The Interdependence of Television and Professional Football

During the Early Network Era

The Seattle Seahawks were not supposed to win the 2013 NFC Championship game. The

team had quickly gone down 21 points in the second quarter, and most of the fans began to turn

off their TVs when the game had gone sour. Though against all odds, the Seahawks came back.

After a 30 minute series of the most improbable plays, including a fake field goal, on-side kick,

and trick extra point play, the Seahawks won the game in overtime on a dramatic 40 yard

touchdown pass. At the end of the game, the announcers appeared incredulous, close ups of

members in the crowd displayed Seahawk fans in a state of utter joy. ABC, the network

broadcasting the game, then cut from the shot of fans in the stadium to a shot on the field where

sideline reporters and hordes of press members surrounded Seahawks quarterback Russell

Wilson. Wilson, who at 510 was said to be too short to ever play quarterback in the NFL, had

thrown four interceptions during the game, and was most likely concussed within the games

early minutes. However, against all odds, he brought his team back from defeat and led them to

their third Super Bowl appearance in franchise history. A handheld shot tightly framed reporter

ABC reporter Erin Andrews and Wilson. Then a cut to a close up of Wilson showed his face

covered in blood, sweat, and tears, as Andrews asked the unlikely hero how he overcame such

tremendous adversity. It was a scene that appeared to be pulled from a primetime network

drama, It looked like it was made for television.

Though what is responsible for this experience? Why does the NFL seem to be such a

perfect fit for television, and why is the league so immensely popular? Americans have always

loved sports, but the advent of television has dramatically increased the presence of sports in
American society. More specifically, the advent of TV has created a relationship between the

National Football League and television that has greatly impacted American society and culture.

Much scholarship on the NFL and television has focused the years after 1960 when

television-minded Pete Rozelle became league commissioner and increased the leagues

profitability. However, there is little focus on the years between the first NFL broadcast in 1937

and Rozelles takeover in 1960. Through a historical survey of the relations between sports

and the media, it can be seen that the advent of television disturbed the preexisting

relationship between the NFL and the major broadcasting networks, and ensured that the

NFL could not survive without broadcast revenue. My analysis will involve a historical

survey of the relations between sports and media beginning in the late 19th century through

1961. My analysis will also involve an examination of network development, relations between

advertisers and audiences, relations between audiences and the NFL, and broadcasting rights. I

aim to contextualize my analysis of football and television relations within the broader landscape

of broadcast television.

The relationship between sports and media was established during the late 19th and early

20th century. At the start of the 19th century, Americans were primarily interested in horse

racing. However, by the start of the 20th century, sports began to take a greater hold on the

American public. The underlying dynamic behind this shift was urbanization. (Jhally).

Working-class Americans who were burdened with the effects of rapid urbanization such as lack

of leisure time, sought out organized sports as a way to cope with their work-intensive lives.

However, professional sports in the early 20th century were not very profitable, though one of

the few factors that kept professional sports alive was the press. Between 1870 and 1900, the
number of newspapers in the US increased dramatically. Advertising revenue from newspapers

also grew dramatically at this time. A new style of advertising and audience-based press that was

attractive to a mass audience was also established during this time. The creation of this new style

of press coincided with the creation of the first professional sports leagues. This would greatly

aid the popularity of these new leagues, as the same working-class Americans that were

attending sporting events were the same group of people who purchased this new style of

newspaper. It was these media, increasingly financed by advertising, that drew together the

melting pot working-class which were flooding in as migrants to the USA into saleable

audience for advertisers (Smythe). This intersect between the development of the popular press

and the development of professional sports leagues would result in the beginnings of a long

relationship between media and sport in America.

Newspaper owners quickly recognized their readers interest in sport and attempted to

capitalize on that interest. By 1883, Joseph Pulitzer created the first sports reporting department

at the New York World, and by the 1890s many newspapers had their own sports reporting

departments. (Jhally). Media scholar Sut Jhally argues that it was during this time that sports and

media investors began to create the Mass consumption spectator-sports industry that is now

present today. (Jhally). The actions of newspaper owners such as Pulitzer and William R. Hearst

seem to confirm Jhallys argument. Hearst who had also developed a sports section in the New

York Journal when he bought the paper in 1895, went beyond reporting and directly invested in

sports and stadiums. According to American sports historian J.R. Betts, It was the metropolitan

and then the smaller city dailies which sponsored teams, promoted contests and brought the lingo

of the diamond, the turf, the rings, the links and the gridiron to the great American middle-class.
(Betts). This was essentially the creation of a symbiotic relationship between sport and the

media. Sport created an audience, newspapers could cater to that audience, and then commodify

that audience for sale to advertisers. However, media was limited in how it could sell sports to

audience. There was no way of directly reporting live sporting events to audiences. This would

not occur until the development of broadcasting and radio in the 1920s.

