red the pioneer in sports broadcasting. It laid the groundwork for what we know today as sports entertainment. Although no single factor can ever be totally responsible for a network's rise to the top, it can be said that ABC largely moved to the top of the Nielsen ratings because of its domination of sports programming. ABC Sports was number one long before the network as a whole earned that title. Sports provided ABC with income and prestige and a focal point for its future ascent (Sugar, 1978).
One of the chief appeals of sports in the early days was its cost effectiveness. At that time, sports required little to produce and games were easily scheduled for unproductive network hours, particularly on weekend afternoons. Sports were also a good buy for television advertisers. They continue to be an important source of advertising revenue for the networks, particularly through big event programming, such as the Super Bowl, Olympics, World Series, and basketball finals. In particular, sports programming is attractive to such advertisers as sellers of beer, automobiles, shaving equipment, gasoline, and tires, since major sports programming tends to reach the demographic of middle class males who are high consumers of these products.
After the domination of roller derby, wresting, and boxing during the 1950s, the networks gradually moved into other sports. By 1962, the three networks had committed $80 million for sports programming, one quarter of it for college and professional football on CBS, another quarter for baseball on NBC. Added to that were pro hockey and basketball, plus special events such as the Kentucky Derby and the Masters Golf Tournament (McDonald, 1990). Major magazine shows, such as Wide World of Sports, were born during this decade, and the Olympics began to be understood as a major sporting event for broadcast television.
However, women played a very small role in this developing phenomena, makin...