Early Red Sox and Braves TV history

[Kevin Vahey]

A new book details the history of baseball and television titled
CENTER FIELD SHOT.

It offers some interesting tidbits about early Boston TV. Professor
Halper take note.

It claims that the first televised games at Fenway date to 1931 and
were done by a gentleman by the name of Hollis Baird who perhaps Donna
knows of.

Boston was a year behind most other major league cities as regular TV
service did not begin until 1948. In 1949 WBZ/WNAC televised every Red
Sox and Braves home games and the same applied in 1950.

In 1951 and 1952 the Braves were only on WNAC and televised 54
afternnon games but nothing in prime time. However WBZ continued to
air every Red Sox game and would bump NBC to do so and this continued
through 1953.

In 1954 WBZ first started doing road games (18) but the total
telecasts remained at 77.

The book also states that the production of the 1948 World Series by
WNAC was so bad that baseball was considering no longer televising the
games. However WEWS in Cleveland did a much better job of the games
there.

Gillette who owned the rights to the 1948 World Series wanted
desperately to link the East and Midwest stations for the games but
the cable linking NY and Chicago had not been completed. Mutual had
both the radio and TV rights and offered the games to any station that
wanted them.

To link the east with the midwest Gillette turned to Westinghouse who
devised a way to relay the games. WMAR in Baltimore fed the signal to
a B-29 flying over Pennsylvania at 20000 feet who then transmitted the
game on channel 6 which was picked up by WEWS in Cleveland and then
fed to the Midwest.