The Major League Baseball Game of the Week is the
de facto title for nationally televised coverage of regular season
Major League Baseball games. The Game of the Week has traditionally aired on Saturday afternoons. When the national networks began televising national games of the week, it opened the door for a national audience to see particular clubs. While most teams were broadcast, emphasis was always on the league leaders and the major market franchises that could draw the largest audience.
Beginning in 2010, several of the Saturday games aired in prime time during the spring. These telecasts used an exclusivity window from 7 to 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time, as the network revived a pregame show for these games, airing at 7 p.m. with the game at 7:15.
In 2012, the pregame show returned full-time, prompting another change in scheduling. The normal scheduling in 2012 and 2013 was for the pregame airing at either 12:30 or 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time. The pregame is not a part of Fox's exclusive window, which began with the game telecast starting a half-hour later. The scheduling did not change for the spring prime time games, however, as the scheduling for these games remained the same as in 2010 and 2011.
On July 24, 2012, Matt Yoder of Awful Announcing questioned Fox's need to hire local broadcasters on their national telecasts[7] and therefore, bringing about a perceived sense of favoritism towards one of the participating teams. For example,
Billy Ripken, who played for the
Baltimore Orioles alongside his
Hall of Fame brother
Cal, was roundly criticized for his perceived favoritism towards the Orioles[8] while broadcasting an
Orioles–
Detroit Tigers game (even by actor
Jeff Daniels via
Twitter) for Fox the previous week. The following week came a
Philadelphia Phillies–
San Francisco Giants telecast on Fox, which was called by Phillies play-by-play announcer
Tom McCarthy and former Phillies pitcher
Mitch Williams. McCarthy and Williams were in particular, singled out for their rather downbeat manner of calling a
Matt Cain home run off
Cole Hamels in the top of the 3rd inning. This was contrasted by their more enthusiastic call of Hamels returning the favor with a home run in the bottom half of the inning. In 2019,
Len Kasper, who is currently the voice of the Cubs, broadcast
Cubs-
Nationals on Fox with a rather monotonous tone of voice while calling Nationals home runs.
For the 2014 season, sister cable channel
Fox Sports 1 began providing Major League Baseball game coverage, carrying a Fox Saturday Baseball doubleheader on most weeks. FS1's coverage begins with the pregame show a half-hour before the game, which usually starts at 1 or 4 p.m. Eastern Time. A second game usually follows at either 7 or 8 Eastern Time. If there is a gap between the first and second game, a studio show is not aired in between. All of the telecasts are aired nationally instead of on a regional basis; however, the telecast is not exclusive, unless the game is between two teams that whose games are broadcast on the
Fox Sports regional networks. Prime time games continue to air on Fox, and once again used the 2010 scheduling formula for these telecasts, including full national exclusivity.
In
2014, the
Fox Sports 1 cable network began airing regular-season games over 26 Saturdays. As a result, MLB regular season coverage on the over the air Fox network was reduced to 12 weeks.
For a Saturday afternoon telecast of a
Los Angeles Dodgers/
Chicago Cubs game at
Wrigley Field on August 26, 2000, Fox aired a special "Turn Back the Clock" broadcast[9] to commemorate the 61st anniversary of the first televised baseball game. The broadcast started with a recreation of the television technology of 1939, with play-by-play announcer Joe Buck working alone with a single microphone, a single black-and-white camera, and no graphics; each subsequent half-inning would then see the broadcast "jump ahead in time" to a later era, showing the evolving technologies and presentation of network baseball coverage through the years.
In
2004, Fox's Game of the Week telecasts only appeared three times after August 28, due to ratings competition from
college football (especially since Fox affiliates may have had syndicated college football broadcasts). One unidentified former Fox broadcaster complained by saying "Fox is
MIA on the pennant race, and Joe [Buck] doesn't even do [September 18's]
Red Sox-Yankees. What kind of sport would tolerate that?" By this point,
Joe Buck was unavailable to call baseball games, since he became
Fox's #1 NFL announcer (a job he has held since
2002). The following two seasons saw similar interruptions in Fox's September coverage.
In 2007, Fox began airing games every Saturday during the season. A new scheduling format was devised, in which all of the regional games started simultaneously. Fox moved the pregame, which became part of the exclusive game window, to 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time. All of the Fox games would then start at 3:55 p.m. Eastern Time, regardless of region. This format gave more leeway for teams not being shown on Fox to schedule daytime games. Fox's exclusivity began at the start of the pregame at 3:30 and ran until 7 p.m. Eastern.
In 2007, Joe Buck was only scheduled to call eight regular season MLB games out of a 26-game schedule for Fox (along with a handful of regional
St. Louis Cardinals telecasts on
FSN Midwest).
Fox discontinued its pregame show in 2009, with the telecasts now beginning at 4 p.m. Eastern and the game time being pushed to 4:10. Fox gave up the first half-hour of its exclusivity,[10] with its window now beginning at 4 p.m. Eastern Time. This scheduling formula was used through 2011 for the regular season. Beginning in 2010, several of the Saturday games aired in prime time during the spring. These telecasts used an exclusivity window from 7 to 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time, as the network revived a pregame show for these games, airing at 7 p.m. with the game at 7:15.
CBS initially did not want to start their 1990 coverage[13][14] until after the network had aired that year's
NBA Finals (which was the last time
CBS aired the Finals before the NBA's move to
NBC[15]). Therefore, only 12 regular season telecasts were scheduled[16] The broadcasts would have been each Saturday from June 16 through August 25 and a special Sunday telecast on the weekend of August 11–12 (the
New York Yankees against the
Oakland Athletics in Oakland on both days). Ultimately, four more telecasts were added – two in April[17] and two on the last two Saturdays of the season.
After sustaining huge losses[18][19][20] (CBS claimed to have lost about $55 million[21] in after-taxes revenue in 1990,[22] which would go up to $170 million at the end of its four-year contract) from 1990's abbreviated postseason (which ended with the
Cincinnati Reds shockingly sweeping the defending
World ChampionOakland Athletics in the
World Series), CBS made several notable adjustments for 1991. Regular season telecasts were reduced to a meager handful. In return, pregame shows during the League Championship Series were entirely eliminated, to minimize the ratings damage.
