THE OLYMPICS: WINTER GAMES AT ALBERTVILLE : CBS Started It at 1960 Games : Television: Walter Cronkite was an anchor for the 15 hours of coverage from Squaw Valley.

Figure skater Carol Heiss was struck by an odd sensation just before her gold-medal winning performance in the 1960 Olympics at Squaw Valley, Calif.

“I just didn’t want to fall in front of all those people who were watching at home on television,” she said recently.

Heiss had good reason. When CBS became the first American network to broadcast a Winter Olympics 32 years ago, viewers stayed tune. The telecast, as much as the Games themselves, helped spawn the U.S. ski boom in the 1960s and ‘70s.

But perhaps the most striking aspect of the broadcast was its influence on televised sports.

Although limited by today’s standards, the 15 hours of programming was enough to show network executives the value of covering future Olympics. Broadcast rights to the 1988 Winter Games at Calgary cost ABC $309 million, and CBS paid $243 million for these Games at Albertville.

In 1960, all it took was $50,000. . . . and the prescience of Tex Schramm, then assistant director of the sports department for CBS News who about the same time started the Dallas Cowboys.

Schramm, looking for sports events to fill daytime programming, prodded network executives into approving the undertaking. At the time, he had little idea what a profound effect the broadcast would have.

Firstly, CBS recruited a professional team of broadcasters. Walter Cronkite, a news correspondent, served as anchor with Chris Schenkel. Jim McKay and Bud Palmer were reporters. The network also hired previous gold-medal winners such as figure skater Dick Button and skier Andrea Mead Lawrence as technical analysts.

Schramm said Paul Levitan, the program’s executive producer, devised a format successfully used to cover political conventions in the 1950s. Cronkite was cast as master of ceremonies, and left the analysis to field specialists at the various venues.

“The marriage between sports and news was unholy at best,” said Frank Chirkinian, who directed the downhill and ski jumping events.

But somehow it came together each day for 11 days.

Most of the programs were 15-minute wrapups at the end of the regular news. Because of the three-hour time difference from the network’s center in New York, much of the coverage was live.

“The greatest achievement was by the technicians in getting cameras up the mountain slopes,” Cronkite recounted. “We were constantly being prepared with alternate coverage in case the cameras went out in any of the locations.”

Schramm said technicians laid six miles of coaxial cable and five miles of phone lines during the summer before the Games. The crew tried to estimate where the best camera angles would be.

“We had to use our imagination,” he said.

How to get the cameras and crew in place proved to be another story. Chirkinian hired a European ski patrol to tow the cameras across the snowy peaks and place them on the courses. They started the operation at 5 a.m. each day.

Cronkite, situated in a makeshift studio in the basement of the Olympic Village, had reason to fret. The rudimentary equipment came from Hollywood and New York where it was made for studio settings, not the winter bite of the mountains. Some equipment froze.

“We never were sure exactly what we would be covering in the next few minutes,” Cronkite said.

There was more than a little trepidation over the weather. Squaw Valley often was battered by violent storms, which would have limited coverage and reduced the broadcast to arena events.

As organizers and athletes braced for the opening ceremony on the afternoon of Feb. 11, 1960, the resort was blanketed by a blinding white powder. Mead Lawrence was at the top of Papoose Peak, starting a decent with the Olympic torch.

“It was misty, snowy, with flurries everywhere,” she said. “Then I got to the bottom just as the doves were flying and suddenly the sun came through.”

The occurrence was officially dubbed a miracle by organizers, and there was more than a casual sigh of relief by CBS executives in New York.

With the weather cooperating, it was left to creative minds to ensure success.

Chirkinian, who today is the executive producer of golf for CBS, was no stranger to improvisation. He pioneered the use of graphics while covering a rodeo in Lubbock, Tex., by superimposing an NBA clock on the screen so the viewers could follow along as the cowboys rode the animals.

Chirkinian did not need an NBA clock at Squaw Valley. IBM, a sponsor, introduced electronic timing in Olympic skiing. CBS’ anchors shared the basement with IBM programmers to have access to instant results, which could be shown. Schramm said the idea of computers in football scouting came about as a result of this process.

Schramm said instant replay also was born in the Olympic Village basement. He got the idea when Olympic officials asked the television producers if they could review a tape of the men’s slalom to see a controversial run by a skier who missed a marker. They viewed the tape, but did not take action against the competitor.

“Nobody but nobody said, ‘No, you can’t do that,’ because nobody had any experience in this sort of thing,” Chirkinian said.

Chirkinian did meet some resistance when he asked for an athlete’s view of the 80-meter ski jump.

“I wanted the viewers to feel what it was like to make that crazy jump,” he said.

Technicians told Chirkinian they were not equipped to show the angle, but the director insisted. They figured a way to do it.

“It was a startling look,” Chirkinian said. “We captured that feeling.”

If any angle of the Games was missed, it was the story of Kyung Soon Yim of Korea, who learned to ski by reading books and practicing on grass. He arrived at Squaw Valley without proper equipment, without ever skiing on snow, but left as the embodiment of the Olympic spirit.

Mead Lawrence, who served as U.S. women’s ski team manager as well as TV analyst, said the teams collaborated to equip Kyung with gear.

His times were pitiful, and he finished far behind the others after each run in the three Alpine disciplines. But on his final decent in the slalom, the last of Alpine races, Olympic skiers from around the world waited at the bottom of the slope for Kyung to finish. Chirkinian had the cameras poised to capture what would become one of the Games’ most poignant moments.

Kyung crossed the finish line in a snow plow, was immediately gathered up by the other competitors and marched off in celebration.

Viewers never saw the scene. CBS officials, already embarrassed after two of its announcers used a pejorative when referring to Japanese ski jumpers, were afraid of humiliating an Asian competitor.

“I felt that was the biggest mistake we ever made,” Chirkinian said.

Despite the pratfalls, the broadcast was an artistic success.

Heiss, now a figure skating instructor in Akron, Ohio, did not appreciate the historical implications at the time she won the gold medal. It was all so new. Her family in Queens, N.Y., had owned a television set for only five years by the time she skated in 1960.

But the power of television became more apparent the day after her victory. She said she tried to enter Blyth Arena without a ticket to watch the U.S. hockey team, but the game was sold out.

She was disappointed because the Christian brothers, Billy and Roger, had invited her to watch them pursue an unexpected bid for the gold medal.

At first, security refused to let her pass.

“Then one of the guards said, ‘Wait, you’re the American who just won the gold medal. We saw you on TV.’ ”

They let her enter.

Penny Pitou, a ski racer who won two silver medals, remembers being interviewed by Mead Lawrence with gold medalist Heidi Biebl of West Germany after the downhill.

“I can’t remember what I said, except I was euphoric I hadn’t fallen on my face, which I almost did,” she said.

The media crunch was not new to U.S. skiers who raced before crowds of up to 50,000 in Europe in the late 1950s. But the American coverage had an added effect.

“I knew my mother and father were watching right as I was doing it,” said Pitou, from Gilford, N.H. “That was very, very special.”

For the country, however, nothing was more dramatic than the United States’ 3-2 victory over the seemingly invincible Soviet hockey team. The Miracle on Ice game was one of those rare moments that caught the collective interest of a nation.

Much to the chagrin of Olympic officials, CBS emphasized nationalism. During the height of the Cold War, viewers were transfixed by competitions between the United States and Soviet Union. That, as much as any factor, made the coverage much more intriguing.

CBS concocted a leader board showing the number of medals each country had won. Viewers at home kept count.

“They put a lot of pressure on us not to do that,” Cronkite said.

But that’s the way it was.