Television of Major League Baseball during the 1950s
Some sports adapted to television better than others. The size of the ball used was one factor in selecting sports programming for the early broadcast networks. When TV screens were small and pictures fuzzy, sports such as golf and hockey were difficult for viewers to follow. Some sports also provided better TV viewing because of […]
Post-war Politics
The Democrat Party controlled national politics from 1932 through 1952. This was based largely on the personality of one man – Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), who was elected to four terms as president and who led the country through The Depression and World War II. However, FDR died early in his fourth term. FDR was […]
Televising Professional Football in The Fifties
In 1939, NBC was the first network to televise a pro football game, the contest between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Brooklyn Football Dodgers. Using two cameras and about eight staffers, NBC broadcast the game to the roughly 1,000 TV sets in New York City at the time and to displays in the RCA Pavilion […]
College Football on TV during the Fifties
The first televised college football game occurred during the “experimental” era of television’s broadcasting history, when a game between Fordham University and Waynesburg College was broadcast on September 30, 1939. It was hardly a sophisticated production. Just one camera and one announcer, Bill Stern, one most famous sportscasters of the time. It was a showcase […]
Boxing on TV in the Fifties
Boxing is divided by weight class. Historically, the most popular in term of fan interest was the heavyweight class. Then came middleweight. Rocky Marciano was the most well-known of the heavyweights in the Fifties. He retired undefeated in 1956, having won 49 fights in a row. Sugar Ray Robinson was the most popular of the […]
Other Sports on TV in The Fifties
NBA/NCAA Basketball
In 1937, the National Basketball League (NBL) was created by three corporations: General Electric, Firestone and Goodyear. Most of the teams in the league played in the Midwest, and the league remained in existence for over ten years. In 1946, the Basketball Association of America (BAA) was formed, with 11 teams the first season. Though […]
Hockey
The first TV hockey broadcasts occurred in the late 1940s in New York and Detroit. At the time, CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) was the only television network in Canada. In 1952, hockey’s Chicago Black Hawks began broadcasting their Saturday matinee games, which remained a Hawks tradition for years. CBC’s coverage of Games 3, 4 and […]
Television of News, Current Events and Politics in the Fifties
The primary sources of news before the Fifties were the radio, newspapers and magazines. To actually “see” an event, people relied on MOVIETONE NEWS, which had cameramen all over the world capturing footage of breaking stories. These news segments played before every movie and were the best way to actually see what went on. CBS […]