"top attended events for North America in 1989. Jim McKay of ABC Sports labeled it ""the best race that I have ever witnessed"" during the 1995 Preakness telecast. The stretch duel of the race itself was featured on ABC's ""Wide World of Sports prelude claiming to be the """"thrill of victory"""" for 12 years. It preceded the more memorable line """"and the agony of defeat"""". The 114th Preakness Stakes Payout Schedule $2 Exacta: (8–2) paid $10.40 $2 Trifecta: (8-2–5) paid $66.00 1989 Preakness Stakes The 1989 Preakness Stakes was the 114th running of the Preakness Stakes thoroughbred horse race. The"
"well as producer. Arledge did not gain a formal title as president of ABC Sports until 1968, even though Scherick left his position to assume a position of vice president for programming at ABC in 1964. Arledge personally produced all ten ABC Olympic broadcasts, created the primetime ""Monday Night Football"" and coined ABC's famous ""Thrill of victory, agony of defeat"" tagline — although ABC insiders of that era attribute the authorship to legendary sports broadcaster Jim McKay. In 1977, ABC made Arledge president of the then low-rated network news division, all while Arledge retained control of the Sports Division. ABC"
"ABC Sports as a two-hour special in 1973. Bob Seagren, an Olympic pole vault gold medalist, was the first winner. However, it was heavyweight champion boxer Joe Frazier who nearly stole the show. In the very first event, the 50 meter swimming heats, Frazier nearly drowned, and only after he was retrieved from the pool did he admit to commentators that he didn't know how to swim. When a reporter asked him why he tried the race, Frazier replied, ""How was I to know I couldn't unless I tried it?"". He also famously opined, ""That Mark Spitz,"" (who had won"
"sports that had a loyal following but might be unknown to American television viewers. The result was the April 21, 1961 debut of ABC's ""Wide World of Sports"", the groundbreaking television sports anthology program. Arledge, Howard and commentator Jim McKay created the show on a week-by-week basis during its first year of broadcast, establishing a sports television tradition in the process. Howard went on to become a vice president for programming at ABC Sports and covered nine Olympic Games, the Super Bowl, World Series, British Open, Kentucky Derby, Indianapolis 500 and NCAA football -- as well as Acapulco cliff diving,"
"victory was covered by ABC, including dramatic coverage of the finish, when a German imposter ran into the stadium ahead of Shorter. Serving as guest color commentator was writer Erich Segal, who called out over the airwaves (but obviously inaudible to Shorter) ""It's a fraud, Frank."" In 2000, the ""Washington Post"" included the phrase among the ten most memorable American sports calls. The television story changed the way Americans viewed the sport of long-distance running. According to Joe Muldowney, at the time ""most Americans had no idea what the marathon was, let alone its weird 26.2-mile distance. Some folks may"
"television programs with its 1956 season premiere; it was also the only NBC television show in the Nielsen ratings top ten for the 1956-1957 season. During this time, a ratings war developed between the Como show and that of entertainer Jackie Gleason. Off-screen, Gleason and Como were long-time friends; Como had been one of those who filled in for Gleason in 1954, when he suffered a broken leg and ankle in an on-air fall. While both men were eager to win, neither wanted to do so at all costs. They kept their friendship intact with phone calls the day after"
"as entertainment spectacle as well as sporting event, under the mandate of executive producer Roone Arledge, made the show a huge success in both sports and pop culture. Despite his professional success, Forte had a huge gambling addiction which he kept behind the scenes. ABC executives feared his gambling activities were affecting his job which led to his departure from ABC in the mid-1980s. He was also indicted by a federal grand jury on three-counts of mail fraud and tax evasion. He cooperated with the government and was spared prison time, receiving a five-year probation sentence. In 1989, he directed"
"an American sporting event to be televised live by ABC, CBS and NBC simultaneously. The Phillies went on to win the game 5-3. The 1964 season became best remembered, however, for the Phillies' late-season collapse; despite a -game lead with 12 games to play, the Phillies lost 10 in a row and finished one game behind the St. Louis Cardinals. Manager Gene Mauch was criticized for his handling of the pitching staff over the final two weeks, but players such as slugging rookie third baseman Richie Allen also drew harsh treatment. Callison was 12-for-48 during the last 12 games, including"
