 This is Jimmy Powers coming your way with another Grantland Rice story. Hey there, this is Jimmy Powers coming your way once again with another installment from Granny Rice's best seller, the tumult and the shouting. Today we open the book to the chapter entitled TV and Sport, and I'll pick up Granny's narration in first person. Back in the middle 1940s, a cloud no larger than a small man's hand suddenly appeared above the fields of sport. It was known as television or TV. Within a few short years, this cloud was a raging storm spearheaded by a wrecking cyclone. It struck two of the country's most popular sports, baseball and football, with a devastating crash. In baseball, it practically wrecked the minor leagues or many of them. In the big leagues, it cut attendance by nearly 500,000 a year. In football, only Notre Dame could sell out in the face of TV's power. It was the old story of trying to sell something and give away the same product for nothing. You can't sell what you can get for nothing. As television sets increased, football and baseball attendances started dropping. Under the new NCAA agreement, only one big college game each week could be televised. This meant about 26 teams could be shown making it impossible to show the top game each Saturday, a factor which drove millions back to radio. College football faced an impossible job in trying to satisfy a sports public that looked on Notre Dame versus anybody, a Michigan versus Ohio State, an Oklahoma versus Texas, a Georgia Tech versus Alabama televised contest as the game they wanted to see. All of which would kill the attendance at the local college contest level. I can recall years when I had to work desperately to get a pair of tickets for such ivy brawls as Harvard versus Yale or Yale versus Princeton with sellouts the rule. Those games are gone even without TV. The fight is still going despite the fact that the average college certainly cannot book the TV competition. In late seasons, it has been discovered that, in baseball, even with the flag contenders, premium games have dropped off, attendance-wise, by as much as 40,000. The 80,000 paid for a Cleveland Yankee night game is now closer to 30,000. The sellouts were a thing of the past with the other 50,000 taking it by TV. Milwaukee didn't have television in 1953, and so Milwaukee led both leagues with over 1,800,000. Yet, TV was a boom for racing where only one race was shown. To affect racing, the TV people would have had to supply bookmaking or bettaking with each set. Racing is strictly a betting matter, and in 1954, it reached the top in attendance popularity. But, as 1954 passes out, big league and minor league baseball and TV are in a triple conflict. Meanwhile, due to the NCAA stand, old-time standards in football minus TV were reached and held at Michigan, Ohio State, Illinois, Michigan State, Southern Cal, Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia Tech, and other power plants who have no televised games except those one time only dictate of the NCAA. Television has raised just as heavy havoc in the fight game. Here, the International Boxing Club raised a new type of boxing fan, the TV expert. Fights that formerly lured from 15,000 to 18,000 now rate less than 5,000. The medium has wrecked boxing as a science or an art. It has reduced it to hillbilly entertainment without the music. Four major sports in the country are considered of national interest, baseball, football, boxing, and racing. It is quite possible that basketball and bowling have many more entries. But, of the above big four, racing is the lone flourisher. Instead of satiating the appetite, it has wetted it. In time, all of the current problems will be solved, and it will be found that television has done more good than harm. But this is a story for future years. And now this is Jimmy Powers again, and with me today is a gentleman who I think knows more about television as it applies to sport than anyone else. I mean, Asa S. Bushnell, the commissioner of the Eastern Intercollegiate AA, and director of the NCAA's TV legislative body. Hello, Asa Bushnell. Hello, Jimmy. As you can well understand, I enjoyed your reading of excerpts from Grantland Rice's life story. They revived memories of various conversations with Granny regarding his ideas about television and its effects upon college football. Apparently, Granny Rice felt strongly that the NCAA was taking a needed step when, in 1951, it put the harness on the unlimited TV of college games. What about it, Asa? Well, Jimmy, when Grant Rice wrote the TV strict devastating blows to college football and also to organized baseball, he wrote the truth. When the NCAA took steps to protect collegiate football from these blows and to save the game by restricting television of it, complaints from the public and from the TV industry were loud and long. But I'm convinced that we were on the right track then and that we are still on the right track. I suspect that the public and the TV people realize it too, for the complaints are now both fewer and further between. Asa Bushnell, first of all, tell us just what the National Collegiate Athletic Association is, when it was formed, and what are its duties aside from the regulation of TV as it affects college football. By coincidence, Jimmy, the NCAA originally came into being in an earlier move to save the game of football. That was back in 1955, 50 years ago. The existence of football was threatened then by the many injuries caused by the old fashioned mass and power play in Vogue. The NCAA was organized. A rules committee for football was established. Play was opened up. Injuries greatly curtailed. And college football went on to become the magnificent sport it is today. Now, after 50 years of successful administration, the NCAA operates a rules committee not alone in football but in each intercollegiate sport. The NCAA conducts intercollegiate championship events. Publishes rule books and guides. It has a large part in organizing U.S. Olympic teams. It assures the maintenance of high standards in the conduct of college sports. The NCAA is the organization through which its 460 member colleges and universities consider and take action on athletic matters at the national level. How many games are being televised this season? The NCAA telecast program this fall covers 13 dates, 12 Saturdays plus Thanksgiving. There are eight national dates and five regional dates. On each national date, a single outstanding contest is televised from coast to coast. On each of the regional dates, five or six games are presented within their respective territories. How does this number compare with past years? This year's number is slightly larger. In 1952, 53, and 54, only one game was put on the air each Saturday. Asa Bushnell, I know that the Big Ten, Yes, and the Pacific Coast conferences in particular were opposed to some of the present restrictions of the NCAA's television control of football TV. The vast majority of NCAA colleges have long favored control of football TV for the protection of football itself. However, certain segments of the membership have been strong in advocating regional presentations rather than national presentations as features of the restricted program. This is the reason for the NCAA's experimentation this year with a schedule which combines national and regional telecasts. Incidentally, should be pointed out that, though the colleges sometimes disagree over the details of their TV activities, they are virtually unanimous in their conviction that controls must be maintained if the TV problem is to be solved. And they are united year after year in their support of whatever program is currently in operation. Asa Bushnell, you've had more experience in dealing with this TV problem than any other big sport. Do you think some such arrangement as the NCAA's present one is or should be in the books for Major League Baseball? Well, ever since television became a reality, I've been convinced that any sport which failed to find a reasonable basis for the restriction and limitation of televising of its events would soon become as extinct as a dodo. In my opinion, it all reduces itself to this simple fact. You can't give away tickets for a sports contest free at charge and sell those tickets at the same time. TV means free tickets, therefore it means hurt at the box office. Despite the complexities caused by the many, many games played at the same times, college football has found a way to live with TV through the limitations on telecasts imposed by the NCAA television plan. This plan safeguards the football revenue which is so badly needed by the colleges, large, middle-sized, small, and the operation of their overall all sports programs. I feel that other sports could well take a leaf from the NCAA book. For baseball and the rest of them, less television will mean less truck with Annie Oakley. And Annie has always been a girl with expensive taste. Thank you, Asa Bushnell, director of the NCAA football television program. And now this is Jimmy Powers Transcribe closing another chapter of the tumult and the shouting and saying so long until next time.