The NHL on CBS was a presentation of National Hockey League (NHL) games on CBS in the United States. It aired in several variations from the 1950s to 1980.
New York Rangers games on WCBS (1945–1948) CBS' affiliation with the National Hockey League technically goes as far back as the 1945–46 season, when its flagship station, New York's WCBW (later WCBS) televised New York Rangers games through the 1947–48 season. Bob Edge provided the commentary during the first two seasons and Win Elliot for the final season, when WCBW officially became WCBS. The hockey telecasts from this era only used two cameras.
The commercial spots for Knox Hats were done and aired live from a small studio elsewhere in Madison Square Garden. They required a considerable amount of rehearsal with a four-way hook-up connecting the live commercial, Win Elliot's cage, the CBS studio, and the Garden's control room. All of this necessitated instantaneous cueing by director Herbert Bayard Swope Jr. The commercials from the Garden's other two sponsors, Ford and Maxwell House were decidedly less complicated to produce. For instance, the Ford commercials were exclusively done by film from the CBS studio.
1956–1960 NHL Game of the Week CBS broadcast its Saturday afternoon National Hockey League "Game of the Week" program starting in the season to season. Bud Palmer served as the play-by-play announcer, while Fred Cusick did color commentary and interviews for the first three seasons. In , Cusick moved over to play-by-play while Brian McFarlane came in to do the color commentary and interviews. McFarlane was originally banned by American Unions in early January 1960 from working the telecasts, as they revoked his card. The pregame and intermission interviews were done on the ice, with the interviewer on skates. No playoff games were televised during this period, and all broadcasts took place in one of the four American arenas at the time.
During the 1956–57 season, CBS broadcast 10 games on Saturday afternoons, starting on January 5, 1957. The ratings were deemed good enough that the following season saw the slate expanded to 21 games, and 20 games for the season. The network continued airing games on Saturday afternoons through March 19, 1960. CBS ceased telecasting the NHL nationally when it cancelled its contract on July 22, 1960. CBS was generally happy with viewer ratings for its NHL Game of the Week. However, only showing the same four American teams, without the Toronto Maple Leafs or Montreal Canadiens willing to play Saturday afternoons in the United States, caused viewership to drop by 1960 and was the reason the network did not renew its TV contract. The four American franchises–at the time consisting of the Boston Bruins, the Chicago Black Hawks, the Detroit Red Wings, and the New York Rangers–each received US$7,000 per game. This new revenue stream was not shared with the players as they received absolutely no money from the television deal. In October 1957, the nascent NHL Players Association filed a lawsuit against the league's ownership and won an out-of-court settlement whereby James Norris, Jr. and Arthur Wirtz agreed to pay money into the players’ pension fund.
Schedules
1956–57 Date Teams1/5/57Chicago at New York1/12/57New York at Detroit1/19/57Detroit at Chicago1/26/57New York at Boston2/2/57New York at Detroit2/9/57Montreal at Boston2/16/57Boston at Chicago2/23/57Detroit at Chicago3/2/57New York at Boston3/9/57Detroit at Boston
1957–58 DateTeams11/2/57Boston at New York11/9/57New York at Chicago11/16/57Detroit at Chicago11/23/57Montreal at Boston11/30/57Detroit at New York12/7/57Chicago at Boston12/14/57 New York at Detroit12/21/57Detroit at Chicago1/4/58Boston at New York1/11/58Chicago at Detroit1/18/58New York at Chicago1/25/58Detroit at Boston2/1/58Chicago at New York2/8/58New York at Detroit2/15/58Montreal at Boston2/22/58Boston at Detroit3/1/58Boston at Chicago3/8/58Detroit at Chicago3/15/58New York at Boston3/22/58 Chicago at Detroit
1958–59 Date Teams10/18/58Detroit at Chicago10/25/58Chicago at New York11/1/58Detroit at Boston11/8/58Chicago at Detroit11/15/58Montreal at Chicago11/22/58Detroit at Boston11/29/58Boston at New York12/6/58Detroit at Chicago1/3/59Boston at Detroit1/10/59Detroit at New York1/17/59 New York at Chicago1/24/59Chicago at Detroit1/31/59Chicago at Boston2/7/59Chicago at New York2/14/59Montreal at Boston2/21/59Chicago at Detroit2/28/59Boston at Chicago3/7/59New York at Chicago3/14/59Detroit at Boston3/21/59New York at Detroit
1959–60 Date Teams1/9/60Detroit at New York1/16/60Detroit at Chicago1/23/60New York at Chicago1/30/60Detroit at Boston2/6/60Chicago at New York2/13/60Montreal at Boston2/20/60Boston at Detroit2/27/60Boston at Chicago3/5/60New York at Chicago3/12/60Detroit at Boston3/19/60New York at Detroit
The Toronto Maple Leafs did not appear on the schedule because the team played at home every Saturday night during the season.
1967–1972 contract In , CBS offered to broadcast an NHL Game of the Week on Saturdays during the National Football League season. By the winter, CBS would move the Game of the Week to Sundays in the same time slot. Ultimately, the NHL rejected the idea, saying it would cause too many scheduling and travel problems. The league was especially worried about a game from Montreal or Toronto being played on a Saturday afternoon (and not on Saturday night to accommodate CBC Television), and teams having to play an early afternoon game on Sunday after playing a game the previous night.
