The Olympics on TV, and the Tragedy of the 1972 Munich Games
The 1972 Munich Olympics will forever be remembered for the terrorist attack and murder of the eleven Israeli team members by the Palestinian militant organization Black September. We’ll delve into some detail of this tragedy of 50 years ago shortly.
First, some background…
As the Munich Games began on August 26, the pomp of the opening ceremonies, the ultra-modern grandeur of the new stadium, and the attractive Olympic village all indicated high hopes for an exciting and joyous two-week competition. West Germany as a nation also needed to host an Olympics to create positive lasting memories for the world, in stark contrast to the bone-chilling Berlin Games of 1936.
Those infamous Games opened on August 1, under the menacing auspices of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. With the exception of the English Derby at Epsom race track in England in 1932 (televised by television inventor John Logie Baird), the Berlin Olympiad was the first major sporting event ever to be televised to a viewing audience.
Some background:
In the early 1930s, engineers in both Germany and Great Britain kept vigilant of each other’s progress in their quest to be the first to present television to the masses. In Germany, with the Nazi party’s power already omnipotent, all early television experiments were conducted under the party’s auspices. Electronic cameras had been in use there since March 22, 1935, the official birth date of German TV. Even so, the picture quality was poor, due mostly to the rush to beat the U.K. and U.S. development of their own systems. Of course, those first regular German TV broadcasts consisted largely of Nazi propaganda programs.
The disappointing picture quality prompted the Nazis to produce television content shot first on 35 mm film, and then broadcast over the airwaves.
At the time the Olympics opened, there were still precious few privately-owned TV sets in Germany to receive the broadcasts from the main stadium. Instead of broadcasting only to those handful of households with televisions (mostly belonging to high-ranking Nazi party members), public TV viewing parlors were installed throughout Berlin; some allowed about 20 people at a time to sit in a darkened room and watch the events on one or two small-screen monitors in the front. Other venues were set up in existing theatres to accomodate larger crowds. Roughly 160,000 viewers visited these parlors to watch portions of the Olympic events.
At the stadium, three electronic cameras were used in conjunction with film cameras, creating an “intermediate film” method, which sent exposed film from the cameras into the broadcasting truck to be instantly developed, and then transmitted a minute later to the TV parlors. Picture quality still wasn’t ideal, but it was a milestone accomplishment in the early history of television broadcasting.
Still, despite the presence of the new medium of television, the Berlin Olympics will be remembered mostly for the grotesque, swastika-laden proceedings, in the midst of the ever-present propaganda and white-washed images of German life, as reported in the national press and television — but also for a few individuals who instilled both defiance and pride for much of the free world at the time; especially personified by the success of 4-time gold medalist Jesse Owens.
While the 1936 Berlin Olympics were the first ever to be televised — albeit only in Germany — the 1940 and 1944 Games were cancelled due to World War II. Subsequent Games after the war (London, ’48; Helsinki, ’52; Melbourne, ’56) were seen on American TV only as newsreels and as limited highlights on news broadcasts.
It wasn’t until 1960 when American viewers saw CBS televise same-day (but not live) reports from the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California. Originally, ABC paid $50,000 for the rights to cover the games, but later backed out. Roone Arledge, one-time president of ABC Sports and ABC News, explained, “CBS had picked up the Games, not out of any love for the Olympics but as a favor from [CBS president] Bill Paley to Walt Disney.” What did Walt Disney have to do with it? He was chairman of the Pageantry Committee, responsible for the opening and closing ceremonies, and Paley was happy to ensure that his friend’s efforts would be televised coast-to-coast.
The reporters covering these games included Walter Cronkite (still two years away from assuming his role as anchor of the evening news), Bud Palmer, and future ABC stalwart Chris Schenkel. But the CBS coverage was nothing like what American viewers today are accustomed to seeing for each winter and summer Olympics. The Squaw Valley broadcasts were initially limited to 15-minute recap segments each evening, beginning at 11:15 p.m. This obviously precluded the opportunity for any younger viewers to see the highlights, and also didn’t allow for in-depth reporting on the individual events and participating athletes. However, CBS did expand its coverage later in the week to include figure skating, hockey, and ski jumping, prompting New York Times TV critic Jack Gould to retract somewhat his earlier criticisms of the coverage. “These events were part of the original CBS plans for the Olympic coverage, not an afterthought,” he conceded in a follow-up column, “so that viewers who legitimately complained about those earlier 15-minute summaries, including this corner, were perhaps too quick in their judgments.”
Later in 1960, CBS also offered limited coverage of the Summer Olympics in Rome. This was still before Telstar and other satellites enabled live broadcasts from abroad, so films of the Games had to be flown to New York for broadcast.
For the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics, NBC used the Syncom 3 satellite for its coverage, including live, color broadcasts of the opening and closing ceremonies. These were the first color transmissions via satellite from overseas to the U.S., but only the ceremonies themselves were shown in color.
The modern era of coverage began when ABC secured the rights to both the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France, and the summer Games in Mexico City. The Winter Games in Grenoble included live transmissions of the opening ceremony and ladies figure skating final (won by Peggy Fleming), while the rest of the Games were sent to ABC via satellite to be taped and aired from New York. The Summer Games in Mexico City were broadcast in color throughout the 44 hours of coverage.
For the 1972 Winter Games in Sopporo, Japan, NBC provided the coverage, but ABC won the bidding for the Summer Games in Munich.
