Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth reallylies.
April 27, 1986
Video pirate
disrupts HBO signals.
A video pirate
manages to override the satellite transmission of an HBO movie on this day in
1986. He interrupted the show with a message stating he did not intend to pay
for his HBO service.
April 29, 1961
ABC’s Wide World of Sports premiered.
Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport... the
thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat... the human drama of athletic
competition... This is ABC's Wide
World of Sports!Wide World of Sports was the creation of Edgar
Scherick through his company, Sports Programs, Inc. After selling his
company to ABC, he hired a youngRoone
Arledge to produce the show.
The series' April 29, 1961 debut telecast featured both the Penn and Drake
Relays. Jim McKay (who hosted the program for most of its
history) and Jesse Abramson, the track
and field writer for the New York Herald Tribune, broadcast
from Franklin Field with Bob
Richards as the field
reporter. Jim Simpson called the action
from Drake Stadium with Bill
Flemming working the field.[1]
During its initial season in the spring and summer of 1961, Wide
World of Sports was initially broadcast from 5:00 p.m. to
7:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturdays. Beginning in
1962, it was pushed to 5:00 to 6:30 p.m., and later to 4:30 to
6:00 p.m. Eastern Time to allow ABC affiliates in the Eastern and Central
Time Zonesto carry local early-evening newscasts.
In 1961, Wide World of Sports covered a bowling event
in which Roy Lown beat Pat Patterson. The
broadcast was so successful that in 1962, ABC Sports began covering the Professional Bowlers Tour.
In 1964, Wide World of Sports covered the Oklahoma Rattlesnake
Hunt championships; the following year, ABC premiered outdoor program The American Sportsman, which remained
on the network for nearly 20 years.
In 1973, the Superstars was first televised as a segment
on Wide World of Sports; the following year, the Superstars debuted
as a weekly winter series that lasted for 10 years.
In 1963, ABC Sports producers began selecting the Athlete
of the Year. Its first winner was track
and field star Jim Beatty for being the first to run a
sub-4-minute mile indoors. Through the years, this award was won by such now
legendary athletes of Muhammad Ali, Jim Ryun, Lance
Armstrong, Mario Andretti,Dennis
Conner, Wayne Gretzky, Carl Lewis and Tiger
Woods. The award was discontinued in 2001.
In later years, with the rise of cable
television offering more outlets for sports programming, Wide
World of Sports lost many of the events that had been staples of the
program for many years (many, although not all, of them ended up on ESPN, a sister network
to ABC for most of its existence). Ultimately, on January 3, 1998, Jim McKay
announced that Wide World of Sports, in its traditional anthology
series, had been cancelled after a 37-year run. The Wide World of
Sportsname remained in use afterward as an umbrella title for ABC's weekend
sports programming.
In August 2006, ABC Sports came under the oversight of ESPN, under the
relaunched banner name ESPN on ABC. The Wide World of Sports title
continues to occasionally be revived for Saturday afternoon sports programming
on ABC, most recently during the 140th Belmont Stakes as a tribute to Jim
McKay, following his death in June 2008. Most of ABC's sports programming
since Wide World of Sports ended as a program has been
displaced from ABC and moved to ESPN; the cable network began producing its own
anthology series on Saturday afternoons in 2010, ESPN Sports Saturday, which consists of
documentaries originally featured on ESPN's E:60 and 30 for 30 programs,
and a modified version of the ESPN interactive series SportsNation, titled Winners
Bracket.
May 1, 1931
President
Herbert Hoover officially dedicates New York City's Empire State Building. Less than eight months later, a
television-transmitting antenna had been erected atop the structure (The top
was originally designed as a mooring mast for dirigibles). During the ensuing
36 years, television and FM radio signals have continued to be transmitted from
this location. Today, 22 stations share the site.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
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