First College Baseball Game

May 17, 1939

Princeton 2, Columbia 1

Experimental New York television station W2XBS — which would later become WNBC-TV — broadcast the second game of a Columbia-Princeton doubleheader to the 400 or so TV sets in the New York area capable of receiving the signal from antenna placed atop the Empire State Building. Only one camera was used, which was placed on a 12-foot-tall platform on the third-base side of home plate. The experiment cost NBC $3,000 and was declared a huge success.

First Major League Baseball Game

Aug. 26, 1939

Cincinnati Reds 5, Brooklyn Dodgers 2

A little more than three months later, W2XBS tried it again — this time at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field for the first game of a doubleheader between the Dodgers and the Reds. Dodgers general manager Larry MacPhail demanded a fee for his team’s participation in the telecast: A TV set to be installed in the press room so he and his friends could watch. The Reds’ Bucky Walters pitched a two-hit game and scored a run himself in the eighth inning, when the Reds scored all five runs.

First College Football Game

Sept. 30, 1939

Fordham 34, Waynesburg College 7

A month after that broadcast, it was college football’s turn. Fordham — the preseason pick to win that year’s national championship — hosted what was considered a patsy team: Waynesburg College. Waynesburg surprised Fordham, however, by scoring first. However, the New York Times reported, “The Rams had the televised game well in hand by halftime.” W2XBS used two iconoscope cameras: One at field level and one atop a raised platform near the 10- or 15-yard line.

First NFL Game

Oct. 22, 1939

Brooklyn Dodgers 23, Philadelphia Eagles 14

Flash-forward three weeks and a day and back to Ebbets Field. The game was broadcast by W2XBS once again, and also on W2XCW in Schenectady. The latter is now WRGB, a CBS affiliate. Again, two cameras were used. “I’d sit with my chin on the rail in the mezzanine with the camera over my shoulder,” announcer “Skip” Walz told the Football Hall of Fame. “I did my own spotting and when the play moved up and down the field on punts or kickoffs, I’d point to tell the cameraman what I’d be talking about.”

First College Basketball Game

Feb. 28, 1940

This game — a bit of a blowout — was the first of a doubleheader that day. The Fordham University student newspaper didn’t even write about the game. The second game featured No. 1-ranked New York University defeating Georgetown 50-27. Basketball was much slower to catch the television bandwagon. The DuMont network began regularly broadcasting NBA games in 1953. The first nationally televised college basketball game was Houston vs. UCLA in 1968 in the Astrodome.

Other Sports Broadcasting Firsts