After two years of calling baseball telecasts for CBS,[23] Jack Buck was dismissed in December 1991. According to the
radio veteran Buck, he had a hard time adjusting to the demands of a more constricting television production.[24] CBS felt that Buck should have done more to make himself appear to be a set-up man for lead analyst Tim McCarver.[25][26] Buck's replacement was
Boston Red Sox announcer
Sean McDonough.[27][28]
After Major League Baseball's contract with CBS expired at the end of the 1993 season, the league decided to produce its own in-house[29] telecasts of games,[30] which were then
brokered to air on ABC and NBC. The package[31] included coverage of games in
prime time[32] on selected nights throughout the regular season (under the branding Baseball Night in America),[33] along with coverage of the
postseason and the
World Series.[34] Unlike previous broadcasting arrangements with the league, there was no national "
game of the week"[35] during the regular season;[36] these would be replaced by multiple weekly regional[37] telecasts on certain nights of the week. Additionally, The Baseball Network had exclusive coverage windows; no other broadcaster could televise MLB games during the same night that The Baseball Network was televising games.
After the All-Star Game was complete,[38] ABC took over coverage with what was to be their weekly slate of games.[39] ABC was scheduled to televise six[40] regular season games on Saturdays[41] or Mondays[42] in
prime time. NBC[43][44] would then pick up where ABC left off by televising six more regular season Friday night[45][46] games. Every Baseball Night in America game was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m.
Eastern Time (or 8 p.m.
Pacific Time if the game occurred on the
West Coast[47]). A single starting time gave the networks the opportunity to broadcast one game and then, simultaneously, cut to another game when there was a break in action.
On November 7, 1995,
Major League Baseball reached a television deal with
Fox and
NBC, allowing the former to obtain MLB game rights (assuming
ABC's end of the contract). Fox paid $575 million for the five-year contract, a fraction less of the amount of money that
CBS had paid for the Major League Baseball television rights for the 1990–
1993 seasons.[48][49] Unlike the previous television deal, "
The Baseball Network" (a partnership created through the league's joint contract with
ABC and
NBC that began in the 1994 season), Fox reverted to the format of televising regular season games (approximately 16 weekly telecasts that normally began on
Memorial Day weekend[50]) on Saturday afternoons. Fox did, however, continue a format that The Baseball Network started by offering a selection of games based purely on a viewer's region. Fox's approach has usually been to offer three regionalized telecasts. The initial deal also gave Fox the rights to broadcast the
1996,
1998 and
2000 World Series, the
1997 and
1999 All-Star Games, as well as coverage of the
League Championship Series (shared with NBC) and five
Division Series games each year.
Like its predecessor NBC, Fox determined its Saturday schedule by which MLB franchise was playing a team from one of the three largest television markets – New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago. If there was a game which featured teams from two of these three markets (involving any combination of the
Yankees,
Mets,
Dodgers,
Angels,
Cubs or
White Sox), that game would be aired on the network.
During the
1981 players' strike,[54] NBC used its Saturday Game of the Week time-slot to show a 20-minute strike update, followed by a sports anthology series hosted by
Caitlyn Jenner (then Bruce)[n1 1][55] called NBC Sports: The Summer Season.[56][57]
Even though
Dick Enberg did play-by-play for the
1981 NLCS for NBC (working alongside
Tom Seaver),
Merle Harmon was, for the most part, NBC's backup baseball play-by-play announcer (serving behind Joe Garagiola, who called that year's
ALCS for NBC with Tony Kubek) in 1981. Harmon's broadcast partner during this period was
Ron Luciano.[58] In late 1979, Harmon left the
Milwaukee Brewers completely in favor of a multi-year pact with NBC. Harmon saw the NBC deal as a perfect opportunity since according to The Milwaukee Journal he would make more money, get more exposure, and do less traveling. At NBC, Harmon did SportsWorld, the backup Game of the Week, and served as a field reporter for the
1980 World Series. Most of all, Harmon had hoped to cover the American-boycotted
1980 Summer Olympics from Moscow. After NBC pulled out of their scheduled coverage of the 1980 Summer Olympics, Harmon considered it to be "a great letdown." To add insult to injury, NBC fired Harmon in 1982 in favor of Bob Costas.[59] It was in 1982 that Costas started working the NBC backup games on a full-time basis, with former
Oakland A's third baseman
Sal Bando as his color man.
According to his autobiography, Oh My,[60] Dick Enberg (then the lead play-by-play voice for The NFL on NBC) was informed by NBC that he would become the lead play-by-play voice of the Major League Baseball Game of the Week beginning with the
1982 World Series (sharing the play-by-play duties for that game with Joe Garagiola, alongside analyst Tony Kubek) and through subsequent regular seasons. Enberg wrote that on his football trips, he would read every edition of The Sporting News to make sure he was current with all the baseball news and notes. He then met with NBC executives in September 1982, who informed him that Vin Scully[61][62] was in negotiations to be their lead baseball play-by-play announcer (teaming with Garagiola, while Kubek would team with Bob Costas) and began with the network in the spring of 1983. Therefore, rather than throw him in randomly for one World Series, Enberg wrote that he hosted the pre-game/post-game shows while the team of Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek did the games. According to the book, Enberg was not pleased about the decision (since he loved being the
Los Angeles Angels' radio voice in the 1970s and was eager to return to baseball) but the fact that NBC was bringing in Scully, arguably baseball's best announcer, was understandable. Enberg added that NBC also gave him a significant pay increase as a pseudo-apology for not coming through on the promise to make him the lead baseball play-by-play announcer.
On April 7, 1983, Major League Baseball agreed to terms with ABC and NBC on a six-year television package, worth $1.2 billion. The two networks would continue to alternate coverage of the
playoffs (ABC in even-numbered years and NBC in odd-numbered years), World Series (ABC would televise the World Series in odd-numbered years and NBC in even-numbered years) and
All-Star Game (ABC would televise the All-Star Game in even-numbered years and NBC in odd-numbered years) through the 1989 season, with each of the 26 clubs receiving $7 million per year in return (even if no fans showed up). This was a substantial increase over the last package, in which each club was being paid $1.9 million per year. ABC contributed $575 million for the rights to televise prime time and Sunday afternoon regular season games and NBC paid $550 million for the rights to broadcast 30 Saturday afternoon games.[63]
1984 was the first year that the Game of the Week was not subject to blackout. NBC and ABC generally still aired two games each week, with a primary game carried to most of the country and a secondary game to mostly the markets that would carry that game. This was mostly done for insurance in the event that a game was
rained out. During the 1970s and early 1980s, many of the "rainout insurance" games involved the
Houston Astros since that team played in a
domed ballpark. Therefore, if the Astros were at home on a given
Saturday or
Monday night, then it was a safe bet that the game would be shown on network television, due to the Astros being the only "dome" team (until the
Seattle Mariners began play in the
Kingdome in
1977).
