Sports on Television

Television has always augmented its dramatic and variety programming with sports. After covering wrestling and boxing matches for several years, ABC added the hugely popular Roller Derby between 1949 and 1951, and later, college and pro football. Today, there is a multitude of pay and cable networks devoted exclusively to baseball, football, golf, hockey, tennis, ice-skating, and auto racing. Rather than focusing on live sports broadcasts, however, this book chronicles the history of sports-themed comedies and dramas, to see how our national fictions have affected our "authentic" sports experiences, and vice versa.

Alvin H. Marill has spent his career in broadcasting, direct marketing, the recording industry, and publishing. He is the author of more than two-dozen books dealing with stage, screen, and television, including the encyclopedicMovies Made for Television, long considered the definitive compilation of the genre. His recent Praeger volume,Big Pictures on the Small Screen released in 2007. Among his other works areMore Theatre: Stage to Screen to Television, The Complete Films of Edward G. Robinson, Robert Mitchum on the Screen, Samuel Goldwyn Presents, and career studies of Sidney Poitier, The Three Stooges, and Tommy Lee Jones. Marill has been executive editor for CBS Entertainment, general editor of The 500 Best American Films to Buy, Rent or Videotape, television editor forFilms in Review, and contributing editor of Leonard Maltin's annual Movie and Video Guide. He is a charter member of the Television Movie Hall of Fame.