One NBC affiliate that refused to air 'SportsWorld' was WLBZ-TV in Bangor, ME...why would that station pre-empt a lot of NBC Sports programming back then? (They aired MLB and NFL games for years!) Today, WLBZ-TV clears the entire NBC schedule, including their sports programming, plus the Olympics since the NBC TV network is in the midst of a long-term Olympic contract.
Unbeknownst to him (or anyone, for that matter), Charlie Jones foreshadowed two unfortunate events in his intro. First, he mentioned prior to the FINA World Championships that "America's swimmers prepare for Moscow." Yes, until they weren't as the US and other NATO allies boycotted the 1980 Olympics following the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. NBC had the rights to those Games, and they were counting on their telecasts to bring in lots of ad revenue to get them back into the black; instead, they scaled back their coverage significantly. Then, to witness Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett compete, "40,000 fans are gathered in the Stade du Heysel in Brussels, Belgium" which by that point was already falling into disrepair, a fact that would become apparent six years later an hour before kickoff of the UEFA European Champions' Clubs Cup Final between Liverpool and Juventus on 29 May 1985 as Liverpool supporters threw pieces of the crumbling stadium and other objects at other spectators, mostly Juventus supporters, then charged at them, and as they tried to escape, a retaining wall collapsed on them and 39 people died. UEFA banned English association football clubs from its competitions indefinitely which ended up lasting five years with Liverpool having to wait an additional two years. That ended up coinciding with the creation of the English Premier League and the UEFA Champions League, at which point there was too much money involved to hold major championships at grounds such as Heysel. Nonetheless, they did rebuild Heysel as Stade Roi Baudouin which continued to host major athletics competitions as well as some matches at UEFA EURO 2000.
NBC must've not used a peacock in the first half of 79 but did use a peacock in the fall. Also in the first half, the N was blue and red and was clear in the fall.
NBC got in trouble with the Big N, it was the same design at Nebraska public TV, they both settled out of court, RCA and NBC donated tv and transmitting equipment and NBC donated money to design a new logo for Nebraska Public tv.
WSB (the NBC affiliate here in Atlanta at the time) ran movies instead of Sportsworld until 1980, when WXIA took the NBC affiliation and WSB switched to ABC.
John Paulson FOX is the only major network not to have had a sports anthology series like what NBC, CBS and ABC had. If they did they would have Joe Buck (who is the worst announcer in sports) as the host which would be a slap in the face to greats like the late Jim Macay .
@@paulsonj72 ABC had 3 spinoffs from Wide World of Sports, the Superstars which were pro athletes in various spots, the American Sportsman which was hosted by Curt Gowdy and was the first Outdoors show, and longest running, the Professional Bowlers Tour over 33 years.
