cancer on November 21, 1996 in Pound Ridge, New York.

[edit] Honors

Wide World of Sports became the longest-running continuing series on ABC, and it won numerous Peabody Awards and Emmy Awards. Howard himself won 11 Emmy Awards as a producer.