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chapter 13 Changing Times Were they really going to kill the fights? Weren’t there still millions of faithful viewers? When word first leaked to the New York Times on Sunday, December 22, 1963, Gillette denied it as a rumor. Garden publicist F. X. Condon quickly warned that if the show was indeed dropped, the Garden might have to cancel its weekly fight shows altogether and stop funding local boxing programs around the country. The president of Madison Square Garden Boxing, Inc., said the rumor of the show’s demise was “not true as far as I know.”1 But it was true. The official announcement, from an unnamed representative , was terse: “ABC has no plans to continue its boxing show next season. By next season, I mean 1964. I can’t say more than that at this time.” The decision had been made by the higher-ups at the network , apparently without the knowledge of affiliates and advertisers. Of course, talk of decline had been ongoing for years. ABC’s switch from Saturdays back to Fridays in October 1963 had seemed more an act of desperation than a calculated move to recover lost viewers. In the void of official explanation, the Times tried to summarize ABC’s rationale for dropping the show: “Waning interest in boxing, the lack of enough competent fighters to sustain a regular TV series, [and] unsavory publicity for the sport and the economics of television” were at the root of it.2 Other reports concurred, dredging up the litany of problems like an Unholy Trinity of Doom. Viewership was down. Fighting skills were on the decline (“dance contests,” criticized “many viewers”).3 It was corrupt; Kefauver had proven it. 216 Part III. The Hardest Game In this context, the press reported positive reactions to ABC’s decision. Explained former TV fighter Joey Giardello, “At first a lot of guys are going to starve. But then the little clubs will spring up again, boxing will get to be a neighborhood thing again, and promoters will have to come up with good fights to pack a house.” There was nothing, Giardello explained, “creepier for a fighter than to fight in a half-empty arena. All those people may be watching you on television, but you can’t hear them cheer or boo, or get behind you and scream.” Public criticism for ABC’s move, what there was of it, appeared to come from those who believed that the boxers would suffer financially. The Garden, explained publicist Condon, paid fighters much higher rates than they could ever earn at the clubs.4 What would fill the TV boxing void? In February 1964, an obvious choice got official recognition. Football would be taking boxing’s place. According to an ABC spokesman, starting September 25, just after boxing left, the network would begin playing a series of five NFL games on Friday nights. Yes, Friday night was boxing night in America. But it was also football night. By the early sixties, professional football, with the help of TV, had truly taken off. Some columnists were already declaring that it had replaced baseball as America’s national pastime. It was on TV just about every day of the week. In Washington, D.C., for instance, one could watch the Redskins game on Sunday, clips of the match on Tuesdays, an official Redskins Review show on Wednesdays, a scouting report show on Thursdays , and a regular chat with Coach Bill McPeak on Fridays. Uniforms had already been changed to better show contrast on television. Football players now hawked electric razors, aftershave lotion, and clothing. The quarterback for the New York Giants, Charlie Conerly, had become the first Marlboro Man. There were new “TV timeouts” to give the sponsors more opportunity to sell, and halftimes had been shortened to allow TV networks more scheduling flexibility.5 CBS had recently paid the NFL $14.1 million per year to broadcast games for the next two years, triple over its last bid. Fueled with Gillette’s cash after NBC initially dropped the Friday Night Fights in 1960, ABC also had big plans. Its Wide World of Sports was well underway, establishing itself as the new standard in sports broadcasting. There were even rumors that the network would be doing something with its Monday night lineup. Perhaps baseball, or even more football.6 Yet there were also fears. Would TV “kill” football the same way it had boxing? More than one journalist noted the eerie “coincidence...

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