". As Edgar Scherick said, ""In '53, no one wanted us. Now teams begged for ""Game""'s cash."" In , ABC broadcast the best-of-three playoff series (to decide the National League pennant) between the Milwaukee Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers. The cigarette company L&M was in charge of all of the telecasts. George Kell and Bob DeLaney were the announcers. In , ABC returned to baseball broadcasting with a series of late-afternoon Saturday games. Jack Buck and Carl Erskine were the lead announcing crew for this series, which lasted one season. ABC typically did three games a week. Two of the"
"Wide World of Sports (U.S. TV series) ABC's Wide World of Sports is an American sports anthology television program that aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) from April 29, 1961 to January 3, 1998, primarily on Saturday afternoons. Hosted by Jim McKay, with a succession of co-hosts beginning in 1987, the title continued to be used for general sports programs on the network until 2006. In 2007, ""Wide World of Sports"" was named by ""Time"" on its list of the 100 best television programs of all-time. Weekend sports news updates on sister radio network ABC Sports Radio, operated by"
"same main-game payoffs as the syndicated version. The bonus round was completely different from both earlier versions: Three exotic vacations were offered, with a graphic for each hidden behind three video screens. Selecting the screen which contained the chosen locale's graphic won that trip for the champion. The original ABC version is believed to be wiped due to network practices at the time. Six episodes are known to exist and have been posted on YouTube: four consecutive episodes from May 19 through the 24th, 1972, featuring Michael Russnow (prior to the adoption of the ""Singleton"" and ""Memory Buster"" elements); an"
"was the studio host of ABC's coverage of college football from 1992 to 2015. He has also hosted ABC's coverage of baseball under the ""Baseball Night in America"" banner and was involved in ESPN's coverage earlier in his career. He also anchored the 1995 World Series for ABC. Saunders' memoir, ""Playing Hurt: My Journey from Despair to Hope"", which spans his three-decade career at ESPN and ABC, was published posthumously in 2017. From 2002 to 2004, and occasionally during the 2007 season, Saunders did play-by-play for ESPN's coverage of the NBA, mostly on Sunday nights. He was the studio host"
"to wait until just as the press conference began, and as a result ""The Newlywed Game"" was able to get a slight head start in the head-to-head ratings battle with the long-running ""Password."" Over the next few months more and more viewers were tuning into ""The Newlywed Game"" and it became a hit, while ""Password's"" ratings began to fall and eventually led to the series' cancellation fourteen months later. On December 20, 1974, ""The Newlywed Game"" concluded its run after nearly eight and a half years on the network. It was the longest running game show in ABC daytime history"
"and was gone by the end of the first season. Sorkin was triumphant in the second season when ABC agreed to his demands, unburdening the crew of the difficulties of staging a scene for a live audience and leaving the cast with more time to rehearse. Although ""Sports Night"" was critically acclaimed, ABC canceled the show after two seasons due to its low ratings. Sorkin entertained offers to continue the show on other television channels but declined all the offers as they were mainly contingent on his involvement which would have been a difficult prospect given that he was simultaneously"
"help of major network contracts (first with ABC and later with NBC). With that first contract with ABC, the AFL adopted the first-ever cooperative television plan for professional football, in which the proceeds were divided equally among member clubs. It featured many outstanding games, such as the classic 1962 double-overtime American Football League championship game between the Dallas Texans and the defending champion Houston Oilers. At the time it was the longest professional football championship game ever played. The AFL also appealed to fans by offering a flashier style of play (just like the ABA in basketball), compared to the"
"Gary Thorne, who served as ABC's backup play-by-play announcer in 1989 and was an on-field reporter for the World Series that year (and covering the trophy presentation in the process), simply laughed while saying ""Great reviews, just as ABC baseball ends."" Meanwhile, Dennis Swanson, president of ABC Sports, noted in a statement that baseball had been ""a blue-chip franchise"" since 1976 for the network, which was ""disappointed"" to lose it. After ABC lost the Major League Baseball package to CBS, they aggressively counterprogrammed CBS' postseason baseball coverage with made-for-TV movies and miniseries geared towards female viewers. As previously mentioned, Game"
"show to his long illness). Boyd has since made comments stating that he hated baseball, including describing it as ""glorified rounders"". After a few shows with a number of guest hosts, Jonny Gould was brought in on a three-show trial and remains the host until the show's conclusion. During these first few years, the popularity of the show blossomed with audiences reaching over one million (a huge figure for a show broadcast in the early hours of the morning) during the 2000 World Series. During this time the show also increased audience participation, encouraging viewers to write (and later e-mail)"
