onairb said:
There was a recent post on the506.com Sports Broadcasting Forums(some people from here frequent that site, too) which mentioned the Pilots demanded too much money for TV rights, and so there was no TV deal..aside from a single telecast in September, from Boston(not sure which station carried it).
According to newspaper reports at the time, the Pilots were trying to sell a 20-game package at $15,000 per game. No one took the offer, so they dropped their price to $5,000. Another justification given by the stations was that interest in the team was so low, a preemption of network programming to air a Pilots game would have alienated too many viewers. KING-TV aired one road game from Detroit on a Sunday morning, August 31. Announcers were Joe Daggett, who called games for the minor-league Seattle Totems hockey team (and was later the sports anchor at WIS-TV in Columbia, S.C.), and Rod Belcher, KING-TV sports director. The game involving the Red Sox was an NBC Game of the Week that was blacked out in Seattle due to poor attendance.
The NBC game from Seattle would be interesting to see, if only for the awkward camera positions. When Sicks' Stadium was expanded for the Pilots, the baseline camera wells were replaced by seating. Photographers were relegated to the stadium roof. Any action photos of the Pilots at home are instantly recognizable because they were taken at an extremely sharp overhead angle.
KING was also the Mariners' television outlet for the scant number of games that aired their first five seasons, with KSTW taking over in 1982.
Going back to the heyday of Pacific Coast League baseball, the Seattle Rainiers made their TV debut on KRSC-TV (now KING) on April 12, 1949, and stayed on Channel 5 through 1953. (The microwave connection with the game failed midway through that first broadcast, by the way.) No games were televised in 1954.
Fledgling Tacoma independent station KTVW (now KCPQ) televised every Rainiers home game during their 1955 championship season and the two following years. As KTNT-TV (now KSTW) lost its CBS affiliation (for the first of three times) to KIRO-TV in 1958, it bulked up its schedule by adding Rainiers home games, which Channel 11 held through 1964. KTVW aired Tacoma Giants games during their inaugural PCL season in 1960 and then KTNT added them to their sports slate in 1962.
The Rainiers became the Seattle Angels in 1965 and games were aired on KING that year and KIRO in 1966. The final two years of Triple-A baseball in Seattle went untelevised except for road games in Tacoma that aired as part of the Cubs' package with KTNT. Apparently the Pilots killed off interest in Tacoma Cubs broadcasts, as they stopped after the 1968 season.
It would be interesting to see how other Pacific Coast League teams fared on television, particularly during the mid-'50s, when it was an "Open" classification -- a step higher than Triple-A.
udley had been radio announcer for the Indians from the 40's to the 60's and worked in TV in Cleveland..Schonely became the first and best known voice of the NBA Portland Trailblazers..