Chris Schenkel served as studio host as the Games in Munich began, with field and studio reports from Jim McKay, a young Peter Jennings, and the rest of the on-air team. Before long, viewers around the world became enamored of athletes such as American swimmer Mark Spitz and charismatic Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut.
In the early hours of September 5, the terrorists broke into the Olympic Village dorm of the Israeli team, and promptly informed authorities that the athletes were being held hostage, as part of a demand to release over 200 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, as well as leaders of Germany’s far-left Red Army Faction. Two of the Israelis were killed during the initial break-in, and some athletes managed to escape and seek help, leaving nine athletes, coaches, and team officials still at gunpoint.
The ABC sportscasters had to suddenly shift into hard-news mode. As soon as Roone Arledge heard that the team was being held hostage in the dorm, he hastily made arrangements to shift the TV coverage to the new turn of events, choosing Jim McKay to anchor incoming reports in the studio. In the succeeding hours, McKay emerged as the personality viewers turned to for the latest updates of the hostage situation.
At one point in the crisis, the terrorists demanded plane transportation to Cairo. Helicopters took them and the hostages to a NATO air base, where the German authorities had planned an ambush. But things went horribly wrong, and in the ensuing gunfight and explosions by hand grenade thrown into one of the helicopters, all of the remaining hostages were killed.
In the studio, McKay’s steady and compassionate reporting of the confusing events at the airport climaxed with his chilling and heartbreaking announcement, as Schenkel and Jennings sat with him. “Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone.” Some terrorists were captured, and the rest were killed before the battle on the tarmac was over.
McKay’s stalwart reporting secured his role as host four years later for ABC’s coverage of the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria, and the Summer Olympiad in Montreal, the rights of which were purchased for a then-whopping $25 million, for 76 hours of coverage. It was another peak of ABC’s Golden Age of Olympic coverage.
McKay’s easygoing personality, genuine interest in the athletes’ stories (both Americans and those from other countries, as highlighted in the “Up Close and Personal” features), and eloquent commentaries won him fans, praise from the critics, and multiple Emmys.
ABC covered the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York (highlighted by the “miracle” U.S. hockey team defeating the Soviet team), while NBC won the rights to broadcast the Moscow Summer Olympics. However, the controversial U.S. boycott of the Games, in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, put the kibosh on network television coverage, allowing only for occasional updates.
In 1984, ABC returned for the Winter Games in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, and shelled out a cool $225 million for the rights to the Summer Games in Los Angeles. The 1988 Winter Games in Calgary, Canada, would prove to be the last televised by ABC.
Capital Cities purhase of ABC came with the announcement that the network would no longer bid for future Olympics, opening the door for NBC to secure the rights for all Games through the 2032 Olympiad. Bob Costas became the prime time host; he voluntarily left that post after the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. Mike Tirico has replaced him for the Games ever since.
While American network television coverage of the Olympics always draws grumbling and criticism of various kinds from viewers and journalists — beginning with the aforementioned Jack Gould — it is a massive undertaking, requiring hundreds of personnel working around the clock before and during each Games to send us the images we see. The most common complaints include abbreviated coverage of certain events, too many commercials, and grossly lopsided attention to American athletes. There are alternatives — live streaming, accessing coverage by other countries — but for those who wish to make minimal effort in order to see “the human drama of athletic competition” (as described in the long-ago opening to ABC’s Wide World of Sports), NBC will be, for at least the next decade, the only Games in town.
And in an increasingly violent world, we can only hope that the tragedy of Munich will remain the sole, if harrowing, instance of violence in the history of a competition designed to promote world peace.
Until next time…
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Other television-related articles of mine that might be of interest to you:
“A Brief History of the Olympics on Television, Part 1” https://garryberman.medium.com/a-brief-history-of-the-olympics-on-television-part-1-d01005318fc4
“The First Person to be Censored on TV was…Eddie Cantor?” https://medium.com/@garryberman/eddie-cantor-the-first-person-to-be-censored-on-tv-78b56c68cae1
“Mary Kay and Johnny: Television’s First Sitcom” https://medium.com/@garryberman/mary-kay-and-johnny-televisions-first-sitcom-835fec303b5e
“A Mother’s Day Tribute to our Funniest Sitcom Moms” https://medium.com/@garryberman/a-mothers-day-tribute-to-our-funniest-sitcom-moms-68f9122538a8
“Television’s Greatest Sitcom Dad?” https://garryberman.medium.com/televisions-greatest-sitcom-dad-ef2dab761525
“Breaking the Fourth Wall (in comedy)” https://medium.com/@garryberman/breaking-the-fourth-wall-in-comedy-51edfa9f88f0
“Comedy to Die For: When Death Rears it’s Head in Sitcoms” https://medium.com/@garryberman/comedy-to-die-for-when-death-rears-its-head-in-sitcoms-7a51cb0acc32
“Saying Goodbye to ‘Modern Family’” https://medium.com/@garryberman/saying-good-bye-to-modern-family-73897235416d
“No Laughs, Please: Our Greatest Comedians as Dramatic Actors” https://medium.com/@garryberman/no-laughs-please-37fdf614e85a
“Fifty Years of ‘The Odd Couple’ on TV (pt. 1)” https://medium.com/@garryberman/fifty-years-of-the-odd-couple-on-tv-part-i-62a0eac93520
“My Funny Valentine: Comedy’s Real-life Married Couples” https://medium.com/@garryberman/my-funny-valentine-comedys-real-life-married-couples-1f0605e2caca
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