Starting in
1986,
Jon Miller would call games for NBC on their occasional doubleheader weeks. If not that, then Miller would appear on Saturday afternoon regionals the day after NBC's occasional prime time telecasts.
After calling the
1988 World Series with Vin Scully, Joe Garagiola resigned from NBC Sports.[64][65][66] Although it was not official at the time, NBC was on the verge of losing the television rights to cover Major League Baseball to
CBS.[67][68][69][70] Garagiola claimed that NBC left him "twisting" while he was trying to renegotiate his deal. Joe Garagiola was replaced by Tom Seaver[71][72] for the
1989 season.[73]
In 1971,
Sandy Koufax signed a ten-year contract with NBC for $1 million to serve as a broadcaster on the Saturday Game of the Week. Koufax never felt comfortable being in front of the camera, and quit before the 1973 season.
Starting in 1975, Joe Garagiola and Curt Gowdy alternated as the Saturday Game of Week play-by-play announcers with Tony Kubek doing color analysis. Then on weeks in which NBC had Monday Night Baseball, Gowdy and Garagiola worked together. One would call play-by-play for 4½ innings, the other would handle color analysis. Then in the bottom of the 5th inning, their roles switched. Ultimately, in November 1975,
Chrysler forced NBC to totally remove Curt Gowdy from NBC's top baseball team. Instead, the company wanted their spokesman, Joe Garagiola, to call all the main regular season games, All-Star Games (when NBC had them), the top League Championship Series (when NBC had it), and the World Series (when NBC had it).
In
1960, ABC typically did three games a week. Two of the games were always from the
Eastern or
Central Time Zone. The late games (no
doubleheaders) were usually
San Francisco Giants[82] or
Los Angeles Dodgers' home games. However, the
Milwaukee Braves[83] used to start many of their Saturday home games late in the afternoon. So if the Giants and Dodgers were both the road at the same time, ABC still would be able to show a late game.
Jerry Coleman[84] hosted the pregame show for CBS' Game of the Week broadcasts.
Despite temporarily losing the Game of the Week package in
1961, ABC still televised several games in
prime time (with Jack Buck returning to call the action). This occurred as
Roger Maris[85][86] was poised to tie and subsequently break
Babe Ruth's regular season home run record of 60. As with all Major League Baseball games in those days, the action was totally
blacked out[87] of major league markets. As a matter of fact, as documented in the
HBO film 61*, the Maris family was welcomed into ABC's
Kansas City, Missouri affiliate
KMBC-TV so they could watch the in-house feed of the game, which was blacked out of Kansas City.
In
1962, CBS dropped the Sunday baseball Game of the Week[88] once the
NFLseason started, dropping the option clause for
affiliates to carry baseball or football in place since
1957.
By
1964,[89] CBS' Dean and Reese called games from Yankee Stadium,
Wrigley Field,
St. Louis,
Philadelphia and
Baltimore. The New York Yankees got a $550,000 share of CBS' $895,000. Six clubs that exclusively played nationally televised games on NBC were paid $1.2 million.
In
1965, ABC provided the first-ever nationwide baseball coverage with weekly Saturday broadcasts[90] on a regional basis. ABC paid
$5.7 million for the rights to the 28 Saturday/holiday Games of the Week. ABC's deal[91][92] covered all of the teams except the
New York Yankees and
Philadelphia Phillies[93] (who had their own television deals) and called for two regionalized games on Saturdays,
Independence Day, and
Labor Day.[94] Each Saturday, ABC broadcast two 2 p.m. games and one 5 p.m. game for the
Pacific Time Zone. ABC
blacked out the games in the home cities of the clubs playing those games.[95] Major League Baseball however, had a TV deal with
NBC for the
All-Star Game and
World Series. At the end of the season, ABC declined to exercise its $6.5 million option for
1966, citing poor
ratings,[96][97] especially in New York.
Until 1965 (when Major League Baseball made its first ever, league-wide regular-season network television deal with ABC), there was no league-wide national television package for regular season Major League Baseball games. As a result, teams, if they so desired, could sell the rights to the networks. Also prior to 1965, regular season Major League Baseball telecasts broadcast by networks had to be
blacked-out in cities with league franchises. More to the point, by around the year prior, thanks to
expansion (in
1960 and
1961), regular season MLB games shown on network television were blacked out in most major markets. However, the network Games of the Week, up until the late 1980s, still could not be seen in the two cities whose local teams were playing in each respective game.
From 1965 until the late 1980s, networks would cover two Saturday afternoon games each week: one that went to most of the network (a "primary game"), and the second being seen only in the home markets of the two teams playing in the network's "primary" game. Although the "primary" game would not be televised in each team's home markets,
local television rights-holders in those cities were free to broadcast that game. The manner that this worked allowed, for instance, a network's two Saturday afternoon Games of the Week involving the
New York Yankees at the Boston Red Sox serving as the primary game and
St. Louis Cardinals at the Chicago Cubs being the secondary game. The Yankees-Red Sox game would as a result, be seen everywhere except in New York City, Boston and possibly markets adjacent to those cities. Ultimately, those markets got the Cardinals-Cubs game instead.
In
1966, the
New York Yankees, which in the
year prior played 21 Games of the Week for CBS (which had actually just purchased the Yankees[98][99]), joined NBC's television package. The new package under NBC called for 28 games compared to the 123 aired across the three networks in
1960.
The
New York Yankees, which, the year before, had played 21 Games of the Week for CBS, joined NBC's package in 1966. The new package under NBC called for 28 games, as compared to the 123 combined among three networks during the 1960s. On October 19, 1966,
NBC signed a three-year contract with Major League Baseball. As previously mentioned, the year before, Major League Baseball sold an exclusive league-wide television package for the rights to the Saturday-Sunday Game of the Week to ABC. NBC covered only the
All-Star Game and
World Series in 1965. In addition, a previous deal limited CBS to covering only twelve weekends when its new subsidiary, the
New York Yankees, played at home. As previously mentioned, before 1965, NBC aired a slate of Saturday afternoon games beginning in 1957. Under the new deal, NBC paid roughly US$6 million per year for the 25 Games of the Week,[100] $6.1 million for the
1967 World Series and
All-Star Game, and $6.5 million for the
1968 World Series and
1968 All-Star Game. This brought the total value of the contract (which included three Monday night telecasts such as a
Labor Day 1966 contest between the
San Francisco Giants and
Los Angeles Dodgers) up to $30.6 million.