"Tunes"" and ""Merrie Melodies"" shorts. Always in search of new programs that would help it compete with NBC and CBS, ABC's management believed that sports could be a major catalyst in improving the network's market share. On April 29, 1961, ABC debuted ""Wide World of Sports"", an anthology series created by Edgar Scherick through his company Sports Programs, Inc. and produced by a young Roone Arledge which featured a different sporting event each broadcast. ABC purchased Sports Programs, Inc. in exchange for shares in the company, leading it to become the future core of ABC Sports, with Arledge as the"
"Winter Olympics from ABC despite losing the National Basketball Association to NBC after the 1989–90 NBA season. Under network president Jeff Sagansky, the network was able to earn strong ratings from new shows """"; ""Touched by an Angel""; ""Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman""; ""Walker, Texas Ranger, Picket Fences"" and a resurgent ""Jake and the Fatman"" during this period, and CBS was able to reclaim the first place crown briefly, in the 1992–93 season; however, a drawback for the network during this time-frame was that its programming slate skewed towards an older demographic than ABC, NBC or even Fox, with its relatively"
"""Game of the Week""-TV sport's first network series. At the time, ABC was labeled a ""nothing network"" that had fewer outlets than CBS or NBC. ABC also needed paid programming or """"anything for bills"""" as Scherick put it. At first, ABC hesitated at the idea of a nationally televised regular season baseball program. ABC wondered how exactly the ""Game of the Week"" would reach television in the first place and who would notice if it did. In April 1953, Edgar Scherick set out to sell teams rights but instead, only got the Philadelphia Athletics, Cleveland Indians, and Chicago White Sox"
"any form of money. This forced the players to ""beg, borrow, and deal"" for meals, transportation, and nightly lodging. Further restrictions included: The sports-related tasks were scored from 1 to 3 points, with 10 points needed to complete the game. The first team to reach the designated finish line having completed 10 points' worth of tasks won the game and tickets to four major championship events of the following year. The network aired two seasons of seven episodes each. One aired in late 2002, and the second aired in mid-2003. In the UK the show was aired on ABC1. In"
"ABC Sports. During the 1980s (1983, 1985, and 1987 respectively), Jackson was given the task of presiding over the World Series Trophy presentations. In (the final year of ABC's contract with Major League Baseball), ABC moved the baseball telecasts to Thursday nights in hopes of getting leg up against NBC's ""Cosby Show"". After braving the traumatic Loma Prieta earthquake and an all-time low 16.4 rating for the 1989 World Series, Al Michaels took ABC's loss of baseball to CBS as ""tough to accept.""Michaels added that ""baseball was such an early stepchild at ABC and had come such a long way."""
"with a succession of short-lived games. ""Split Second""s 1972 entry completed ABC's most successful block of daytime game shows, which included ""Password"", ""The Newlywed Game"", ""The Dating Game"", and ""Let's Make a Deal"", a lineup which lasted for nearly two years. However, the decline of its lead-in, ""Password"", began to adversely affect the Nielsens of ""Split Second"", and it was one of four game shows ABC cancelled between June 27 and July 4, 1975. After a week of 60-minute episodes of the soap opera ""All My Children"", ""Split Second"" was succeeded by another soap, ""Ryan's Hope"". The winning contestant on"
"Golf Tournament (1961), the X-Games (1994) and the Grey Cup (1962). The program's introductory sequence was accompanied by a stirring, brassy musical fanfare (composed by Charles Fox), set over a montage of sports clips and accompanying narration written by Stanley Ralph Ross and voiced by McKay: The melodramatic introduction became a national catchphrase that is often heard to this day. While ""the thrill of victory"" had several symbols over the decades, ski jumper Vinko Bogataj, whose dreadful misjump and crash during a competition on March 21, 1970 was featured from the early 1970s onward heard over the sentence ""...and the"
"of its main competitors for its target young male demographic was professional wrestling. A further sense of urgency struck ABC when NBC announced that it would be working with World Wrestling Federation's Vince McMahon to usher in a competing football league in 2001—the XFL that would encourage rougher play and air during the offseason of the NFL. ABC went through a series of different announcer combinations in rapid succession, trying to establish a booth dynamic that would recapture the public's imagination. By the close of the 1999 season, they were looking to make the fourth change in as many years."
