The Pigskin and the Picture Tube: The National Football League's First Full Season on the CBS Television Network

Abstract

This article describes the efforts of the Columbia Broadcasting System to telecast the National Football League's 1956 season on the CBS Television Network. The network established a pattern of multiple regional telecasts and a shift from local to network control of professional football telecasts. Drawing on historical documents and oral history interviews, the article describes the conditions that led CBS to consider telecasting professional football. In addition, it examines the negotiations between the network and the NFL as well as the technical and contractual challenges that CBS had to overcome for professional football's first full season on network television.