On April 16, 1966, in New York City, about 50 baseball, network, and advertising officials discussed NBC's first year with the Game of the Week. New York could not get a primary match-up between the
Detroit Tigers and
New York Yankees with Curt Gowdy and Pee Wee Reese calling the action because of local blackout rules. Instead, that market received a backup game (or "'B' game") featuring Tony Kubek and
Jim Simpson calling a game between the
Cincinnati Reds and
Chicago Cubs. That rule would be eliminated after the 1983 season.
In April 1953, ABC-TV executive
Edgar J. Scherick set out to sell teams rights but instead, only got the
Philadelphia Athletics,
Cleveland Indians,[103] and
Chicago White Sox[104][105] to sign on.[106] These were not "national" broadcast contracts since they were assembled through negotiations with individual teams to telecast games from their home parks. It was until the
Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, that antitrust laws barred "pooled rights" TV contracts negotiated with a central league broadcasting authority.
CBS took over the Saturday Game in
1955 (the rights were actually set up through the
Falstaff Brewing Corporation[107]) retaining Dean/Blattner and McColgan/Finnegan as the announcing crews (as well as
Gene Kirby, who produced the Dean/Blattner games and alternated with them on play-by-play) and adding Sunday coverage in
1957.
From 1958 to 1960, NBC aired a special regional feed of its games in the
southeast, where the network had a different sponsor (such as
National Bohemian beer) than for the rest of the country. This feed featured its own announcing team, with
Chuck Thompson calling the games with
Bill Veeck (1958) and
Al Rosen (1959–60). NBC never had a true backup game until 1966, when the network got exclusivity for the Game of the Week. In the process, NBC brought in
Curt Gowdy and
Pee Wee Reese for the primary game, and
Jim Simpson and
Tony Kubek for the alternate game (which was always shown in the markets of teams playing in the primary game).
As of 2011, the primary ESPN Radio crew for Sunday Night Baseball consists of
play-by-play announcer
Jon Sciambi and
color analystChris Singleton. In 2010, Sciambi succeeded
Gary Thorne, who had called play-by-play in 2008–09; Thorne had succeeded
Dan Shulman, did so from 2002–07; Shulman, in turn, had been preceded by
Charley Steiner from 1998–2002. Singleton succeeded
Dave Campbell, who was an analyst from 1999–2010. Campbell replaced
Kevin Kennedy as analyst in 1999, after the latter had worked with Steiner in the network's inaugural season of coverage.
Marc Kestecher currently serves as the network's primary Baseball Tonight studio host; he was preceded by
Joe D'Ambrosio from 1998–2007.
As of 2018, Dan Shulman calls the
World Series and one of the two
League Championship Series with Singleton each year, while Sciambi calls the other LCS with Sunday Night Baseball TV analyst
Jessica Mendoza. Various other announcers work the network's secondary regular-season,
Wild Card Game and
Division Series broadcasts as needed. Sciambi and Singleton also call the
All-Star Game and Home Run Derby each year.
In
1985,[118][119] CBS Radio started broadcasting a weekly Game of the Week.[120] CBS Radio usually did two games each Saturday, one on the afternoons and another during the evenings. Typically,
CBS' markets aired only the afternoon broadcasts. The games covered varied from the ones
NBC-TV were offering at the time to games outside of NBC's sight. One notable exception was
KCBS in
San Francisco, who almost always did the evening games. In
1994, just before the
strike,
KNBR carried the broadcasts in San Francisco and finally aired some of CBS' afternoon games. However, following the strike, KNBR dropped CBS' regular season broadcasts, and with the exception of
1995, when all playoff games were played at the same time, they usually only carried one or two
Division Series games on days when there were three games played.
In 1957, NBC replaced Mutual as the exclusive national radio broadcaster for the World Series and All-Star Game. The network would continue in this role through 1975, with CBS taking over the rights the following year. NBC Radio did not air regular season games during this period (save for the three-game National League
pennant playoff series in
1959 and
1962); nor did the network cover the League Championship Series from 1969 to 1975, those series instead having local team radio broadcasts syndicated nationally over
ad hoc networks.
In the 1940s and 1950s,
Wes Wise was a play-by-play sports announcer for
Gordon McLendon's
Liberty Broadcasting System radio network,[122] which mainly broadcast live recreations of
Major League Baseball games by means of broadcasters like Wise following the action via
Western Unionticker tape reports, and then relaying the plays to the listening audience in a more lively style that included studio sound effects meant to simulate the ballgames.
According to
Time magazine articles of the era, McLendon only paid Major League Baseball
$1,000.00 per year for the rights to broadcast the games, but in 1951, the leagues raised the price to $250,000.00 per year, and prohibited broadcasts in any city which had a
minor league franchise and in the
northeastern and
midwestern United States.[123]
Sports were the lifeblood of the Liberty Broadcasting System. Restrictions on Major League Baseball broadcasts in minor league franchise areas, as well as bans on
National Football League broadcasts within a 75-mile range of league cities, were the one-two blow which ended the network. Since the baseball games were a major draw for both listeners and affiliates, the
blackout was a disaster for the fledgling company, which had only posted modest profits during its first few years of operation. More than 100 stations left the network, and, faced with mounting debts, on May 16, 1952, the network ceased broadcasting.
Following the lead of the rival
Liberty Broadcasting System, Mutual also aired regular-season Game of the Day broadcasts (a precursor to television's Game of the Week concept) to non-major-league cities throughout the 1940s and 1950s.
^Dubrow, Rick (April 16, 1965). "Baseball in New Venture". Beaver County Times. United Press International. p. 7.
^Adams, Val (August 19, 1965). "ABC Doubtful About Televising Baseball in '66". New York Times. p. 61.
^Reichler, Joe (August 22, 1965). "TV Baseball Has Problems". The Herald-Tribune. Associated Press. p. 4D.
^Jack Gould (August 14, 1964). "Yank Deal's TV Rating; Purchase by C.B.S. May Be Only First Of Many Under a Not-So-New Concept". The New York Times. p. 14.
