Tel Ra Productions: The Unknown Story of a Philadelphia Production Company That Captured Americans’s Passion for Sports on Film in the Post-WWII Era

Abstract

During commercial television’s early years, the nation’s four networks initially featured an extensive offering of sports programming on prime-time schedules. The networks then replaced sports with entertainment programs in these prime slots, relegating sports to weekends. Independent sports producers saw this deemphasis of athletics as an opportunity. Philadelphia-based Tel Ra Productions emerged as the leading producer of syndicated sports programming, beginning in the late 1940s. Its primary program was TeleSports Digest, a thirty-minute weekly show that featured a variety of sporting events. The program comprised the most extensive offerings of sports available, featuring some of the most valuable American sports properties, including NFL football, college basketball, professional baseball, and non-traditional sports, and unique competitive activities. Ultimately, Tel Ra Productions became the most prolific producer of US sports films from 1948 to 1966, appealing to the country’s seemingly limitless appetite for athletics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 United States Census Bureau, “Chapter R, Communications, Series R 93-105, Radio and Television Stations, Sets Produced and Households with Sets: 1929-1970,” in Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1975/compendia/hist_stats_colonial-1970/hist_stats_colonial-1970p2-chR.pdf (September 1975).

2 The DuMont Network was one of the nation’s original television networks in the 1940s. To start, the company based its network on its stations in New York City and Washington DC, eventually extending to the West Coast. The network offered a portfolio of entertainment and sports programming, including Jackie Gleason’s “The Honeymooners.” David Weinstein, The Forgotten Network (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2004), 1–2.

3 Cavalcade of Sports began in 1942 as a radio program. The show aired on NBC’s local New York station periodically before moving to network television in 1946 when the medium was still in its infancy and few people owned TV sets. The program was renamed The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports in 1948 and aired on NBC until 1960. The focus of both the radio and television versions was boxing.

4 Marc Eliot, American Television: The Official Art of the Artificial (New York: Anchor Press, 1958), 134–140; Jeff Neal-Lunsford, “Sport in the Land of Television: The Use of Sport in Network Prime-Time Schedules 1946-1950,” Journal of Sport History 19, no. 1 (1992): 65–66; Dennis Deninger, Sports on Television: The How and Why Behind What You See (New York: Routledge, 2012), 14.

5 Neal-Lunsford, “Sport in the Land of Television,” 70–74.

6 For this research, the post-WWII era is defined as the years from 1946 through the mid-1960s.

7 Richard E. Bailey’s Sports Network Incorporated (SNI) must be recognized as another prolific sports production firm. Although a different kind of company than Tel Ra, it deserves recognition for its contributions to sports broadcasting history. The firm, begun in 1956, initially provided producers and television stations with cost-efficient access to AT&T transmission lines for radio and television sports content. SNI produced and broadcast its own live content, featuring an array of different sports, and later rented out its two mobile broadcast units to networks for their productions. Aside from falling just outside of the postwar time frame of this research, SNI also focused on live broadcasts, thus its content was not saved on film.

8 In some newspaper articles, News Reel Laboratory is referred to as News Reel Laboratories. This paper will use the News Reel Laboratory as the company name.

9 Similar to the shows that followed it, TeleSports Digest featured multiple sports highlights within each program and was televised on a weekly basis. Based on a count of sports segments included in TeleSports Digest from Bill Orr’s collection, the average number of segments per show was six.

10 The individuals directly employed by Tel Ra Productions, W. Wallace Orr Inc., and News Reel Laboratory have passed away. The last remaining employee from the early years was Armstrong who died on March 11, 2019, several years following his two interviews for this research.

11 Prior to joining the agency, Armstrong was a former minor league player in the Athletics’s farm system before becoming the business manager of its Portsmouth team in 1948. A year later, he was brought up to the team’s home office to serve as the publicity director for the major league team. “Armstrong Quits A’s Office Job,” Courier-Post (Camden, NJ), October 23, 1952.

12 Richard Stoll Armstrong, A Sense of Being Called (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011), 7–11.

13 Brian Kellman did not work for his father’s firm, News Reel Laboratory.

14 These documents, presentation decks, films, and books were instrumental in pulling together Tel Ra’s history, confirming details, and bringing the overall story to life.

15 Both www.newspapers.com and www.newspaperarchive.com proved to be valuable for this research. The historical archives of both the New York Times and Washington Post were also useful.

16 Ron Powers, Supertube: The Rise of Television Sports (New York: Coward-McCann, 1984); Benjamin G. Radar, In Its Own Image: How Television Transformed Sports (New York: Free Press, 1984); Travis Vogan, ABC Sports: The Rise and Fall of Network Sports Television (Oakland: University of California, 2018); Bert Randolph Sugar, The Thrill of Victory: The Inside Story of ABC Sports (New York: Hawthorn, 1975); Jim Spence, Up Close & Personal: The Inside Story of Network Television Sports (New York: Atheneum, 1988); Roone Arledge, Roone: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003).

17 Mark Ribowski, Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2012); Jim McKay, The Real McKay: My Wide World of Sports (New York: Dutton, 1998); Lindsey Nelson, Hello Everybody, I’m Lindsey Nelson (New York: Beech Tree Books/William Morrow, 1985); Harry Wismer, The Public Calls It Sport (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hill, 1965); Dick Enberg and Jim Perry, Dick Enberg: Oh, My! (Campaign, IL: Sports Publishing, 2012). Announcer Chris Schenkel was associated with several books on “how to watch sports” during the 1960s and 1970s. Schenkel was often used by Tel Ra for film narration, but he did not produce a memoir, and there is no existing biography.

