There's some debate about who was the first to broadcast a sporting event over the airwaves and into people's homes.
It's as if as many entities as possible want to claim that they were the ones who brought you a Jack Dempsey fight before someone else who also broadcast a Jack Dempsey fight.
(Or maybe it was Professor F.W. Springer who had a crude set up rigged to transmit University of Minnesota football games to a very small audience as early as 1912.)
No matter who got there first, there's no denying that watching (or listening) to sports in the comfort of our homes is America's real favorite pastime.
And as the games evolved, so did the technology that brings them to us, with each new innovation taking the viewing experience to a new level.
1920 ? The First Widespread Radio Broadcasts
WTAW had the honor of broadcasting the first football game over the radio, a match between the University of Texas and Texas A&M (then known as Mechanical College) on November 25th, 1920.
The first professional football game to be broadcast on the radio was a Thanksgiving Day game between the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions on November 29th, 1934.
On August 5, 1921, KDKA of Pittsburgh, PA broadcast a game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field. The game was called by Harold W. Arlin, as were many games back then since KDKA was an early force in the sports broadcasting world. KDKA would also do college football games and continue to do Pirates games. KDKA also broadcast the first ever tennis match on the radio.
Source: American Sportscasters Online
1939 ? Baseball Comes To Television
The first television broadcast of a sport was pulled off by a radio station known as NBC that was attempting to break into the TV market.
Bill Stern had the honor of calling a baseball game between Columbia University and Princeton University that only 400 televisions in the country were capable of receiving. The date of this game's broadcast May 17, 1939.
The camera was nothing like the standard center field set-up we have today. For the first few broadcasts, one camera actually panned back and forth between the pitcher and the catcher in a futile attempt to pick up the ball.
1955 ? Now In COLOR!
Sports programming on TV didn't appear in color until August 26, 1955.
The sport that was shown in color first was not baseball, but tennis. It was a Davis Cup match between the U.S. and Australia that was covered by NBC.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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