The Major League Baseball Game of the Week is the
de facto title for nationally televised coverage of regular season
Major League Baseball games. The Game of the Week has traditionally aired on Saturday afternoons. When the national networks began televising national games of the week, it opened the door for a national audience to see particular clubs. While most teams were broadcast, emphasis was always on the league leaders and the major market franchises that could draw the largest audience.
Beginning in 2010, several of the Saturday games aired in prime time during the spring. These telecasts used an exclusivity window from 7 to 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time, as the network revived a pregame show for these games, airing at 7 p.m. with the game at 7:15.
In 2012, the pregame show returned full-time, prompting another change in scheduling. The normal scheduling in 2012 and 2013 was for the pregame airing at either 12:30 or 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time. The pregame is not a part of Fox's exclusive window, which began with the game telecast starting a half-hour later. The scheduling did not change for the spring prime time games, however, as the scheduling for these games remained the same as in 2010 and 2011.
On July 24, 2012, Matt Yoder of Awful Announcing questioned Fox's need to hire local broadcasters on their national telecasts[7] and therefore, bringing about a perceived sense of favoritism towards one of the participating teams. For example,
Billy Ripken, who played for the
Baltimore Orioles alongside his
Hall of Fame brother
Cal, was roundly criticized for his perceived favoritism towards the Orioles[8] while broadcasting an
Orioles–
Detroit Tigers game (even by actor
Jeff Daniels via
Twitter) for Fox the previous week. The following week came a
Philadelphia Phillies–
San Francisco Giants telecast on Fox, which was called by Phillies play-by-play announcer
Tom McCarthy and former Phillies pitcher
Mitch Williams. McCarthy and Williams were in particular, singled out for their rather downbeat manner of calling a
Matt Cain home run off
Cole Hamels in the top of the 3rd inning. This was contrasted by their more enthusiastic call of Hamels returning the favor with a home run in the bottom half of the inning. In 2019,
Len Kasper, who is currently the voice of the Cubs, broadcast
Cubs-
Nationals on Fox with a rather monotonous tone of voice while calling Nationals home runs.
For the 2014 season, sister cable channel
Fox Sports 1 began providing Major League Baseball game coverage, carrying a Fox Saturday Baseball doubleheader on most weeks. FS1's coverage begins with the pregame show a half-hour before the game, which usually starts at 1 or 4 p.m. Eastern Time. A second game usually follows at either 7 or 8 Eastern Time. If there is a gap between the first and second game, a studio show is not aired in between. All of the telecasts are aired nationally instead of on a regional basis; however, the telecast is not exclusive, unless the game is between two teams that whose games are broadcast on the
Fox Sports regional networks. Prime time games continue to air on Fox, and once again used the 2010 scheduling formula for these telecasts, including full national exclusivity.
In
2014, the
Fox Sports 1 cable network began airing regular-season games over 26 Saturdays. As a result, MLB regular season coverage on the over the air Fox network was reduced to 12 weeks.
For a Saturday afternoon telecast of a
Los Angeles Dodgers/
Chicago Cubs game at
Wrigley Field on August 26, 2000, Fox aired a special "Turn Back the Clock" broadcast[9] to commemorate the 61st anniversary of the first televised baseball game. The broadcast started with a recreation of the television technology of 1939, with play-by-play announcer Joe Buck working alone with a single microphone, a single black-and-white camera, and no graphics; each subsequent half-inning would then see the broadcast "jump ahead in time" to a later era, showing the evolving technologies and presentation of network baseball coverage through the years.
In
2004, Fox's Game of the Week telecasts only appeared three times after August 28, due to ratings competition from
college football (especially since Fox affiliates may have had syndicated college football broadcasts). One unidentified former Fox broadcaster complained by saying "Fox is
MIA on the pennant race, and Joe [Buck] doesn't even do [September 18's]
Red Sox-Yankees. What kind of sport would tolerate that?" By this point,
Joe Buck was unavailable to call baseball games, since he became
Fox's #1 NFL announcer (a job he has held since
2002). The following two seasons saw similar interruptions in Fox's September coverage.
In 2007, Fox began airing games every Saturday during the season. A new scheduling format was devised, in which all of the regional games started simultaneously. Fox moved the pregame, which became part of the exclusive game window, to 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time. All of the Fox games would then start at 3:55 p.m. Eastern Time, regardless of region. This format gave more leeway for teams not being shown on Fox to schedule daytime games. Fox's exclusivity began at the start of the pregame at 3:30 and ran until 7 p.m. Eastern.
In 2007, Joe Buck was only scheduled to call eight regular season MLB games out of a 26-game schedule for Fox (along with a handful of regional
St. Louis Cardinals telecasts on
FSN Midwest).
Fox discontinued its pregame show in 2009, with the telecasts now beginning at 4 p.m. Eastern and the game time being pushed to 4:10. Fox gave up the first half-hour of its exclusivity,[10] with its window now beginning at 4 p.m. Eastern Time. This scheduling formula was used through 2011 for the regular season. Beginning in 2010, several of the Saturday games aired in prime time during the spring. These telecasts used an exclusivity window from 7 to 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time, as the network revived a pregame show for these games, airing at 7 p.m. with the game at 7:15.
CBS initially did not want to start their 1990 coverage[13][14] until after the network had aired that year's
NBA Finals (which was the last time
CBS aired the Finals before the NBA's move to
NBC[15]). Therefore, only 12 regular season telecasts were scheduled[16] The broadcasts would have been each Saturday from June 16 through August 25 and a special Sunday telecast on the weekend of August 11–12 (the
New York Yankees against the
Oakland Athletics in Oakland on both days). Ultimately, four more telecasts were added – two in April[17] and two on the last two Saturdays of the season.
After sustaining huge losses[18][19][20] (CBS claimed to have lost about $55 million[21] in after-taxes revenue in 1990,[22] which would go up to $170 million at the end of its four-year contract) from 1990's abbreviated postseason (which ended with the
Cincinnati Reds shockingly sweeping the defending
World ChampionOakland Athletics in the
World Series), CBS made several notable adjustments for 1991. Regular season telecasts were reduced to a meager handful. In return, pregame shows during the League Championship Series were entirely eliminated, to minimize the ratings damage.
