Louis Effrat, one of its most distinguished sportswriters, covered the Columbia-Princeton doubleheader that Wednesday. Only the second game was to be televised. That's the complete and only mention of the occasion in that Thursday paper. But a small item in the business section, without referring to it directly, ultimately underscored its importance.
The item said that dealers were abandoning attempts to sell television sets to an indifferent public and concentrating their efforts on the rising sale of more elaborate radio sets.
World War II soon intervened, putting the development of television on hold. But once the war was over, baseball games became the crucial item in selling enough television sets to attract advertising. That assessment came from Gen. David Sarnoff, head of RCA and a dominant figure in the broadcasting world of that time.
So Columbia bears the distinction of if not the responsibility for launching the vehicle that would lead to the Super Bowl, March Madness, runaway Olympics, and a wrestling craze that could lift a man to the governorship of Minnesota. Our own Baker Field was the site of the very first televised sports event. What was it like on that Wednesday 60 years ago? What was the world like, and who were the participants? One must remember the setting. In March, Hitler had invaded Czechoslovakia, marking the final failure of appeasement.
The Spanish Civil War had ended in victory for fascism with the fall of Madrid. Japan had conquered all of eastern China. And although no outsiders knew it, physicists Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, and our own John Dunning, right here at Columbia, confirmed the fact that uranium was indeed fissionable. It was quite a month of March. A major question in America was whether President Roosevelt might run for an unprecedented third term.
In sports, the most startling story came on May 2, when Lou Gehrig -- Columbia Lou -- voluntarily ended his streak of 2, consecutive games played. However, it wouldn't become known until weeks later June 21 that he was suffering from a soon-to-be fatal disease. The King spoke French, delighting his listeners as much as President Roosevelt had done on an earlier visit, the Times reported.
Lesser first-page attention was given to a White Paper issued by the British Government planning to make Palestine independent by , with restrictions on Jewish immigration that would make Arabs permanently twice as numerous as Jews. Philadelphia Phillies. ABC made history in when they had Jackie Robinson call a game, which was the first time that an African American had done so. ABC also made history later that year when they started the tradition of Saturday-afternoon national broadcasts, a format that eventually turned into the Game of the Week.
He felt that the game could attract a larger audience in prime time. The idea worked, and eventually became the standard, as all World Series games are played at night. Louis Cardinals N. Home Features Baseball History. It was also difficult to capture fast-moving plays: Swinging bats looked like paper fans, and the ball was all but invisible during pitches and hits.
Nevertheless, the experiment was a success, driving interest in the development of television technology, particularly for sporting events. Though baseball owners were initially concerned that televising baseball would sap actual attendance, they soon warmed to the idea. In particular, they embraced the possibilities for revenue generation that came with increased exposure of the game, including the sale of rights to air certain teams or games and television advertising.
Today, televised sports is a multi-billion dollar industry, with technology that gives viewers an astounding amount of visual and audio detail. Cameras are now so precise that they can capture the way a ball changes shape when struck by a bat, and athletes are wired to pick up field-level and sideline conversation. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! At an NFL preseason game on August 26, , San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick remains seated as other players stand to observe the national anthem.
This simple action, which Kaepernick makes no attempt to broadcast to the public, gives rise to a controversy that The tall, handsome Chambers was soon arrested and charged with murder.
The battle, which saw an early use of the deadly longbow by the English, is regarded as one of the most decisive in history.
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