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World Football League Affilliates

H

hipman2

I'm not sure if this was started, but I remember that there once was the WFL played sometime in 1974 and 75. It was distributed by the TVS Network, which I believe was a syndicator of the games.

The San Diego affilliate for the WFL was XETV from Tijuana.

What other affilliates were there?
 
hipman2 said:
I'm not sure if this was started, but I remember that there once was the WFL played sometime in 1974 and 75. It was distributed by the TVS Network, which I believe was a syndicator of the games.

The San Diego affilliate for the WFL was XETV from Tijuana.

What other affilliates were there?
Click to expand...

TVS was the syndicator, but only for the 1974 season. There was no national TV coverage for what passed for the 1975 season (the league shut down before the season was complete).

As far as affiliates go, from what I remember, KPHO-TV carried the TVS games in Phoenix. WGN-TV carried the WFL in Chicago, but those may have been just local telecasts of the Fire/Winds.
 
WRCB/3 Chattanooga pre-empted NBC's Thursday-night
lineup from 9 PM on in order to carry the WFL; I think even
Johnny Carson was pre-empted on Thursday nights.

Three indies I know carried the WFL:

WTCG Atlanta
WSWB (now WOFL Fox35) Orlando
WTOG Tampa/St. Petersburg
 
The Philadelphia Bell played at JFK Stadium which stood where the Wachovia Center now stands in South Philly.

The Bell had one of the coolest logos in sports: a Liberty Bell with a lighting bolt where the crack was on the real bell.

The Bell were infamous for grossly padding attendance figures (courtesy of ticket giveaways by the boxcarload) thus turning the WFL into the World Freebie League.

WPHL-17 televised the Bell’s games in 1974 on Wednesday nights with local announcers. WPHL otoh was Philly’s TVS affiliate for the Thursday night national telecast. I watched TVS’s WFL premiere as a 13 yo and it opened with a crude animation of a stork descending on a stadium delivering an orange WFL football. NFL Films actually aired a Lost Classics ep about the WFL that included, among other things, that animation, a few years ago.

ixnay
(who’s touched the real Liberty Bell a couple of times [visits] – pre, pre, PRE 9/11)
 
ixnay said:
The Bell were infamous for grossly padding attendance figures (courtesy of ticket giveaways by the boxcarload) thus turning the WFL into the World Freebie League.
Click to expand...

Actually, that practice was endemic throughout the league -- many teams gave away (or sold at ridiculous bargain basement prices, like $5 a pop) as much as 90% of their tickets in a futile effort to inflate their figures.
 
I remember during this time being on vacation with my dad and stepmother in Michigan, making stops in Detroit and Stambaugh, Mich. (Upper Peninsula)..While in Detroit, I caught a show called "This Week With The Wheels" on WKBD-50..Even as a teenager, I was struck at how really amatuerish the production was..
 
I know a lady who's husband was a successful player in college football. After graduation he had a tryout with the Detroit Wheels, and was the very last guy cut from camp. She said he was devastated and very depressed about the end of his football career.

"Of course", she went on to tell me, "that spurred him to go on to grad school and to get this fantastic job that made him so successful. In hindsight getting cut from that team was the best thing that ever happened to him. The Wheels ended up going out of business in the middle of the season, and all of those guys ended up being stranded down south someplace with no paychecks!"

I remember watching the WFL on WPGH-53 in Pittsburgh. Merle Harmon did the play-by-play I believe.
I recall the quarterback for the Philadelphia Bell was a guy named King Corcoran. What ever happened to him?
 
KGMB in Honolulu, Hawaii aired the games. They moved Medical Center from 6:30 Thursdays to around 8:30 P.M. and Bob Newhart from 7:30 P.M. to around 9:30 P.M.
 
BRNout said:
Toledo Eleven said:
I've posted more World Football League ads from 1974 here: http://vintagetoledotv.squarespace.com/display/Search?searchQuery=World+Football+league&moduleId=4899859&moduleFilter=&categoryFilter=&startAt=0
Click to expand...

Hey TE, that's a really cool website that you have there! Those old ads from TV Guide (and the channel listings) sure bring back some memories. Congrats~
Click to expand...

Ironically, that's Roger Staubach (whose number was changed..poorly..to 42) in the Detroit, Lynchburg and Miami ads.
 
BRNout said:
Toledo Eleven said:
I've posted more World Football League ads from 1974 here: http://vintagetoledotv.squarespace.com/display/Search?searchQuery=World+Football+league&moduleId=4899859&moduleFilter=&categoryFilter=&startAt=0
Click to expand...

Hey TE, that's a really cool website that you have there! Those old ads from TV Guide (and the channel listings) sure bring back some memories. Congrats~
Click to expand...
Thanks, BRNout. There should have been one more link and here it is (for the first telecast with a close-up description): http://vintagetoledotv.squarespace.com/southern-states/single-gallery/4633801
 
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