After two years of calling baseball telecasts for CBS,[23] Jack Buck was dismissed in December 1991. According to the
radio veteran Buck, he had a hard time adjusting to the demands of a more constricting television production.[24] CBS felt that Buck should have done more to make himself appear to be a set-up man for lead analyst Tim McCarver.[25][26] Buck's replacement was
Boston Red Sox announcer
Sean McDonough.[27][28]
After Major League Baseball's contract with CBS expired at the end of the 1993 season, the league decided to produce its own in-house[29] telecasts of games,[30] which were then
brokered to air on ABC and NBC. The package[31] included coverage of games in
prime time[32] on selected nights throughout the regular season (under the branding Baseball Night in America),[33] along with coverage of the
postseason and the
World Series.[34] Unlike previous broadcasting arrangements with the league, there was no national "
game of the week"[35] during the regular season;[36] these would be replaced by multiple weekly regional[37] telecasts on certain nights of the week. Additionally, The Baseball Network had exclusive coverage windows; no other broadcaster could televise MLB games during the same night that The Baseball Network was televising games.
After the All-Star Game was complete,[38] ABC took over coverage with what was to be their weekly slate of games.[39] ABC was scheduled to televise six[40] regular season games on Saturdays[41] or Mondays[42] in
prime time. NBC[43][44] would then pick up where ABC left off by televising six more regular season Friday night[45][46] games. Every Baseball Night in America game was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m.
Eastern Time (or 8 p.m.
Pacific Time if the game occurred on the
West Coast[47]). A single starting time gave the networks the opportunity to broadcast one game and then, simultaneously, cut to another game when there was a break in action.
On November 7, 1995,
Major League Baseball reached a television deal with
Fox and
NBC, allowing the former to obtain MLB game rights (assuming
ABC's end of the contract). Fox paid $575 million for the five-year contract, a fraction less of the amount of money that
CBS had paid for the Major League Baseball television rights for the 1990–
1993 seasons.[48][49] Unlike the previous television deal, "
The Baseball Network" (a partnership created through the league's joint contract with
ABC and
NBC that began in the 1994 season), Fox reverted to the format of televising regular season games (approximately 16 weekly telecasts that normally began on
Memorial Day weekend[50]) on Saturday afternoons. Fox did, however, continue a format that The Baseball Network started by offering a selection of games based purely on a viewer's region. Fox's approach has usually been to offer three regionalized telecasts. The initial deal also gave Fox the rights to broadcast the
1996,
1998 and
2000 World Series, the
1997 and
1999 All-Star Games, as well as coverage of the
League Championship Series (shared with NBC) and five
Division Series games each year.
Like its predecessor NBC, Fox determined its Saturday schedule by which MLB franchise was playing a team from one of the three largest television markets – New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago. If there was a game which featured teams from two of these three markets (involving any combination of the
Yankees,
Mets,
Dodgers,
Angels,
Cubs or
White Sox), that game would be aired on the network.
During the
1981 players' strike,[54] NBC used its Saturday Game of the Week time-slot to show a 20-minute strike update, followed by a sports anthology series hosted by
Caitlyn Jenner (then Bruce)[n1 1][55] called NBC Sports: The Summer Season.[56][57]
Even though
Dick Enberg did play-by-play for the
1981 NLCS for NBC (working alongside
Tom Seaver),
Merle Harmon was, for the most part, NBC's backup baseball play-by-play announcer (serving behind Joe Garagiola, who called that year's
ALCS for NBC with Tony Kubek) in 1981. Harmon's broadcast partner during this period was
Ron Luciano.[58] In late 1979, Harmon left the
Milwaukee Brewers completely in favor of a multi-year pact with NBC. Harmon saw the NBC deal as a perfect opportunity since according to The Milwaukee Journal he would make more money, get more exposure, and do less traveling. At NBC, Harmon did SportsWorld, the backup Game of the Week, and served as a field reporter for the
1980 World Series. Most of all, Harmon had hoped to cover the American-boycotted
1980 Summer Olympics from Moscow. After NBC pulled out of their scheduled coverage of the 1980 Summer Olympics, Harmon considered it to be "a great letdown." To add insult to injury, NBC fired Harmon in 1982 in favor of Bob Costas.[59] It was in 1982 that Costas started working the NBC backup games on a full-time basis, with former
Oakland A's third baseman
Sal Bando as his color man.
According to his autobiography, Oh My,[60] Dick Enberg (then the lead play-by-play voice for The NFL on NBC) was informed by NBC that he would become the lead play-by-play voice of the Major League Baseball Game of the Week beginning with the
1982 World Series (sharing the play-by-play duties for that game with Joe Garagiola, alongside analyst Tony Kubek) and through subsequent regular seasons. Enberg wrote that on his football trips, he would read every edition of The Sporting News to make sure he was current with all the baseball news and notes. He then met with NBC executives in September 1982, who informed him that Vin Scully[61][62] was in negotiations to be their lead baseball play-by-play announcer (teaming with Garagiola, while Kubek would team with Bob Costas) and began with the network in the spring of 1983. Therefore, rather than throw him in randomly for one World Series, Enberg wrote that he hosted the pre-game/post-game shows while the team of Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek did the games. According to the book, Enberg was not pleased about the decision (since he loved being the
Los Angeles Angels' radio voice in the 1970s and was eager to return to baseball) but the fact that NBC was bringing in Scully, arguably baseball's best announcer, was understandable. Enberg added that NBC also gave him a significant pay increase as a pseudo-apology for not coming through on the promise to make him the lead baseball play-by-play announcer.
On April 7, 1983, Major League Baseball agreed to terms with ABC and NBC on a six-year television package, worth $1.2 billion. The two networks would continue to alternate coverage of the
playoffs (ABC in even-numbered years and NBC in odd-numbered years), World Series (ABC would televise the World Series in odd-numbered years and NBC in even-numbered years) and
All-Star Game (ABC would televise the All-Star Game in even-numbered years and NBC in odd-numbered years) through the 1989 season, with each of the 26 clubs receiving $7 million per year in return (even if no fans showed up). This was a substantial increase over the last package, in which each club was being paid $1.9 million per year. ABC contributed $575 million for the rights to televise prime time and Sunday afternoon regular season games and NBC paid $550 million for the rights to broadcast 30 Saturday afternoon games.[63]
1984 was the first year that the Game of the Week was not subject to blackout. NBC and ABC generally still aired two games each week, with a primary game carried to most of the country and a secondary game to mostly the markets that would carry that game. This was mostly done for insurance in the event that a game was
rained out. During the 1970s and early 1980s, many of the "rainout insurance" games involved the
Houston Astros since that team played in a
domed ballpark. Therefore, if the Astros were at home on a given
Saturday or
Monday night, then it was a safe bet that the game would be shown on network television, due to the Astros being the only "dome" team (until the
Seattle Mariners began play in the
Kingdome in
1977).
