American television directory (1946)

COLLEGE SPORTS AND TELEVISION The increasing popularity of televised sports opens to colleges and universities a great opportunity for building prestige and an important source of income. _ By DON SPENCER President, Televised Sports, Inc. T he role that sports may be expected to play in television programming can best be estimated by a glance over their impressive record in radio during the past two decades. Sports broadcasts were among the first features of radio to achieve out¬ standing popularity. The novelty of sit¬ ting at home and hearing a blow-byblow description of a heavyweight championship bout — or a play-by-play report of a World Series baseball game — fired the imaginations of millions. This availability of excellent sports programs, more perhaps than any other single entertainment feature, provided the buying incentive that speeded the expansion of radio. Set ownership grew into the millions, in fact a market of listeners was well established before the entertainment provided in sponsored broadcasts began climbing to its present high levels. Some of the largest radio audiences in history have been tuned in for net¬ work sports presentations: notably the Joe Louis fights and World Series base¬ ball broadcasts. Significantly, however, network presentations of sports form but a small part of the nation’s total sports broadcast time. Most sports events are of sectional interest only. But in their sections such events possess extraordinary audience pulling power. They are regularly presented over their local stations with local commentators doing the honors. Radio’s coverage of sports includes horse races, baseball and football games, golf tournaments and tennis games of top interest, championship fights, and an occasional track meet. Radio’s two great sports standbys are professional baseball and college foot¬ ball. And broadcasts of both of these are conducted primarily as local opera¬ tions. A sports event which has great local or regional interest is presented over one or more of the local or regional stations. And, very frequently, it enjoys a national or regional sponsor. In prac¬ tice this means that a national adver¬ tiser often sponsors a dozen to 20 dif¬ ferent football games in different parts of the country on a single Saturday afternoon. This growing sponsorship of local sports events by large advertisers is of special significance to the growth of television. As television networks may be of slow growth, many sections of the country may find themselves without coaxial cable hookups for 5 to 10 years after they have television stations. These isolated, independent stations, if equipped with mobile field pickup appa¬ ratus, can cover local sports events, give their audiences a top entertainment feature, and can obtain sponsorship of such events by national advertisers be¬ cause the audience attracting power of local sports events has been so ably demonstrated by radio. Experienced sponsors of college foot¬ ball broadcasts declare that localization — giving the sports fans in each section the sports events that are of greatest interest to them — is the key to good audience response. All Games Important to Fans In Texas, for example, the Humble Oil Company started out by sponsoring what it considered to be the top games of the Southwest Football Conference. The company soon learned from the rabid football fans of the Southwest that they considered all games played by Southwest Conference teams to be outstanding. After this reaction, the company swelled its sponsorship to be¬ tween 30 and 35 Conference games yearly, a policy it certainly would not continue if it did not find the opera¬ tion to be very much worth its while. Similarly, on the Pacific Coast, the Associated Oil Company began by spon¬ soring football games in the San Fran¬ cisco area only but soon made an agree¬ ment with the Pacific Coast Conference to broadcast all Conference games. The company has broadcast all these games for a number of years now, and in ad¬ dition has negotiated contracts with the leading independent Coast colleges. On the Eastern seaboard, the At¬ lantic Refining Company has been ex¬ panding its coverage of college games for the past ten years. It now broad¬ casts a total of 167 games per season — an average of 17 games per weekend. Incidentally, since 1940, the Atlantic Refining Company has commercially sponsored telecasts of all big football games played in Philadelphia. These are television’s first recorded commer¬ cially sponsored sports telecasts. In the Midwest, there has been no clear pattern of college football broad¬ casting. Among universities making up the Big Ten, Minnesota games are not open for sponsorship. All other schools, however, permit commercial sponsorship of their games. With the exception of Indiana and Purdue, they receive from $15,000 to $20,000 each for broadcast rights. More than any other type of video (Continued on page 141) 20