Williamson Tobacco, removed their advertisements from the bleak episode, and twenty-five ABC affiliates declined to clear it. Based on these concerns, the NAB Code Committee asked to prescreen the program—a request Ollie Treyz declined. The controversy provided “A Lion Walks among Us” with free publicity that got many to watch just to see what all the fuss was about.
New York Times media critic Jack Gould panned “A Lion Walks among Us” as “a commercial exploitation of sensationalism and savagery, a depiction of the ugliness of man to furnish cheap thrills for the large numbers of young people known to tune in Bus Stop and Fabian.” The Chicago Tribune’s Larry Wolters added that “TV like this is a stimulant to crime and has no place in the living room,” and the Los Angeles Times’ Cecil Smith equated the program to “the worst in drug store fiction.”13 While Minow cited the twenty-five ABC affiliates’ refusal to clear “A Lion Walks among Us” as a positive indication that stations were slowly improving standards, ABC’s insistence on airing the program suggested “the Network of the Young” was uninterested in such high-minded pivots. “ABC for the last several years has been skirting the edge of acceptable programming in its concentration on so-called action drama,” Gould declared. “Now it has gone over the line.”14
Beyond the critics, “A Lion Walks among Us” garnered the attention of the Senate Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee chaired by Connecticut senator Thomas J. Dodd. The committee explored the link between violent media—especially TV—and youth crime. Dodd’s group located ABC as a principal cause of this epidemic. It claimed that Treyz, as well as CBS president James T. Aubrey and NBC head Robert E. Kinter—both of whom had previously worked at ABC—“learned to ‘entice’ an audience with crime and sex at the same school, ABC.” The committee specifically accused ABC’s opportunistic counterprogramming of fostering an industrial culture that would stop at nothing to secure an audience. Counterprogramming, Dodd charged, “is not a philosophy, but a hackneyed formula worn out by the pulp magazines years ago. The high regard it is given by the industry reflects a deep lack of imagination, but a deeper lack of responsibility.”15 The wave of progressively graphic programming against which the committee railed came to be known as the “Treyz trend” because of ABC’s identification with it. Treyz wound up losing his job—a position Moore overtook—in 1962 partly because of the negative reaction Bus Stop provoked. These critiques suggested ABC stood among the vast wasteland’s most desolate provinces.
Networks and affiliates responded to widespread attacks against television’s quality—and threats to cancel licenses—by investing in and emphasizing documentary, a genre commonly identified as exceptionally thoughtful and educational.16 Even before Minow’s speech, ABC used documentary to balance its less respectable properties. In particular, Bell & Howell Close Up! (1960–63) aired a range of celebrated films, including several Drew Associates “direct cinema” productions that included the handheld camera work and synchronized sound that ABC Sports adopted and refined. Treyz, in fact, defended himself against those who decried the “Treyz trend” by arguing that documentary played as big a role on ABC as the network’s youthful and violent content.17
A key way these network documentaries established interest was by engaging Cold War themes and promoting the United States’ role in spreading democracy amid the proliferation of communism. As Michael Curtin observes, “This flourishing of documentary activity was part of an ambitious effort to awaken the public to its ‘global responsibilities’ and thereby consolidate popular support for decisive action overseas.”18 Many of the documentaries during Close Up’s first two seasons foregrounded foreign policy and warned against the perils of communism with titles like Yanki No! (1960), Ninety Miles to Communism (1961), Our Durable Diplomats (1961), and The Remarkable Comrades (1961). They demonstrated television’s civic utility by tapping into Cold War anxieties and suggesting the medium, as well as the networks that filled it with content, “had an important role to play in the global struggle against communism.”19 Wide World of Sports enriched ABC’s strategic involvement with documentary and Cold War nationalism.
SILK PURSES OUT OF SOW’S EARS
“I thought it was the screwiest idea I’d ever heard,” admitted Goldenson of his initial reaction to Scherick and Arledge’s pitch to develop Wide World.20 Though perhaps screwy, Wide World—originally titled World of Sports—was a low-risk experiment that would compose a serviceable twenty-week summer replacement to fill weekend hours during the sports calendar’s slowest season. The program commanded relatively few resources and attracted advertisers simply because of its sporting focus. But Wide World was not unprecedented. CBS launched the similar Sunday afternoon sports anthology CBS Sports Spectacular in 1960. Moreover, the new ABC program borrowed its title from established media brands that included NBC’s Wide, Wide World (1955–58) documentary travelogue program and Sports Illustrated’s “Wonderful World of Sport” column. Ever the salesman, Scherick tacked ABC onto the program’s name so that ABC’s Wide World of Sports would sell the network every time its title was uttered.
Neither Scherick nor Arledge knew precisely which events Wide World would cover, but only that they needed to be affordable and have no blackout policies. ABC did not have a research library at the time, but Arledge had kept the keys to NBC’s reference collection, which was located on the same floor as his old office. Since he was still familiar to his former colleagues, Arledge sent production assistant Chuck Howard to use the rival network’s facilities to research potential contracts. A legal pad in hand, Howard scoured rolls of microfilm to create a compendium of events to which Arledge could start purchasing rights, such as the Frontier Days Rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and the Hydroplane Championships in Seattle. The only parameter they initially set—one that quickly fell by the wayside—was that the events had to be competitions with winners and losers rather than exhibitions. As the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Lee Winfrey put it, “Arledge and ABC were forced to the task of making silk purses out of the sow’s ears of sports.”21
Wide World’s first contract gave it rights to Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) competitions. Though hardly a marquee sports organization, the AAU was a recognizable institution with an identity steeped in patriotism and amateurism. While Scherick typically served as ABC Sports’ main negotiator, he sent Arledge to deal with the AAU because he suspected the organization was anti-Semitic. “The AAU had all the power in amateur sports back then,” he recalled, “and I figured we could get in on the ground floor on televising some of their events. But I’m a Jew, and, since there was still a great deal of prejudice at the time and since Arledge is a Gentile, I sent him in to do that negotiating.”22 Arledge struck a $50,000 deal for one year of the AAU’s exclusive TV rights. Wide World devoted seven of its first season’s twenty episodes in whole or part to AAU events and reinforced the alliance with its first client by adopting a logo that resembled the AAU shield (see appendix 1).
Even though it secured a promising menu of content, Treyz would not greenlight Wide World unless it presold 50 percent of its advertising spots—a policy the network enforced for most new programs at the time. If Wide World did not sell these spots by the close of business on March 31, 1961—less than a month before its scheduled premiere—Treyz would kill it. Gillette had already reserved one-quarter of Wide World’s rights, but the offbeat show was having a difficult time unloading the rest. ABC eventually found a sponsor not because of Wide World’s attractiveness but because of NCAA football’s appeal. The network’s college football coverage lost a quarter of its sponsorship after L&M Cigarettes changed ad agencies and moved away from sports. Though several advertisers were interested in the NCAA package, Scherick tied the advertising space remaining on its NCAA coverage to a quarter sponsorship of Wide World—which was considerably less costly than college football—to get the program on the air. Brown & Williamson, a stalwart of sports marketing at the time, offered to take one-eighth of the Wide World rights to get on ABC’s
