On This Date in Sports October 22, 1939: The NFL is on the Air

In collaboration with the Sportsecyclopedia.com

The experiment of television continues at the World’s Fair in New York. This time it is the NFL getting its television debut as cameras are rolled into Ebbets Field to see the Brooklyn Dodgers face the Philadelphia Eagles. The Dodgers beat the Eagles 23-14, as Ralph Kercheval had three field goals, including a season-long 45-yarder. Calling the game for W2XBS is Allen “Skip” Walz.

As the 1930s came to a close, the NFL was still regarded by most as a joke. Professional football was looked down upon, as most top college players shunned the league feeling it was not the profession of an educated man of letters. The NFL was making some progress, as they had gone from dusty fields in small towns to stadiums in big cities though the stadiums were not filled yet, as most teams had, however, to find their fan base.

That first game at Ebbets Field had just two cameras, one on the 40-yard line and one in the stadium’s second deck. Only eight people worked on that broadcast, which was broadcast to 1,000 television sets in New York, including at RCA Pavilion at the World’s Fair. At the stadium, 13,000 fans witnessed the Dodgers coached by Potsy Clark improved to 3-2-1 while the Eagles remained winless at 0-4-1 under the coaching of Bert Bell.

Over the next ten years, the growth of television was but on the backburner as World War II, and the effort to beat the Nazis in Germany and Imperial Japan had grabbed all of the focus of America’s industrial pursuits. The NFL muddled through the war years with teams needing to merge and take year-long hiatuses to have any hope of remaining in business. One of those teams that would not last was the Brooklyn Dodgers, who won that first televised game.

After the war, a second league was born called the AAFC. The Cleveland Browns dominated that league, which folded after four seasons. The Browns would go on to join the NFL along with the San Francisco 49ers. As television was added to more and more homes, the NFL’s popularity began to grow. In 1958 the Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants in overtime to win the NFL Championship Game, in what was called the greatest game ever played. The game was aired on NBC and began a momentous shift in the league’s popularity.

With cameras able to frame the sport perfectly, football became the greatest made of television sport. With worry over how this would affect attendance, blackout rules were put in place, banning the airing of games in the local market where the game was played. These blackout rules were changed in 1973 to allow any game that was sold out to air on local television. Over the next 40 years, these rules softened more and more, as television contracts became the lifeblood to the NFL’s revenue-sharing plans. By 2014, with the NFL holding rating records, Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended the Blackout rule.

The NFL and Television have become symbiotic, as the league grew with television. Today the NFL is the highest-rated program on television every year, with the Super Bowl annually setting records for the most viewers.