"left ABC and became the executive producer for the Big Ten Conference's football and basketball broadcasts. In 1991, he was named the executive producer at Trans World International, overseeing such events as the New York City Marathon, the America's Cup, and world coverage of the Masters golf tournament, as well as figure skating and tennis events. Howard died of brain cancer on November 21, 1996 in Pound Ridge, New York. ""Wide World of Sports"" became the longest-running continuing series on ABC, and it won numerous Peabody Awards and Emmy Awards. Howard himself won 11 Emmy Awards as a producer. In"
"PGA Tour on ABC PGA Tour on ABC is the ""de facto"" branding used for telecasts of the main professional golf tournaments of the PGA Tour on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) television network in the United States. ABC broadcast the PGA Tour from 1966 to 2006. From 1962 to 2009, ABC served as the broadcast home of The Open Championship. The British Open on ABC was the longest-running entertainment program in ABC's history and the last-surviving ABC program to debut in the ""circle a"" era. ABC also held the broadcast rights of the US Open from 1966 through 1994."
"two teams, with two permanent captains and four guests, competing to answer questions based on recent news events. McDermott opens each show with a humorous monologue based on the news on the week and is responsible for posing questions and awarding points to teams. ""I'm sort of judge, jury and executioner,"" he says of his role. The show premiered on the ABC, but moved to Network Ten in 1999. The ABC was initially apprehensive about Robinson's choice of McDermott as host. He had dreadlocks at the time, and was best known for the crude, aggressive ""bad boy"" character he had"
"Mary Guba, and three grandchildren. McKay, a horse racing enthusiast who also covered Triple Crown races for ABC Sports, died on the same day as the running of the Belmont Stakes (won by Da'Tara that year). Jim McKay James Kenneth McManus (September 24, 1921 – June 7, 2008), better known by his professional name of Jim McKay, was an American television sports journalist. McKay is best known for hosting ABC's ""Wide World of Sports"" (1961–1998). His introduction for that program has passed into American pop culture. He is also known for television coverage of 12 Olympic Games, and is universally"
"fuming at the constituently high ratings enjoyed by a rival American TV show, 'Kill-Bike'. The show has features gladiatorial fights to the death on motorcycles, and has made a hero of a man called Drake (Jared Martin) the unbeaten champion. Cortez is all the more bitter because it was he who discovered Drake in the first place. WBS's current answer to the American show is 'The Danger Game', a simulation game showing the hallucinations of a contestant experiencing the approach of violent death. Fear, panic, and screaming at the extremely realistic simulations triggers a further increase in the intensity. Unfortunately"
"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 canceled after a 37-year run. The ""Wide World of Sports"" name remained in use afterward as an umbrella title for ABC's weekend sports programming. In August 2006, ABC Sports came under the"
"to , when Donoho's contract was not renewed by KABC. The show was then renamed ""Sports Zone"" with host Rob Fukuzaki and it remained an ""MNF"" postgame show until the package left ABC after the 2005 season. ""Sports Zone"" remains on KABC, following many events televised by the network. Other call-in shows included ""The Fan Speaks Out"", ""The Final Score"", and ""The Sports Collector"". News shows featured included ""Tennis Talk"", a baseball program called ""The Hot Stove League"", and a sports wagering program with Wayne Root. Other hosts included Bill Brown, Byron Day, John Loesing, Hugh Malay and Fred Wallin."
"the end of the match. From 1999 to 2005, ABC broadcast ""Monday Night Golf"", a series of seven match play golf challenge events, each of which involved #1 ranked World Golfer Tiger Woods. It marked the first time that a live golf event had been shown in prime time during the week in the United States. ""Monday Night Golf"" proved to be an initial success, drawing more viewers than the final round of the U.S. Open, and being second only to the final round of the Masters Tournament in terms of golf broadcasts. Ratings increased significantly for the second match,"