The success of ABC's Sunday series, The Superstars, which pitted pro athletes from various sports in very different competitions, spawned a primetime, celebrity-driven companion series, Battle of the Network Stars, in which the Alphabet Network would invite stars from NBC & CBS' shows over for a friendly competition. For the next decade, we'd see this take place 1-2 times a year, up until 1985.
Howard Cosell anchored the coverage, with the exception of the May 1985 broadcast. At that point, Cosell had a falling out with ABC, and had seemingly hung up his microphone. However, he'd return for a 1-shot revival in 1988, which would be the last Battle for 29 years.
That's because someone at ABC thought it'd be a good idea to revive Battle anew, this time as a weekly summer series as part of a Thursday block that sees Battle sandwiched in between Boy Band and the revived Gong Show, the latter of which we reviewed earlier. Somehow, I don't think a weekly format works quite so well. Consider also that ABC had revived The Superstars in 2009 to tepid response.
Let's go back to 1976 with this clip with Howard Cosell and Telly Savalas:
CBS saw the results, and decided to do their own network-exclusive series on weekends as a component of CBS Sports Spectacular. We'll try to locate some video of that for another time.
Rating: A. It's a guilty pleasure, after all.
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