LITMIR.BIZ

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effort to awaken the public to its ‘global responsibilities’ and thereby consolidate popular support for decisive action overseas.”¹⁸ Many of the documentaries during Close Up’s first two seasons foregrounded foreign policy and warned against the perils of communism with titles like Yanki No! (1960), Ninety Miles to Communism (1961), Our Durable Diplomats (1961), and The Remarkable Comrades (1961). They demonstrated television’s civic utility by tapping into Cold War anxieties and suggesting the medium, as well as the networks that filled it with content, “had an important role to play in the global struggle against communism.”¹⁹ Wide World of Sports enriched ABC’s strategic involvement with documentary and Cold War nationalism.

      SILK PURSES OUT OF SOW’S EARS

      “I thought it was the screwiest idea I’d ever heard,” admitted Goldenson of his initial reaction to Scherick and Arledge’s pitch to develop Wide World.²⁰ Though perhaps screwy, Wide World—originally titled World of Sports—was a low-risk experiment that would compose a serviceable twenty-week summer replacement to fill weekend hours during the sports calendar’s slowest season. The program commanded relatively few resources and attracted advertisers simply because of its sporting focus. But Wide World was not unprecedented. CBS launched the similar Sunday afternoon sports anthology CBS Sports Spectacular in 1960. Moreover, the new ABC program borrowed its title from established media brands that included NBC’s Wide, Wide World (1955–58) documentary travelogue program and Sports Illustrated’s “Wonderful World of Sport” column. Ever the salesman, Scherick tacked ABC onto the program’s name so that ABC’s Wide World of Sports would sell the network every time its title was uttered.

      Neither Scherick nor Arledge knew precisely which events Wide World would cover, but only that they needed to be affordable and have no blackout policies. ABC did not have a research library at the time, but Arledge had kept the keys to NBC’s reference collection, which was located on the same floor as his old office. Since he was still familiar to his former colleagues, Arledge sent production assistant Chuck Howard to use the rival network’s facilities to research potential contracts. A legal pad in hand, Howard scoured rolls of microfilm to create a compendium of events to which Arledge could start purchasing rights, such as the Frontier Days Rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and the Hydroplane Championships in Seattle. The only parameter they initially set—one that quickly fell by the wayside—was that the events had to be competitions with winners and losers rather than exhibitions. As the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Lee Winfrey put it, “Arledge and ABC were forced to the task of making silk purses out of the sow’s ears of sports.”²¹

      Wide World’s first contract gave it rights to Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) competitions. Though hardly a marquee sports organization, the AAU was a recognizable institution with an identity steeped in patriotism and amateurism. While Scherick typically served as ABC Sports’ main negotiator, he sent Arledge to deal with the AAU because he suspected the organization was anti-Semitic. “The AAU had all the power in amateur sports back then,” he recalled, “and I figured we could get in on the ground floor on televising some of their events. But I’m a Jew, and, since there was still a great deal of prejudice at the time and since Arledge is a Gentile, I sent him in to do that negotiating.”²² Arledge struck a $50,000 deal for one year of the AAU’s exclusive TV rights. Wide World devoted seven of its first season’s twenty episodes in whole or part to AAU events and reinforced the alliance with its first client by adopting a logo that resembled the AAU shield (see appendix 1).

      Even though it secured a promising menu of content, Treyz would not greenlight Wide World unless it presold 50 percent of its advertising spots—a policy the network enforced for most new programs at the time. If Wide World did not sell these spots by the close of business on March 31, 1961—less than a month before its scheduled premiere—Treyz would kill it. Gillette had already reserved one-quarter of Wide World’s rights, but the offbeat show was having a difficult time unloading the rest. ABC eventually found a sponsor not because of Wide World’s attractiveness but because of NCAA football’s appeal. The network’s college football coverage lost a quarter of its sponsorship after L&M Cigarettes changed ad agencies and moved away from sports. Though several advertisers were interested in the NCAA package, Scherick tied the advertising space remaining on its NCAA coverage to a quarter sponsorship of Wide World—which was considerably less costly than college football—to get the program on the air. Brown & Williamson, a stalwart of sports marketing at the time, offered to take one-eighth of the Wide World rights to get on ABC’s NCAA football package. Even with Treyz’s deadline fast approaching, Scherick refused and gambled that Wide World could find a sponsor to take the full quarter. Arledge readied himself for the disappointment of losing the show that would so neatly display his approach to sports TV, but Scherick remained hopeful. Mere minutes before Treyz’s 5:00 p.m. deadline, R.J. Reynolds begrudgingly agreed to take the Wide World spots if it was the only way to be a part of the NCAA broadcasts.²³

      Wide World had content and sponsors, but no host. Scherick and Arledge sought a recognizable figure with the dexterity to handle the program’s diversity and the creativity to transform its little-known events into captivating stories. They hired the avuncular and sincere Jim McKay, who, like Arledge, was a well-read Renaissance man whose sprawling interests drove him to pursue a career in media. Born James McManus, the native Philadelphian joined the Baltimore Sun after studying journalism at Baltimore’s Loyola College—where he edited the school’s paper and was class president—and serving as captain of a navy minesweeper that escorted convoys between Trinidad and Brazil during World War II. Though sports were McManus’s main passion, he began his career as a police reporter and shortly thereafter transitioned into a television correspondent for a station the Sun owned. McManus, in fact, was the first person ever seen on Baltimore TV when he announced an October 1947 horse race from the city’s Pimlico racetrack—a production that local tastemaker H.L. Mencken panned as “a very poor show.” “I’d not give ten cents for an hour of such entertainment, even if it showed a massacre,” Mencken grumbled in his diary.²⁴ Despite Mencken’s grievances, McManus parlayed this initial assignment into a position hosting the three-hour weekday afternoon program National Sports Parade, a horse racing–focused rundown of sports news and analysis that McManus would occasionally sprinkle with a song during slow news days. He also emceed a range of daytime programming that the station used to fill out its schedule, including Traffic Court, The Johns Hopkins Science Review, Know Your Sunpapers Route Owner, and Teenage Forum.

      In 1950, New York City’s WCBS-TV took notice of and hired away the affable and multitalented TV reporter to host a daytime talk and variety program titled The Real McKay. At the time, networks owned names for their talent—a practice that allowed radio programs to continue using a familiar appellation after those who adopted the title left. CBS carried this practice over into TV and owned the name Jim McKay. Producers liked The Real McKay’s resemblance to “The Real McCoy” and asked McManus to use the snappier moniker, which became his permanent professional handle. The Real McKay, according to Variety, supplied a “homey atmosphere” that “makes for relaxed and pleasant viewing.”²⁵ The program’s introductory song emphasized its lighthearted focus: “Brighten your day with The Real McKay, here’s a show just meant for you. / We’re gonna chase all your blues away. Gonna make you feel just like The Real McKay.” The show featured interviews, banter among McKay and his cohosts, and musical numbers. McKay sang “It Had to Be You” during The Real McKay’s premiere.

      As in Baltimore, McKay was a utility player for CBS during The Real McKay’s short run and after its 1951 cancellation. Most notably, he served as a reporter for CBS’s Morning Show opposite Walter Cronkite. He also moderated a public affairs program titled Youth Takes a Stand (1954–55), manned the quiz show Make the Connection (1955), and served as a reporter on the courtroom drama The Verdict Is Yours from 1957 until it relocated to Los Angeles and left him behind in 1960. Sports assignments were sprinkled throughout his duties, such as a short evening report called Sports Spot, horse races, the Little League World Series,

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