The introduction of radio technology would further change the relationship between sport

and media. David Sarnoff, the head of RCA, lead the attempt to turn radio into a consumer

product. However, Sarnoff and RCA needed to give Americans a reason to purchase radio sets.

The public was sold with the promise of programming. As Raymond Williams writes, When the

question of content was raised, it was resolved, in the main, parasitically. There were state

occasions, public sporting events Which would be communicatively distributed by these new

technical means. (Williams). As Williams notes, sporting events played a particularly prominent

role in programming. In 1921, Americas first radio station KDKA broadcast the Davis Cup, the

World Series, and the Heavyweight Boxing Championship fight between Jack Dempsey and

George Carpentier. By 1925, sports broadcasts had become an integral part of radio

programming, due in part to their appeal to a common denominator. (Parente). Betts notes that,

Radio came of age in the hectic 1920s and sport was soon seized upon as an entertainment

feature Music and news broadcasts were the standard programmes in the early years of radio

but sports events were rapidly absorbed into the entertainment schedule. (Betts). However, the

potential to cultivate a mass audience through the broadcast of sport would not yet be realized.

Consumption patterns during this time would further be influenced by the development of

broadcast networks. Sarnoff and RCA needed a network that could produce programming that
would in turn stimulate a greater sale of RCA radio sets. RCA would launch NBC to accomplish

this goal. However, NBCs approach to early broadcast would be split between a public service

model and a revenue generating model. While these tensions at NBC were occurring, the

emerging Columbia Broadcasting Service would resolve these tensions and influence the future

course of the broadcasting networks. William Paley, the president of CBS, built his network with

a business model structured on profit from advertising. In regards to Paleys philosophy at CBS,

David Halberstam writes that Paley Could see that the larger the audience, the greater the

benefit to the network, because it would mean that many more advertisers would want to

participate. (Halberstam). Paleys vision for CBS proved to be the business model of the future.

The networks now placed much greater importance on advertisers and sponsorships than the

quality of programming. This was an important turning point as the commodity of networks

would no longer be the messages that they produced, but rather the audiences they could draw in.

(Livant). This business model between the networks and advertisers would further influence the

relationship between the networks and sports. The notion that programming, including sporting

events could used to draw in mass audiences to the networks had taken hold. However the formal

relationship between sport and media would not be broken until the advent of television.

After WWII, a number of societal, media, and professional football related changes

would create the roots of the televisions relationship with the NFL. While the first televised

broadcast of a professional football game took place in 1937, college football had long been

more popular than the NFL. However, after WWII, the NFL began to make changes that made

the league more popular. Teams began to desegregate, rule changes made the game more fast

paced, and the league expanded by adding franchises in the Midwest and West Coast. At the
same time, the rapidly expanding middle class and rise in consumer activity lead to the creation

of the leisure industry. According to mass communication academic Donald Parente, sport was at

the heart of this leisure industry. Sport was also a great fit for early television which,

Emphasized the liveness, immediacy, and nation-connecting miracle of instantaneous sight

(Hilmes). The desire for audiences to view sporting events exactly as they occurred could be

satisfied by this new medium. The live nature of sports also suited the needs of the networks.

The networks wanted to avoid filmed production as it would undercut their regulatory position

and would give local stations more options of where to obtain programming material. (Hilmes).

Thus sport, and the increasingly popular National Football League, began to be one of the most

attractive forms of programming for the networks.

Soon after the post-war period, the NFL would come to stand out among other

professional sports league as a highly desirable form of television programming due to the

leagues valuable consumer audience. Advertising research during the 1920s through the 1950s

relied purely on numbers, though by 1950 new research techniques had been established. Age,

gender, income, location, etc could be quantified, leading to the commodification of specific

audiences. Groups of audiences that held more disposable income were viewed as more valuable,

as they were more able to purchase the products that were advertised during network

programming. At the top of these various groups were college-educated, high income earning

males. During the 1950s, not only did the NFL begin to achieve high ratings, but 50% of those

who tuned into NFL games fell into the highly coveted college-educated, high income earning

male consumer category. (Jhally). Thus the desirability of football for television programing

can be attributed not only to its high audience ratings, but also to the composition of its
audience. (Parente). It was also highly cost effective for networks to reach this audience through

NFL programming, as NFL programming did not have to be produced, it merely had to be

televised. (Berkman). The costs of broadcasting an NFL game paled in comparison to the cost of

broadcasting a two hour long anthology drama. While a studio production relied on hiring

writers, a director, producers, crew members, and talent, broadcasting a sporting event only

required a few cameras and a commentator. Thus the NFL was favored over programming that

attracted the same share of valuable consumers.

