THE HEIDI GAME RETURNS, ALMOST
At least half of you were not alive when an event now known as The Infamous Heidi Game took place. It was 1968 and NBC was carrying a game between the Oakland Raiders and the Joe Namath led New York Jets. Nobody really knew how popular Professional Football had become, and they especially didn't know how popular the new American Football league had become. So NBC was showing the game when the notorious "it" happened. A seemingly innocuous decision by an NBC executive -- to pre-empt the broadcast of the end of an AFL game for the start of the movie Heidi -- triggered a firestorm. Better than any poll, it delivered an unmistakable message about the popularity of pro football and America's passionate attachment to the game. Since then no network has ever cut a football game short to show anything.....that is until last Sunday night. The gloriously high scoring game between the Cincinatti Bengals and the San Diego Chargers was nine minutes from ending and CBS had finished showing the Jets Patriots game. So they picked up the totally wild Chargers-Bengals game. Then, like in then, they had to cut away from Cincinnati-Chargers game with some nine minutes left and the score 41-38 San Diego. To top it off, the game had just gotten a whole lot more compelling after Charger defensive back Marlon McCree floored Bengals receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh with, what looked like at the time, a helmet-to-helmet cheap shot. It was later determined that the hit was a clean shoulder to the head shot. (The team doctor asked Houshmandzadeh to spell his name afterwards, and he failed, but could he spell Houshmandzadeh with a clear head? Could you?)
Suddenly the broadcast shot back to the studio, where Boomer Esiason, Greg Gumbel and the gang apologized that they could show no more of the game, as the witching hour of 4:15 had arrived, and it was time for viewers to jump to the game over at Fox. At least this time the CBS blunder didn't cause a revolution. Probably because there wasn't a New York team involved.
2 comments:
Blame the NFL for divvying up the rights. (Yeah, somebody should have forseen the situation and allowed for it.)
Remember that, to the league's millionare owners, folks who watch the games on network TV are a bunch of freeloaders. NFL: "Didn't get to see the whole game? Awww, that's too bad, chum, you shoulda bought a ticket." (AKA F* you).
As to the "Heidi" game, a story I heard afterward was that NBC's duty engineer at their NYC center realized that there was going to be a time crunch, and was frantically trying to contact the network exec who could give him permission to delay the start of the movie. First, busy signals, then nothing. Because the network exec was frantically trying to get through to master control. Which he couldn't, because so may football fans were trying to call the network to say "Surely, you're not gonna cut the end of the game?!?" that the whole exchange got knocked out. So when the time came, absent other instructions, the engineer pushed the button.
May not be true, but sounded good enough to be!
Post a Comment