Television debuted to the masses of the United States at the 1939 World Fair held in New York City when RCA head David Sarnoff showcased the TRK-12 which was the first set available for purchase by the public. Sarnoff also headed the group that began television network broadcasts by granting rights to the newly created NBC for coverage of the opening ceremonies and events of the fair and eventually a regular schedule of broadcasts that would consist of 2 hours in the afternoon and roughly an hour in the evening, what we now know as “Prime Time”.
Later on that year, as television set ownership and viewership continued to grow at a rough rate of 10 percent per week, NBC broadened the scope of what it would show from produced shows to broadcasting of live events. This would include the introduction of live sports broadcasts to the television platform.
On May 17th, 1939 a college baseball game between Ivy League rivals Princeton and Columbia became the first sports broadcast on television. The game, ironically goes extra innings with the Princeton Tigers pulling out the 2-1 victory.
The single camera sat atop a 12 foot wooden platform and sent signals through a coiling wire to an amplifier truck which then boosted the signal to an antenna sitting on top of a flag pole and eventually would be picked up via airwaves on the 85th floor of the Empire State building in Manhattan. That signal would then be re-transmitted to the roughly 3,000 (yes, that’s all) television sets in the viewing area.
To put in even further perspective how impressive the viewership numbers of television were and how this would impact sports it should be noted that the 3,000 people watching the game on television was 7.5 times more than the 400 fans in atten...
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...o them such as ESPN, NBC Sportsnet and Fox Sports. As the advent of new technologies continues, it only begs us to continue to explore new facets of broadcasting these events. From on-screen displays in games such as the “Line of Scrimmage” and “First Down” lines in a football game, to the score, game clock, pitch counts and locations in a baseball game, sports television is a still ever evolving medium and now a source of as much information about the event as it is entertaining to watch the event and with this element of intrigue the viewership numbers continue to grow. From 3,000 to 10 million to a projected viewership of the 2014 Super Bowl broadcast at 115 million which makes for all the reasons to why all sports television broadcasts are now not just some of the most watched programs but also most profitable broadcasts in the history of the television business.
In the early fifties, young people watched TV more hours than they went to school, a trend which has not changed greatly since that time. What was portrayed on television became accepted as normal. Shows like What's a My Line debut on CBS, Your Hit Parade premieres on NBC in 1950. In April of 1950 5,343,000 TV sets are in American Homes. In May of 1950, 103 TV Stations in 60 cities were operating. In September 7,535,000 TV sets in USA. In October there were 8,000,000 TV sets.
The following information is pertinent to the vitality and success of the FOX 24 cable-programming national network. It is necessary to discuss the importance of the ratings and shares system to enable FOX to increase viewership in the local TV market of 247,780 (.235% of US). This market is highly competitive among the affiliates of the other major networks: ABC, CBS and NBC.
...PN, Fox, While NBC, ABC Down." SportsBusiness Daily. N.p., 19 Dec. 2013. Web. 8 Apr. 2014.
The first excuse is economics. The business of TV is ruled by a simple declaration: Get the audience the advertisers want. The consequence is that major networks forgo the mass ...
Paul S. Boyer. "Television." The Oxford Companion to United States History. 2001. Retrieved November 24, 2011 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-Television.html
Radio broadcasting was one development that kept “America’s Pastime” alive, and provided the sport with additional audience. During these rough times, many people could not afford tickets to baseball games, so listening to the radio was an option that was very appealing. Naturally, some baseball club owners claimed that putting games on the air was hurting attendance. However, evidence shows that the radio broadcasting caused more people to gain interest in the sport, causing more people to attend the sport. For example, the St. Louis Cardinals outlawed broadcasting during the 1934 season, and attendance levels decreased to 283,000 less than the 1931 championship season. The public clearly enjoyed the new radio broadcasting of games, and the media expressed their feelings. The Chicago Tribune released a fervent argu...
One of the single greatest measurable facets of professional sports is attendance. A sport’s popularity is in direct correlation to the number of people that will show up to watch that sport. Overall 2000 regular season attendance in Major League Baseball was a record 72,782,013 in 2,416 games for an average per game crowd of 30,125 whereas official overall paid attendance in the National Football League for the 2000 season was 16,387,289 in 248 games for an average per game crowd of 66,077. The average per game crowd is the measurable statistic due to the fact that the number of games in a regular season for baseball and football are very different. A NFL team plays a regular season schedule of 16 game however a MLB team plays a regular season schedule of 162 games so average attendance per game presents an accurate picture of popularity. Therefore, football appears to be more than twice as popular as baseball when measured by ...
