A century ago, NBC’s leaders were quick to recognize the importance of sports as a cornerstone of the fledgling national radio network.
On New Year’s Day 1927, NBC carried the first coast-to-coast live broadcast of a sporting event, the Rose Bowl football game between Stanford and Alabama (which ended in a tie). Top-tier teams, leagues and events, cutting-edge technology and programs that cultivate the fandom around sports have been part of the mix at NBC ever since.
Today, with NBC firmly established as the U.S. home of the Olympics and the biggest of big-league sports (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and more), the division is guided by a simple philosophy. “How do we entertain people?” says Rick Cordella, president of NBC Sports.
“People look to sports to kind of get away from their day-to-day lives and fall into the drama of a great competition and the storytelling that happens around the athletes and teams and people around the periphery of those sports,” Cordella says. “We always say, ‘How do we make big events bigger?’”
NBC is in the midst of a yearlong celebration of the 100th anniversary of its launch as a radio network on Nov. 15, 1926. Cordella has been thinking about another milestone marked this year, the 20th anniversary of NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” and its companion studio show, “Football Night in America.”
The decision to carve out a Sunday evening gridiron showcase was the brainchild of former NBC Sports chief Dick Ebersol, who steered sports and late night at NBC for more than two decades. Ebersol’s ethos was to up the ante on the production and presentation and to make the telecast entertaining for casual football fans. The “Sunday Night Football” launch team included Cordella and Sam Flood, who is executive producer and president of production for NBC Sports.
“The goal was to create a Sunday night destination and make ‘Sunday Night Football’ the most important game of the week,” says Flood, who joined NBC in 1986 as an Olympics researcher. “That’s a combination of the great talent, the great production philosophy and the hard work that goes into not being satisfied after every show.”
In the 1950s, it was undisputed that baseball was America’s favorite sport. NBC was the first to bring baseball to radio and TV with nationwide reach. The network consistently invested in technology and resources to improve the presentation of the action on the diamond. Harry Coyle, an NBC Sports staff director, cemented his place in sports history with his brainstorm in 1955 that a camera placed just right in center field would better capture a 360-view of the duel between the batter and the pitcher.
NBC broadcasts a college baseball game between Princeton and Columbia on May 17, 1939 during the New York World’s Fair installation where RCA and NBC introduced television to the U.S.(NBC/NBCU Photo Bank)
NBC/NBCU Photo Bank
“That was an NBC innovation where Harry Coyle said, ‘Let’s put a camera in center field,’” Cordella notes. “The stadiums weren’t built for it, they had to carve out a spot. And that setup that is still standard-issue for baseball today.”
Molly Solomon, executive producer and president of NBC Olympics and Paralympics, has been with NBC Sports for 36 years. After rising to her current post in 2019, she was tasked with reinventing NBC’s Olympics coverage for a new era. She was instrumental in the triumph of the 2024 Summer Games in Paris.
“We constantly ask ourselves the question: How can we make the best seat in the house even better,” Solomon says. “Athlete storytelling and the competition are the core of the Olympics, and we look for ways that we bring the viewer closer to them and explain the sports of the games even
more deeply.”
In 1963, NBC gambled — and won — by spending $1 million to outbid ABC for the rights to the 1964 Tokyo Summer Games. Fifty years later, NBCUniversal made an extraordinary commitment to secure U.S. rights to Summer and Winter Games from 2022 to 2032 for $7.75 billion.
With just 23 months to go before the Olympics caravan alights on NBC’s home turf with the Los Angeles Summer Games, Cordella, Solomon and a small army of producers, artisans and anchors are gearing up for what Cordella anticipates will be “the biggest sporting event of our lifetimes.”
He points to the sense of community that many Americans felt in June and July when the World Cup soccer tournament unfolded across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
“We saw what happened with the World Cup domestically and how the country coalesced around that event — and that’s just one sport,” Cordella observes. “This is all sports for 17 days in a row. We may have an Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani gold medal baseball game from Dodger Stadium, which may be the 100th best thing that week.”
Solomon notes that time zone issues are usually the biggest issue that NBC faces in covering the broad menu of live Olympic events. But that won’t be an issue in 2028.
“The LA28 Games are going to be live, live, live,” she says. “We’ve been planning LA28 since 2020, and it’s unlike any Olympics that we’ve ever designed. We’re making sure that we are going to create the most compelling presentation in the history of media because this will be the greatest media event in a generation. No pressure.”
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Games of Our Lives
A sampling of historic NBC firsts that shaped sports broadcasting
May 18, 1929
Racing announcer Clem McCarthy calls the Kentucky Derby on NBC radio network for the first time. He would cover the Run for the Roses on NBC until 1947.
August 1936
NBC radio covers major events at the Berlin Summer Olympics, including Jesse Owens’ four track and field gold medal wins.
April 1941
First-ever NBC Sports division is created under the direction of longtime NBC announcer Bill Stern.
Sept. 30, 1947
NBC broadcasts the first World Series on TV.
Jan. 1, 1954
NBC televises NBA games for the first time.
July 12, 1955
A center field camera is added to a baseball game telecast for the first time when NBC carries the All-Star Game. The innovation is the brainchild of NBC Sports director Harry Coyle.
October 1964
NBC broadcasts the first live Olympic opening ceremony as the Tokyo Games kick off. It also marks the first-ever live U.S. telecast to originate from Japan.
Nov. 17, 1968
The “‘Heidi’ Bowl”: NBC cuts away from a New York Jets-Oakland Raiders game with 65 seconds on the clock to run the children’s movie “Heidi.” The Raiders shock the Jets with two touchdowns in the final minute to score a 43-32 upset win. The notorious incident led to the establishment of the “Heidi phone” hotline for NBC Sports to coordinate with network leaders at 30 Rock when a live game ran long.
From the Nov. 20, 1968, edition of Variety
April 8, 1974
NBC telecasts Atlanta Braves’ slugger Hank Aaron’s historic 715th career home run, which broke Babe Ruth’s record.
March 16, 1979
NBC Sports carries the landmark Michigan-Indiana NCAA men’s basketball championship game, which marks the birth of the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird basketball rivalry
Oct. 1, 1990
John Tesh’s “Roundball Rock” is introduced as the theme for “NBA on NBC.” The propulsive anthem becomes synonymous with the end of the hoops showcase that carried the triumphs of such NBA superstars as Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant.
(Pictured top: NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” in-studio launch team of Cris Collinsworth, Jerome Bettis, Sterling Sharpe and Bob Costas in 2006)
This story is part of a retrospective series commemorating NBC’s centennial that Variety is publishing through a partnership with NBCUniversal.
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