Starting in
1986,
Jon Miller would call games for NBC on their occasional doubleheader weeks. If not that, then Miller would appear on Saturday afternoon regionals the day after NBC's occasional prime time telecasts.
After calling the
1988 World Series with Vin Scully, Joe Garagiola resigned from NBC Sports.[64][65][66] Although it was not official at the time, NBC was on the verge of losing the television rights to cover Major League Baseball to
CBS.[67][68][69][70] Garagiola claimed that NBC left him "twisting" while he was trying to renegotiate his deal. Joe Garagiola was replaced by Tom Seaver[71][72] for the
1989 season.[73]
In 1971,
Sandy Koufax signed a ten-year contract with NBC for $1 million to serve as a broadcaster on the Saturday Game of the Week. Koufax never felt comfortable being in front of the camera, and quit before the 1973 season.
Starting in 1975, Joe Garagiola and Curt Gowdy alternated as the Saturday Game of Week play-by-play announcers with Tony Kubek doing color analysis. Then on weeks in which NBC had Monday Night Baseball, Gowdy and Garagiola worked together. One would call play-by-play for 4½ innings, the other would handle color analysis. Then in the bottom of the 5th inning, their roles switched. Ultimately, in November 1975,
Chrysler forced NBC to totally remove Curt Gowdy from NBC's top baseball team. Instead, the company wanted their spokesman, Joe Garagiola, to call all the main regular season games, All-Star Games (when NBC had them), the top League Championship Series (when NBC had it), and the World Series (when NBC had it).
In
1960, ABC typically did three games a week. Two of the games were always from the
Eastern or
Central Time Zone. The late games (no
doubleheaders) were usually
San Francisco Giants[82] or
Los Angeles Dodgers' home games. However, the
Milwaukee Braves[83] used to start many of their Saturday home games late in the afternoon. So if the Giants and Dodgers were both the road at the same time, ABC still would be able to show a late game.
Jerry Coleman[84] hosted the pregame show for CBS' Game of the Week broadcasts.
Despite temporarily losing the Game of the Week package in
1961, ABC still televised several games in
prime time (with Jack Buck returning to call the action). This occurred as
Roger Maris[85][86] was poised to tie and subsequently break
Babe Ruth's regular season home run record of 60. As with all Major League Baseball games in those days, the action was totally
blacked out[87] of major league markets. As a matter of fact, as documented in the
HBO film 61*, the Maris family was welcomed into ABC's
Kansas City, Missouri affiliate
KMBC-TV so they could watch the in-house feed of the game, which was blacked out of Kansas City.
In
1962, CBS dropped the Sunday baseball Game of the Week[88] once the
NFLseason started, dropping the option clause for
affiliates to carry baseball or football in place since
1957.
By
1964,[89] CBS' Dean and Reese called games from Yankee Stadium,
Wrigley Field,
St. Louis,
Philadelphia and
Baltimore. The New York Yankees got a $550,000 share of CBS' $895,000. Six clubs that exclusively played nationally televised games on NBC were paid $1.2 million.
In
1965, ABC provided the first-ever nationwide baseball coverage with weekly Saturday broadcasts[90] on a regional basis. ABC paid
$5.7 million for the rights to the 28 Saturday/holiday Games of the Week. ABC's deal[91][92] covered all of the teams except the
New York Yankees and
Philadelphia Phillies[93] (who had their own television deals) and called for two regionalized games on Saturdays,
Independence Day, and
Labor Day.[94] Each Saturday, ABC broadcast two 2 p.m. games and one 5 p.m. game for the
Pacific Time Zone. ABC
blacked out the games in the home cities of the clubs playing those games.[95] Major League Baseball however, had a TV deal with
NBC for the
All-Star Game and
World Series. At the end of the season, ABC declined to exercise its $6.5 million option for
1966, citing poor
ratings,[96][97] especially in New York.
Until 1965 (when Major League Baseball made its first ever, league-wide regular-season network television deal with ABC), there was no league-wide national television package for regular season Major League Baseball games. As a result, teams, if they so desired, could sell the rights to the networks. Also prior to 1965, regular season Major League Baseball telecasts broadcast by networks had to be
blacked-out in cities with league franchises. More to the point, by around the year prior, thanks to
expansion (in
1960 and
1961), regular season MLB games shown on network television were blacked out in most major markets. However, the network Games of the Week, up until the late 1980s, still could not be seen in the two cities whose local teams were playing in each respective game.
From 1965 until the late 1980s, networks would cover two Saturday afternoon games each week: one that went to most of the network (a "primary game"), and the second being seen only in the home markets of the two teams playing in the network's "primary" game. Although the "primary" game would not be televised in each team's home markets,
local television rights-holders in those cities were free to broadcast that game. The manner that this worked allowed, for instance, a network's two Saturday afternoon Games of the Week involving the
New York Yankees at the Boston Red Sox serving as the primary game and
St. Louis Cardinals at the Chicago Cubs being the secondary game. The Yankees-Red Sox game would as a result, be seen everywhere except in New York City, Boston and possibly markets adjacent to those cities. Ultimately, those markets got the Cardinals-Cubs game instead.
In
1966, the
New York Yankees, which in the
year prior played 21 Games of the Week for CBS (which had actually just purchased the Yankees[98][99]), joined NBC's television package. The new package under NBC called for 28 games compared to the 123 aired across the three networks in
1960.
The
New York Yankees, which, the year before, had played 21 Games of the Week for CBS, joined NBC's package in 1966. The new package under NBC called for 28 games, as compared to the 123 combined among three networks during the 1960s. On October 19, 1966,
NBC signed a three-year contract with Major League Baseball. As previously mentioned, the year before, Major League Baseball sold an exclusive league-wide television package for the rights to the Saturday-Sunday Game of the Week to ABC. NBC covered only the
All-Star Game and
World Series in 1965. In addition, a previous deal limited CBS to covering only twelve weekends when its new subsidiary, the
New York Yankees, played at home. As previously mentioned, before 1965, NBC aired a slate of Saturday afternoon games beginning in 1957. Under the new deal, NBC paid roughly US$6 million per year for the 25 Games of the Week,[100] $6.1 million for the
1967 World Series and
All-Star Game, and $6.5 million for the
1968 World Series and
1968 All-Star Game. This brought the total value of the contract (which included three Monday night telecasts such as a
Labor Day 1966 contest between the
San Francisco Giants and
Los Angeles Dodgers) up to $30.6 million.