The NFL was highly desirable for networks to broadcast, though why did it appeal to

audiences that tuned in? The most apparent answer is that television simply allowed viewers to

watch the game from the comfort of their own homes. This convenience was noted as early as

1939 in an article by the New York Sunday Times, Science has scored a touchdown at the

kick-off of football by television. So sharp are the pictures and so discerning the telephoto lens

That the viewer sits in his parlor wondering why he should leave the comforts of home to watch

a gridiron battle in a sea of mud on a chilly afternoon. (Berkman) Another answer, is that

football directly resonates with American notions of patriotism and masculinity. As Michael

Real notes, If one were to create from scratch a sport to reflect the sexual, racial, and

organizational priorities of the American power structure, it is doubtful that one could improve

on football. (Real). Real goes on to highlight three attributes of the game that appeal to the

American viewer and reflect the tastes of network television; personal identification, heroic

archetypes, and communal focus. Viewers vicariously become participants in the action through

identifying with a local team or player. A Stanford graduate identifies with a certain quarterback

because hes a fellow Stanford alum, or a man who resides in Miami but was raised in Seattle
maintains a firm attachment to the local Seattle team he grew up with. Through tremendous feats

on the field, certain players take on the role of a hero. Statues of these anointed heroes are

erected in front of stadiums, and their busts reside among other heroic players in the Hall of

Fame. The game also takes on a communal sense. Televised NFL games reach a mass audience,

creating a feeling of communal participations among all the fellow fans who tuned it. The

emotional impact of wins and losses arent just experienced by the players, coaches, and owners,

but also by the mass network of fans who are right there watching the action with those who are

more directly involved. It is important to note that the impact and occurrence of these attributes

of the game are due to television. According to Parente, once a sport league has had its product

bought by television for use as programing, that sports league can rarely exist after in the same

manner without the financial support of television. These attributes of the game appear to

confirm Parentes argument. Without televised broadcasts, there would be no existence of a mass

audience to share these experiences. Television renders the game into a large spectacle, and the

meaning fans take from the televised game further renders that spectacle into a cultural product.

The changes in broadcasting regulations leading up to the 1961 Sports Broadcasting

Rights Act would ensure that the NFL would need to rely on revenue from network broadcasting.

Up until the 1961 broadcasting act, individual NFL franchises would sell the rights to film their

games to broadcasters. The cost of these broadcasting rights would be based upon the size of the

television market in which a team was situated. For example, in 1956 the New York Giants

received $85,000 from CBS for the rights to broadcast their games while the Green Bay Packers

received $35,000. (Fiske). However, this system was not very profitable to either parties. Teams

could could not get high prices for their games because stations could shop around. The stations
could not assure advertisers the numbers they needed to generate a large income because they

were competing with other stations for the same audience at the same time. What resulted was an

amplified sellers market. ABC would televise AFL games, NBC would broadcast Baltimore

Colts and Pittsburgh Steelers games, and CBS would broadcast the remaining NFL games.

(Horowitz). However, this all changed with the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act. The congressional

law allowed individual teams to pool their broadcast rights together and then sell to the highest

bidder. The highest bidding networks motivation Would be to offer to sponsors the opportunity

to advertise their products nationally on a network Game of the Week that had no competitors.

(Horowitz). This essentially awarded the major networks a monopoly of broadcasting NFL

games. As a result of this monopoly, networks could influence individual teams and the NFL to

suit the needs of television. For example, the networks pressured the NFL to cut down the

halftime intermission so that room could be made for more advertising minutes. (Parente).

Networks also pressured the NFL to allow for incorporated television timeouts in which more

time for commercials could take place. The NFL yielded to these requests because the league has

a direct interest on the financial success of the major networks. The more advertising dollars a

network can bring in, the greater chance that network can pay for higher broadcasting rights to

NFL games. This has resulted in a long history of the NFL essentially acting as an employee of

the major broadcast networks. Professional football appears as if its made for television because

it is manufactured in way that meets the demands of the networks.

Throughout my analysis, I have charted the evolving relationship bet between sports and

the media. It is through that analysis that I have attempted to gain a greater understanding behind

the impact and influence of Americas most popular professional sport. Essentially, Ive tried to
answer the following question, why is the NFL such a perfect combination of medium and

message? As Ive previously explained, the game itself is innately attractive to television. The

action takes place within a relatively finite space, and the ball is big enough to be seen on a

television screen. The game consists of a series of plays, each having a beginning, middle, and

end that can be re-capped and further analyzed at the end of each play. However, my analysis has

demonstrated that the medium is more powerful than the message. The NFL evokes a wide range

of emotion and is directly woven into the fabric of American culture. Though it is not the game

itself that has created this phenomena, but rather television. The implications of my analysis are

that various aspects of American culture not as organic as they appear. Football is often said to

be Americas game, though it was manufactured to be that way.