Baseball broadcasting firsts
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[edit] 1930s
The first-ever televised baseball game was on May 17, 1939, between Princeton and Columbia; Princeton beat Columbia 2-1 at Columbia's Baker Field. The contest was aired on W2XBS, an experimental station in New York City which would ultimately become WNBC-TV.
On August 26 of the same year, the first ever Major League Baseball game was televised (once again on W2XBS). With Red Barber announcing, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds played a doubleheader at Ebbets Field. The Reds won the first 5-2 while the Dodgers won the second, 6-1. Barber called the game without the benefit of a monitor and with only two cameras capturing the game. One camera was on Barber and the other was behind the plate. Barber had to guess from which light was on and where it pointed.
[edit] 1940s
By 1947, television sets (most with five and seven-inch screens) were selling almost as fast as they could be produced. Because of this, Major League teams began televising games and attracted a whole new audience in to ballparks in the process. This was because, people who had only casually followed baseball began going to the games in person and enjoying themselves. As a result, the following year, Major League attendance reached a record high of 21 million.
1947 saw the first televised World Series. The games were shown in the New York area by NBC and sponsored by Gillette and Ford. The 1947 World Series brought in an estimated 3.9 million people, becoming television's first mass audience.
On April 16, 1948, Chicago's WGN-TV broadcast its first big-league game, with Jack Brickhouse calling the White Sox' 4-1 defeat of the Cubs in an exhibition game at Wrigley Field. WGN televised each Cubs and White Sox home game live. According to Brickhouse,
| “ | It worked because the Cubs and White Sox weren't home at the same time. You aired the Sox at Comiskey, or Cubs at Wrigley Field. Daytime scheduling gave the Cubs a decided edge, as Wrigley didn't have lights, so kids came home from school, had a sandwich, and turned the TV on. | ” |
[edit] 1950s
On July 11, 1950, the All-Star Game out of Chicago's Comiskey Park was televised for the first time. On November 8, 1950, Commissioner Happy Chandler and player reps agreed on the split of the TV-radio rights from the World Series.
On August 11, 1951, WCBS-TV in New York City televised the first baseball game (in which the Boston Braves beat the Brooklyn Dodgers by the score of 8-1) in color. On October 3 of that year, NBC aired the first coast-to-coast baseball telecast as the Brooklyn Dodgers were beaten by the New York Giants in the final game of a playoff series by the score of 3-1 (off Bobby Thomson's now-legendary home run).
In 1958, KTTV in Los Angeles, California aired the first regular-season baseball game ever played on the West Coast, a Los Angeles Dodgers-San Francisco Giants game from Seals Stadium in San Francisco, California, with Vin Scully announcing. In its first year airing Major League Baseball, KTTV aired only the Dodgers' road games.
[edit] 1960s
On July 23, 1962, Major League Baseball had its first satellite telecast (via Telstar Communications). The telecast included portion of a contest between the Chicago Cubs vs. the Philadelphia Phillies from Wrigley Field with Jack Brickhouse commentating.
On July 17, 1964, a game out of Los Angeles between the Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers contest became the first Pay TV baseball game. Basically, subscription television offered the cablecast to subscribers for money. The Dodgers beat the Cubs by the score of 3-2, with Don Drysdale collecting 10 strikeouts by the way.
On March 17, 1965, Jackie Robinson became the first black network (ABC) broadcaster for Major League Baseball. That year, ABC provided the first-ever nationwide baseball coverage with weekly Saturday broadcasts on a regional basis. Some time later, Bill White became the first black man to regularly do play-by-play work Major League Baseball.
[edit] 1970s
On October 13, 1971, the World Series held a night game for the very first time. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who felt that baseball could attract a larger audience by featuring a prime time telecast (as opposed to a mid-afternoon broadcast, when most fans either worked or attended school), pitched the idea to NBC. An estimated 61 million people watched Game 4 on NBC; TV ratings for a World Series game during the daytime hours would not have approached such a record number.
On October 18, 1977, ABC's Bill White became the first African American broadcaster to preside over the presentation of the Commissioner's Trophy at the conclusion of the World Series.
[edit] 1980s
In 1985, NBC's telecast of the All-Star Game out of the Metrodome in Minnesota was the first program to be broadcasted in stereo by a TV network. Also 1985, ABC announced that every game of the World Series would be played under the lights for the biggest baseball audience possible. It marked the first time that all World Series games were played at night.
In 1989, NBC's Gayle Gardner became the first woman to regularly host Major League Baseball games for a major television network.
[edit] 1990s
On August 3, 1993, Gayle Gardner became the first woman to do television play-by-play for a Major League Baseball game. It was the Colorado Rockies vs. Cincinnati Reds on KWGN-TV in Denver.
On October 2, 1995, ESPN televised the first cable tie-breaker playoff game. Jon Miller and Joe Morgan called the [1] from Seattle's Kingdome between the Seattle Mariners and California Angels.
In 1995, NBC's Hannah Storm not only became the first female sportscaster to host a World Series game, but also the first female to preside over the World Series Trophy presentation. In that same World Series, ABC's Lesley Visser became the first female field reporter for a World Series game.
Also in 1995, both League Championship Series were exclusively televised on a regional basis as opposed to nationally. In addition, in a very rare feat, television coverage for a single World Series alternated between two different networks (ABC and NBC)
- See also: The Baseball Network
In 1996, ESPN began a five year contract with Major League Baseball worth $440 million and about $80 million per year. ESPN paid for the rights to a Wednesday doubleheader and the Sunday night Game of the Week, as well as all postseason games not aired on Fox or NBC. As a result, Major League Baseball postseason games were aired on cable for the very first time.
On July 8, 1997, Fox televised its first ever All-Star Game (out of Jacobs Field in Cleveland). For this particular game, Fox introduced "Catcher-Cam" in which a camera was affixed to the catchers' masks in order to provide unique perspectives of the action around home plate. Catcher-Cam soon would become a regular fixture in Fox's baseball broadcasts.
[edit] 2000s
2001 marked first year of split coverage of one League Championship Series game as well as the first cable involvement in LCS. Game 5 of the NLCS and Game 4 of the ALCS were split between the Fox Broadcasting Company and Fox Sports Net. 2001 also featured the first cable League Division Series game to be aired in prime time.
The 2002 World Series, broadcast on Fox, was the first World Series to be broadcast in high-definition.
[edit] References
[edit] Sources
| Major League Baseball on national television |
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| Contract history: Sports television broadcast contracts | Major League Baseball television contracts |
| Broadcast partners: ABC | CBS | ESPN | FOX | NBC | TBS | USA | The Baseball Network | Baseball Channel |
| General media: World Series television ratings | Major League Baseball Game of the Week | Cable television | Monday Night Baseball | Wednesday Night Baseball | Thursday Night Baseball | Sunday Night Baseball | Broadcasting firsts | Telecasts technology |
| Broadcasters by event: World Series | American League Championship Series | National League Championship Series | All-Star Game | American League Division Series | National League Division Series |