On April 16, 1966, in New York City, about 50 baseball, network, and advertising officials discussed NBC's first year with the Game of the Week. New York could not get a primary match-up between the
Detroit Tigers and
New York Yankees with Curt Gowdy and Pee Wee Reese calling the action because of local blackout rules. Instead, that market received a backup game (or "'B' game") featuring Tony Kubek and
Jim Simpson calling a game between the
Cincinnati Reds and
Chicago Cubs. That rule would be eliminated after the 1983 season.
In April 1953, ABC-TV executive
Edgar J. Scherick set out to sell teams rights but instead, only got the
Philadelphia Athletics,
Cleveland Indians,[103] and
Chicago White Sox[104][105] to sign on.[106] These were not "national" broadcast contracts since they were assembled through negotiations with individual teams to telecast games from their home parks. It was until the
Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, that antitrust laws barred "pooled rights" TV contracts negotiated with a central league broadcasting authority.
CBS took over the Saturday Game in
1955 (the rights were actually set up through the
Falstaff Brewing Corporation[107]) retaining Dean/Blattner and McColgan/Finnegan as the announcing crews (as well as
Gene Kirby, who produced the Dean/Blattner games and alternated with them on play-by-play) and adding Sunday coverage in
1957.
From 1958 to 1960, NBC aired a special regional feed of its games in the
southeast, where the network had a different sponsor (such as
National Bohemian beer) than for the rest of the country. This feed featured its own announcing team, with
Chuck Thompson calling the games with
Bill Veeck (1958) and
Al Rosen (1959–60). NBC never had a true backup game until 1966, when the network got exclusivity for the Game of the Week. In the process, NBC brought in
Curt Gowdy and
Pee Wee Reese for the primary game, and
Jim Simpson and
Tony Kubek for the alternate game (which was always shown in the markets of teams playing in the primary game).
As of 2011, the primary ESPN Radio crew for Sunday Night Baseball consists of
play-by-play announcer
Jon Sciambi and
color analystChris Singleton. In 2010, Sciambi succeeded
Gary Thorne, who had called play-by-play in 2008–09; Thorne had succeeded
Dan Shulman, did so from 2002–07; Shulman, in turn, had been preceded by
Charley Steiner from 1998–2002. Singleton succeeded
Dave Campbell, who was an analyst from 1999–2010. Campbell replaced
Kevin Kennedy as analyst in 1999, after the latter had worked with Steiner in the network's inaugural season of coverage.
Marc Kestecher currently serves as the network's primary Baseball Tonight studio host; he was preceded by
Joe D'Ambrosio from 1998–2007.
As of 2018, Dan Shulman calls the
World Series and one of the two
League Championship Series with Singleton each year, while Sciambi calls the other LCS with Sunday Night Baseball TV analyst
Jessica Mendoza. Various other announcers work the network's secondary regular-season,
Wild Card Game and
Division Series broadcasts as needed. Sciambi and Singleton also call the
All-Star Game and Home Run Derby each year.
In
1985,[118][119] CBS Radio started broadcasting a weekly Game of the Week.[120] CBS Radio usually did two games each Saturday, one on the afternoons and another during the evenings. Typically,
CBS' markets aired only the afternoon broadcasts. The games covered varied from the ones
NBC-TV were offering at the time to games outside of NBC's sight. One notable exception was
KCBS in
San Francisco, who almost always did the evening games. In
1994, just before the
strike,
KNBR carried the broadcasts in San Francisco and finally aired some of CBS' afternoon games. However, following the strike, KNBR dropped CBS' regular season broadcasts, and with the exception of
1995, when all playoff games were played at the same time, they usually only carried one or two
Division Series games on days when there were three games played.
In 1957, NBC replaced Mutual as the exclusive national radio broadcaster for the World Series and All-Star Game. The network would continue in this role through 1975, with CBS taking over the rights the following year. NBC Radio did not air regular season games during this period (save for the three-game National League
pennant playoff series in
1959 and
1962); nor did the network cover the League Championship Series from 1969 to 1975, those series instead having local team radio broadcasts syndicated nationally over
ad hoc networks.
In the 1940s and 1950s,
Wes Wise was a play-by-play sports announcer for
Gordon McLendon's
Liberty Broadcasting System radio network,[122] which mainly broadcast live recreations of
Major League Baseball games by means of broadcasters like Wise following the action via
Western Unionticker tape reports, and then relaying the plays to the listening audience in a more lively style that included studio sound effects meant to simulate the ballgames.
According to
Time magazine articles of the era, McLendon only paid Major League Baseball
$1,000.00 per year for the rights to broadcast the games, but in 1951, the leagues raised the price to $250,000.00 per year, and prohibited broadcasts in any city which had a
minor league franchise and in the
northeastern and
midwestern United States.[123]
Sports were the lifeblood of the Liberty Broadcasting System. Restrictions on Major League Baseball broadcasts in minor league franchise areas, as well as bans on
National Football League broadcasts within a 75-mile range of league cities, were the one-two blow which ended the network. Since the baseball games were a major draw for both listeners and affiliates, the
blackout was a disaster for the fledgling company, which had only posted modest profits during its first few years of operation. More than 100 stations left the network, and, faced with mounting debts, on May 16, 1952, the network ceased broadcasting.
Following the lead of the rival
Liberty Broadcasting System, Mutual also aired regular-season Game of the Day broadcasts (a precursor to television's Game of the Week concept) to non-major-league cities throughout the 1940s and 1950s.
^Dubrow, Rick (April 16, 1965). "Baseball in New Venture". Beaver County Times. United Press International. p. 7.
^Adams, Val (August 19, 1965). "ABC Doubtful About Televising Baseball in '66". New York Times. p. 61.
^Reichler, Joe (August 22, 1965). "TV Baseball Has Problems". The Herald-Tribune. Associated Press. p. 4D.
^Jack Gould (August 14, 1964). "Yank Deal's TV Rating; Purchase by C.B.S. May Be Only First Of Many Under a Not-So-New Concept". The New York Times. p. 14.