CBS Television Network is the Number one most watched network with more than two hundred stations providing viewers with some of the nation’s best entertainment, news and sports programming. Popular programs include CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Everybody Loves Raymond, Survivor, the Late Show with David Letterman and 60 Minutes. Sports stations however, include the NFL and the NCAA Basketball Championship. Daytime drama The Young and The Restless leads a daytime pr...
Every February an event is televised in many different countries and watched by millions of people according to Greg Price in the article “How Many Countries Will Watch the Super Bowl?”. Some of these people would consider this show the greatest show on Earth and many companies would consider it the greatest night of television. This is not the circus it is a sporting event featuring two National Football League teams called the Super Bowl. According to Sociology of Sports Module” by Wadsworth this event is watched by people, who don’t normally even watch football, but parties are set up and this event can even become a family ritual (7). When this event is televised the major networks compete to be able to air it on their station. Companies compete and pay large amounts of money to commercial their products. The majority of viewers are average people with average incomes that are far separated from the cash flow of the Super Bowl.
Baseball was first introduced into the American culture, by English immigrants in the early 18th century, and its popularity slow grew. It wasn’t until the Civil War the popularity of the game spread, and both Union and Confederate soldiers played baseball during lulls in the fighting. After Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, soldiers from both the Army of Northern Virginia (Confederate) and the Army of the Potomac (Union) played baseball. (Schackelford Jul 4, 2009) This was the beginning of the American people love of Baseball began. It was also the first mention of baseball being the national game. During the bloodiest war in our countries history Baseball was there to help the two sides heal. It was another fourteen years till 1879 when Football would be invented.
Thanks to gambling, baseball got its first big popularity boost. At the time, money was a big draw to the families coming out of the war. This was due to the focus on family and being able to provide for them, after a time of absence and low economic times. Baseball began as a game mainly for schoolboys, because older men didn’t view it as something they could make
The 1940's and 1950s Cable Television originated in 1948 as a service to households in mountainous or geographically remote areas where reception of over the air television signals was poor. Antennas were erected on mountaintops or other high points, and homes were wired and connected to these towers to receive the broadcast signals.
Wilson Center. Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Cold War International History Project. 14 October 2010. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.
Football’s ancestors are considered to be rugby and soccer, with rugby being the more dominant aspect of the game. The game of football was born on November 6, 1869, when teams from Rutgers and Princeton Universities met for the first intercollegiate football game. At that time the game still resembled rugby and was more of an organized brawl than a sport. Then in 1873, representatives from Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton, and Yale Universities met in New York City to create the first collegiate league for the sport. They eventually established the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA). Over the next decade some colleges decided to ban the brutal sport because of all the injuries received by its players. “Nearly 180 players had suffered serious injuries, and eighteen deaths had been reported from the brutal mass plays that had become common practice” (A Brief History of the Game). With these staggering numbers of injuries and deaths the game was falling to its own demise. So in 1905, President Roosevelt asked Harvard, Princeton, and Yale to save the sport. After several meetings the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, was established as the governing group for football in college. They redesigned the game and added many new rules, such as forward passing, to reduce the number of injuries from the mass plays that teams used to use.
According to The Fédération Internationale de Football Association A.K.A FIFA, the World Cup in 2010 hosted in South Africa had in-home television coverage of the competition reached above 3.2 billion! That is 46.4 percent of the global population; This was an eight percent increase on the number of viewers recorded during the 2006 FIFA World Cup hosted in Germany (FIFA). The only sports events that can compete are the super bowl, which on average has about 100 million viewers, or the Olympics with a total of 4.2 billion views this does surpass the number of viewers in the world cup, however, this is counting all of the 42 events all at once. In comparison the world cup, which is host only one sport, which is soccer/football, gets 3.2 billion compared to the Olympics which has 42 times the number of events that the world cup has, INCLDUING SOCCER. Press, Associated. "FIFA: At Least 1 Billion Saw Cup final." ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 11 July 2011. Web. 05 May 2014