Over the course of four decades, it was a Saturday afternoon tradition.
However, after 37 seasons, ABC ended Wide World of Sports as a weekly anthology series. Today, the name remains as an umbrella title for various ABC/ESPN sports specials, such as the recent revival of Battle of The Network Stars.
Sportscaster and former game show host Jim McKay was the lead anchor for Wide World for most, if not all, of its run. The series also gave former NFL stars Frank Gifford & O. J. Simpson something to do, Gifford in particular, when in between seasons of Monday Night Football. In the course of its run (1961-98), Wide World lived up to the narrative spoken by McKay at the beginning of each episode, "spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport". Where else would you find televised lumberjack competitions? Demolition derbies? You get the idea.
Wide World also spun off The Pro Bowlers Tour & The American Sportsman.
We're going back in time to 1969, and an edited broadcast emphasizing that year's running of the Daytona 500. "The Great American Race" was shown on tape delay back in those days, long before NASCAR became big business, mandating that its major races would be shown live.
Rating: A.
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