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SPORTS Indians Test TV Wampum W HEN Gene Tunney’s fight with Tom Heeney drew a paltry $691,014, Tex Rickard blamed radio for the poor attendance. This was in 1928, when Rickard was counting his receipts in even millions and tossing the odd thousands into the waste¬ basket. The promoter vowed that never again would he sell radio rights on a major fight for less than the price of every seat in the house. He kept his word by dying before he could promote another big one, but that isn’t the point. The point is that his attitude toward radio was typical of the sports producers of that day. How,” they were all asking, “can you expect to sell a show that you’re giv¬ ing away free over the air?” In that primitive era before night baseball, club owners dealt with the radio problem according to their own best judgment. Some broadcast freely. Others barred microphones from their parks. Some, like the St. Louis Cardi¬ nals, compromised. Because they drew their biggest crowds on Sundays and a large proportion of those crowds came from the surrounding country¬ side, the Cardinals broadcast all week to steam up the farmers’ interest but silenced the announcer on Sunday to drag dollars through the gate. Ultimately it was discovered that radio was more a box office stimulant than a deterrent, and all promoters took the mufflers off. Today television presents similar problems, and promoters are tinkering with similar solutions. This summer the Cleveland Indians will try an ex¬ periment that the whole sports world will watch avidly. The Indians will broadcast all their games but will telecast only those away from home. Cleveland is an ideal place for this research. It is a one-club city with a park that has held 86,288 customers. It has a season potential of 2,620,627, the American League attendance rec¬ ord set in the championship year of 1948. Since then, Cleveland attendance has declined every season. Thus, assuming that the Indians are pennant contenders, and it seems al¬ most certain that they must remain in the first division, the 1954 figures should furnish an accurate measure of television’s effect upon the gate. Even if the Indians should win the pennant, it is unlikely they would match the attendance record because the present ownership hasn’t the pro¬ motional flair of Bill Veeck, who oper¬ ated the club in 1948. However, if there is a larger revenue increase, traceable to the blackout, than the in¬ come that television could wring from a sponsor, the policy may be adopted by other clubs and other sports. Cold figures like that impress busi¬ nessmen— beg pardon, Mr. Justice, that’s a dirty word. Baseball is a sport. 19