Television: The Deep Dark Debacle

With brutal abandon, the front-running New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders fought point for point all afternoon. Then, with 65 seconds remaining, the Jets slipped ahead 32-29. But the Raiders struck back swiftly, connecting on a 22-yd. pass play that put them within scoring range. Now there were only 50 seconds left in the game. The Oakland stadium erupted like Mauna Loa. Twenty-one million at-home fans climbed into their TV sets. And then—NBC abruptly cut away to Heidi, a two-hour dramatization of the children’s classic. It was a clear case of unsportsmanlike conduct, especially since the Raiders, in those last few TV-less seconds, went on to score two spectacular back-to-back touchdowns and win 43-32.

In virtually every city east of Denver (most of the Far West was spared the blackout), the telephone switchboards at NBC affiliate stations lit up like fireflies on grass. In Manhattan, a blitz of 10,000 angry callers blew a fuse in the network’s switchboard. In sheer frustration, hundreds of other fans telephoned the New York City police, tying up its emergency number for more than three hours. In a further display of exquisite timing, NBC belatedly announced the results of the game in two news streamers, one of which chugged across the bottom of the screen just when Heidi’s paralytic cousin tried to walk for the first time.

The all-color network, already blushing red, was gleefully jabbed black and blue by its rivals. On the CBS Sunday Evening News, Harry Reasoner reported the outcome of the game: “Heidi married the goatherder.” The ABC Evening News staged its own electronic “bedtime story,” with Anchorman Frank Reynolds reading excerpts from Heidi while Sportscaster Howard Cosell repeatedly interrupted with film clips of the game and suitably frantic commentary. Sounding very much like a quarterback caught in his own end zone, NBC President Julian Goodman said lamely: “It was a forgivable error committed by humans who were concerned about children expecting to see Heidi.”

Money over Matter. Not really. Truth is that while the Raiders scored their two decisive touchdowns, NBC was leading into Heidi with a six-second spot for NBC’s Monday Night at the Movies, a 60-second commercial, a ten-second promotional blurb for local stations and a five-second dance by the NBC peacock—a full 81 seconds, all of them eminently cuttable. Charged the Miami Herald: “It was simply a case of money over matter.” As one NBC vice president later confessed, the network had promised Timex, sponsor of Heidi, that the $850,000 special would draw a large children’s audience. “We had to cut away,” said the vice president. “Otherwise, all the kids would have switched over to Land of the Giants on ABC.”

NBC later gave an amended account of the events. When it became apparent that the game would run late, NBC TV President Don Durgin and Sports Vice President Carl Lindemann, both watching the telecast at home in the New York City suburbs, conferred by telephone. Lindemann then called the home of the game’s operations manager —whose name NBC insists is a “deep dark secret”—and informed him of the decision to stay with the game until its conclusion.

Lost Irony. Deep Dark Secret then telephoned NBC’s Broadcast Operations Control in Manhattan, but he was unable to get through; the lines were already jammed with calls from fans who wanted to make sure that NBC would stick with the game. So Deep Dark Secret called the mobile unit covering the game in Oakland. Mobile Unit relayed Deep Dark Secret’s message by direct line to the head engineer of the Broadcast Operations Control “punchboard” in Manhattan. “Highly irregular,” said Punchboard, who insisted that a command to delay Heidi would have to come directly from the mouth of Deep Dark Secret. So Punchboard called Deep Dark Secret, but alas, he was talking on the phone with Lindemann. Thus, when the decisive moment arrived, old reliable Punchboard dutifully followed prior orders and punched the buttons that substituted Heidi for halfbacks.

One of the nation’s largest specialists in mass communication had failed to communicate internally. But this irony was lost on most NBC executives. They were too busy chortling over the bonuses of the whole affair. For one thing, the unexpected publicity given Heidi all but assures that the program will be sold as a rerun next year. For another, as Sports Vice President Lindemann explains, the fanaticism of the TV football fans showed doubting sponsors that NBC was giving them their money’s worth. Lest such a blackout ever happen again, NBC will install two direct lines to Punchboard at BOC. Presumably, this will redouble the chances of the next foul-up.