Radio: Air Wave of the Future

Television was promising either to kill or cure the sports world. The mourners’ bench was crowded at the 1950 meeting in Manhattan of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Cried Eastern Conference Commissioner Asa Bushnell: “Television and the atomic bomb have been hooked up a lot at this conference. Let’s wait until the bomb destroys our stadiums, and not let television do it first.”

Throw It Out. Despite bulging football attendance figures, Michigan’s Athletic Director Fritz Crisler told delegates: “We’re ready to throw out television. Video could damage our gains seriously, and it is up to [us] to act immediately.” Western Conference Commissioner “Tug” Wilson protested that colleges were “giving television a terrific show at ridiculously cheap rates.”

Boxing’s groans were even louder. Editor Nat Fleischer of Ring Magazine said: “In 1949, receipts from fights around the country dropped 50%—or $4,000,000. Attractive matches do well at the box office, but television is hurting the small clubs which can’t get leading fighters.”

Most of baseball’s complaining cries came from the minor leagues. Newark, across the Hudson River from Manhattan, gave up its International League franchise this winter, partly because it could no longer compete with televised major-league games from New York City. Even the majors were nervous. Last year the New York Giants made a few surveys to determine what TV was doing to them. “We concluded that we lost a few customers for Friday night games,” said a front-office spokesman. “People thought: ‘If we go to the ball game we’ll miss the fights,’ so they stayed at home and saw both.”

The Converts. But wrestling and the roller derby, hippodromed spectacles that masquerade as sports, hailed television as a savior. The roller derby, after a dozen years of life in the back streets, still ranked in popularity with curling and hurling when it went on TV in 1947. Since then it has played to sellout audiences, 90% of whom first saw it over TV. Wrestling, too, had a sweaty, dying pallor until it was hurried onto TV as an inexpensive fillin. So astounding was its success that when Promoter Ned Irish put a wrestling match into Madison Square Garden last month, he grossed over $50,000—$10,000 more than any boxing card had drawn all season. Said Irish: “At least 40% of the customers were women—there’s nothing you can attribute it to but television.”

Wait & See. Network executives were taking both the applause and the abuse with studied calm. NBC President Joseph McConnell purred soothingly: “Back in 1932 there was the same fear of radio, and, for a while, colleges barred football broadcasts.” The sports world would feel differently “in five years when there will be 20 million video sets catering to 75 million persons in the U.S.”

Last week ABC Vice President Robert Saudek foresaw an entrancing future when —”at a fabulous price, of course”—sports would be turned over completely to television. “Then we’ll have silent football,” said Saudek, dreamily. “It will be played indoors under perfect conditions. The weather will always be just right, the grass just the proper height, the ball will never be slippery. In this test-tube football the players won’t be bothered by the roar of the crowd, because the crowds will all be watching at home, and they’ll be comfortable. There’ll be no one at the game except the sponsor—and he’ll be behind a glass cage.”