Heidi answers

["Kevin Vahey" <kvahey@mediaone.net>]

Trying to answer some of the questions concerning the Heidi game in 1968.

First of all viewers in New England never were affected as NBC was feeding a
Patriots game from Kansas City at the same time which was seen in its
entirety and then Heidi began as scheduled.

The problem WAS at WNBC where NBC BOC pulled the plug at 6:58 PM and of
course the last 2 Oakland touchdowns were missed. NBC Sports had given the
order to delay Heidi but the word never got to the AD on duty, and then
because the telephone system at NBC was overloaded with angry calls, NBC
execs living in Connecticut could not reach BOC to order the game back on.

I have heard Curt Gowdy tell the story many times that after the game was
over, he was asked to do the play by play over the remaining minutes that
did not air which indicates to me that NOBODY anywhere saw the end "live".

I do know in those days that while a seperate West Coast feed existed from
Burbank, all they did was tape the New York feed and show it 3 hours later.
More than likely since all sports events were produced out of New York,
there was no way for AT&T Long Lines to divert the raw feed from Oakland to
Burbank on such short notice. Strange as this sounds in the days before
satellites very little moved west to east, example being whenever Carson was
on the west coast and would tape hos show at 8:30 New York time, the show
itself would not be delivered by telco until 11:30 NYT and then relayed back
over the network.

The following spring CBS had a similar disaster about to unfold when a
Bruins-Montreal playoff game went into overtime and CBS was ready to
televise the Masters golf tournament. CBS lucked out when Montreal scored
with only seconds remaining before they would have had to switch to golf
 and there was no way hockey was going to delay the Masters) I shudder to
think what would have happened at the old Channel 5 if the plug had been
pulled on a B's playoff game in that era.



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