Coverage For six seasons, from through , CBS aired a game each week between mid-January and early-mid May in every season, mainly on a Sunday afternoon, including playoffs. Each American-based franchise was paid US$100,000 annually for the first two years of the initial contract and $150,000 for the third. From 1968–69 through 1971–72, the intermission studio was called "CBS Control," just like with its NFL coverage.
Due to prior programming commitments, CBS did not broadcast regular season games during the 1966–67 season, so that portion of the package was subleased to RKO General, which syndicated eight regular-season games to some cities, including the four U.S. cities that then had NHL clubs and the six U.S. cities that would gain new teams in the 1967 expansion. During the 1967 playoffs, CBS was scheduled to broadcast the April 8 game between the New York Rangers and Montreal Canadiens. However, an AFTRA strike forced the cancellation of the telecast. The strike itself ultimately ended two days later.
CBS started its weekly 1967–68 coverage with the opening game (the Philadelphia Flyers vs. Los Angeles Kings) at The Forum in Inglewood, California on December 30. Then after three more Saturday afternoons, CBS switched to covering Sunday afternoon games beginning on January 28 for the next 10 weeks. On March 10, 1968, CBS broadcast a game at Chicago Stadium between Toronto and Chicago. In a precursor to the "Heidi fiasco" on NBC a few months later, CBS decided that the game was over, the Hawks leading 3–0 with 50 seconds left, and went to a children's movie called The Goalkeeper Also Lives on Our Street.
Due to another strike by AFTRA (which resulted in the cancellation of a New York Rangers-Montreal broadcast last year), CBS started its playoff coverage with a CBC tape of the previous night's Boston-Montreal game. On April 13, CBS started its three-week-long weekend afternoon Stanley Cup coverage, ending with the St. Louis-Montreal game 4 on May 11. For the playoffs, Jim Gordon worked play-by-play, and Stu Nahan worked color commentary. During the regular season, the pair alternated roles each week. For instance, Gordon worked play-by-play on December 30 while Nahan worked play-by-play the next week.
In , CBS broadcast 13 regular season Sunday afternoon games and five Stanley Cup playoff games. Dan Kelly did play-by-play while Bill Mazer did color commentary and intermission interviews.
In 1970, Pat Summerall and then Boston Bruins' television announcer Don Earle did a short post-game segment from inside the team's dressing room at the end of CBS' coverage of the fourth (and what turned out to be the final game) of the 1970 Stanley Cup Final. WSBK-TV, which was the Bruins' television flagship at the time, simulcast the CBS coverage and did a longer post-game locker-room segment after CBS' coverage ended. After Bobby Orr scored the championship-winning goal after just 40 seconds, so the story went, Summerall turned to Bobby's father, Doug Orr (who was reportedly, too nervous to go back to his seat from the Bruins' dressing room for the start of overtime) and yelled over the crowd in the stands above "Mr. Orr, your son has scored and Boston has won the Stanley Cup!" Doug Orr is said to have told Summerall, "I know Boston scored, but we didn't see it! What makes you think my son scored?" Summerall supposedly replied, "Because they wouldn't be yelling this loudly if Esposito had scored!"
On January 31, 1971, CBS was scheduled to carry a game between the Boston Bruins and St. Louis Blues, a rematch of the 1970 Finals. The game was to begin at 2 p.m. Eastern Time, but NASA announced that the Apollo 14 lunar-landing mission would be launched that afternoon at 3:23 p.m. Eastern Time. CBS decided to air the first period of the game live, then switch to news coverage once the first period ended (at approximately 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time). At about 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time, after the launch coverage was due to end, CBS would show the second and third periods of the game on tape delay. But the launch was delayed for over a half-hour, and after the launch took place, CBS had no time to show the rest of the game on tape. The theme music that CBS employed during this period bore similarities to the song "Sounds" by Hot Butter.
The network showed weekend afternoon playoff games; the same pattern continued through the season. CBS did manage to televise the 1971 Stanley Cup Final clincher on a Tuesday night and the 1972 Stanley Cup Final clincher on a Thursday night. In 1971, CBS was not scheduled to broadcast Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final but showed the prime time contest (the first ever occurrence of an NHL game being nationally televised in prime time in the United States) between the Montreal Canadiens and Chicago Black Hawks after fans reportedly swamped switchboards at network headquarters in New York City asking that the seventh game be televised. Ironically, the game was not telecast by CBS' Chicago owned-and-operated station WBBM-TV, nor on CBS affiliates in most of Illinois, and parts of Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa, due to Blackhawks' owner Arthur M. Wirtz policy of not telecasting home games. While Dan Kelly once again handled all play-by-play work, Jim Gordon replaced Bill Mazer on the role Mazer previously did in . For the CBS' Stanley Cup Final coverage during this period, a third voice was added to the booth (Phil Esposito in 1971 and Harry Howell in 1972).
One trivial note, however: on January 23, 1972, Jim Gordon was not in Boston for the Buffalo-Boston game. Therefore, Dick Stockton filled in and did the game with Dan Kelly. Stockton, who did some work for The NFL on CBS, was also at the time a sports anchor for WBZ-TV in Boston, which ironically was at the time an NBC affiliate (WBZ-TV switched from NBC to CBS on January 2, 1995, after its parent company Westinghouse invested in and later purchased CBS, making WBZ an owned-and-operated station of the network in September 1995 which it has remained as since).