‘Wide World’ to Celebrate 25th Anniversary Saturday

In 1961, sports on television was a catch-as-catch-can operation.

There were no million- and billion-dollar contracts between the professional leagues and the networks. There were no cable outlets. And there certainly were no anthology shows.

In April of that year, Roone Arledge, who would become the head of ABC Sports and News, chose a little-known broadcaster from Baltimore named Jim McKay to be the host of a 20-week series. It began at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia on April 29, 1961, and truly has “spanned the globe” since.

ABC will celebrate the 25th anniversary of “Wide World of Sports” with a two-hour, prime-time special next Saturday. It will feature some of McKay’s favorite personalities and memories from a quarter-century of sports.

“Wide World of Sports” has presented a forum for such diverse events as U.S.-USSR track and field competitions, barrel-jumping, Little League games, and hurling. It has also helped popularize sports such as Alpine skiing, ski jumping and figure skating.

McKay remembers his first assignment, standing in the rain at Franklin Field and trying to remain calm as he introduced Wide World to viewers. Little did he know that television history was being made, and that the new show would become the longest running sports program on television.

After 25 years, Wide World’s introduction--”Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport . . . the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”--is familiar to sports fans throughout America. But in the beginning, McKay wasn’t sure the program would last.

“We were almost going off the air as a summer replacement, even though there was the feeling that the concept was destined to be,” says McKay, now 65. “We went to the Soviet Union for the U.S.-USSR track meet and took 20 tons of equipment with us. That got some space in the newspapers and the show was exciting. We took off from there.”

McKay estimates he has covered “at least 100 sports” and has traveled virtually everywhere “except the continent of Africa. And I’m not asking to go there right now.”

He is just as excited about Wide World today--after the series collected 49 Emmys and a Peabody Award--as he was in 1961 when he was getting drenched on the University of Pennsylvania campus.

“This will be a nostalgic look at the show but it also will focus on the cultural and historical roles the events play,” McKay said. “And, of course, we’ll spend a lot of time dealing with the personalities.”

Those personalities range from Muhammad Ali to Peggy Fleming to Vinko Bogataj, whose near-disastrous ski jump is featured at the beginning of every show.