18 Michael Freeman, ESPN: The Uncensored Story (Lanham: Taylor Trade, 2000); James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, ESPN: Those Guys Have All the Fun (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011); John McGuire, Greg G. Armfield, and Adam Earnheardt, eds., The ESPN Effect: Exploring the Worldwide Leader in Sports (New York: Peter Lang, 2015); Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick, The Big Show: Inside America’s SportsCenter (New York: Atria: 1997).

19 Raymond Gamache, A History of Sports Highlights: Replayed Plays from Edison to ESPN (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 82–103.

20 Alex McNeil, Total Television: The Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 822; H. Hal Erickson, Syndicated Television: The First Forty Years, 1947-1987 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1989), 84.

21 Erik Barnouw, The Image Empire: The History of Broadcasting in the United States from 1953 (New York: Oxford, 1970); Erik Barnouw, The Golden Web: The History of Broadcasting in the United States 1933-1953 (New York: Oxford, 1968); Tim Brooks and Earle F. Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows (New York: Ballentine Books, 2007); Cobbett Steinberg, TV Facts (New York: Facts on File, Inc. 1980); Vincent Terrace, Encyclopedia of Television: Series, Pilots, and Specials (1937-1984), 3 vols (New York: Zoetrope, 1986); Vincent Terrace, Television Series of the 1950s: Essential Facts and Quirky Details (Lanham: MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).

22 NFL Films was formerly called Blair Motion Pictures. Jeff Davis, Rozelle: Czar of the NFL (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007), 141–163; Travis Vogan, Keepers of the Flame: NFL Films and the Rise of Sports Media (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 6–18.

23 Ray Gamache, “Genealogy of the Sportscast Highlight Form: Peep Show to Projection to Hot Processor,” Journal of Sports Media 5, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 77–106.

24 Jacob S. Turner, “This is SportsCenter: A Longitudinal Content Analysis of ESPN’s Signature Television Sports-News Program from 1999 and 2009,” Journal of Sports Media 9, no. 1 (Spring 2014), 45–70; Cheryl Cooky, Michael A. Messner, and Michela Musto, “It’s Dude Time!” A Quarter Century of Excluding Women’s Sports in Televised News and Highlight Shows,” Communication & Sport 3, no. 3 (June 2015): 261–287; Rich G. Johnson and Miles Romney, “Boosterism or Audience Interest? An Examination of Self-Promotion on Sports-Network Highlight Shows,” Journal of Sports Media 12, no. 2 (Fall 2017): 1–23; Rich G. Johnson and Miles Romney, “How the West was Lost: Geographic Bias on Sports-Network Highlight Shows,” Journal of Sports Media 13, no. 1 (Spring 2018): 99–121.

25 Deninger, Sports on Television, 8–21; Ronald A. Smith, Play-by-Play: Radio, Television, and Big-Time College Sport (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001), 49–51.

26 The program was still boxing focused.

27 Powers, Supertube, 52; Neal-Lunsford, “Sport in the Land of Television,” 65–68.

28 Neal-Lunsford, “Sport in the Land of Television,” 69–74.

29 Sports programming on DuMont was extensive. During the late 1940s, the DuMont network aired boxing and wrestling during prime-time hours. The network’s Saturday night show in 1950, Madison Square Garden, featured sporting events that were scheduled for the venue. Neal-Lunsford, “Sport in the Land of Television,” 56–76; Smith, Play-by-Play, 54–56; Weinstein, The Forgotten Network, 58–61.

30 According to this article, during an eighteen-month period, Orr interviewed “more than 100,000” newspaper publishers in the nation, securing “bulk space discounts” for General Motors. “Our Respects to –,” Broadcasting, November 27, 1944, 44–46.

31 Richard S. Armstrong, Spatola Presentation (Philadelphia, PA: W. Wallace Orr Advertising, 1953), 14–15.

32 Philadelphian Benjamin Franklin is credited as being the first individual to use illustrations in advertisements placed in his newspaper, the Philadelphia Gazette, during the early 1700s. In 1842, Volney B. Palmer began what is widely recognized to be the United States’s first advertising agency, placing his firm between the advertisers and newspapers as a space broker, essentially selling newspaper space to local merchants. See Thomas C. O’Guinn, Chris T. Allen, Angeline C. Scheinbaum, and Richard J. Semenik, Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion (Boston, MA: Cengage, 2017), 55; Juliann Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1998), 33.

33 N.W. Ayer must have been an interesting place to work. Advertising historian Stephen Fox described Francis Ayer as: “Ayer was himself a powerful symbol of rectitude. A Sunday school superintendent and prominent Baptist layman, he was a paragon of sobriety, without humor or small talk, who liked to spend his time purposefully.” Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: History of American Advertising and Its Creators (New York: Vantage Books, 1985), 21.

34 Among the clients Orr handled at Ayer were AT&T, Goodyear, Kellogg, Carrier, and others. “Orr Forms Ad Agency: Offices in Three Cities,” Broadcasting, April 19, 1948, 4.

35 Others followed Yale’s lead: Penn, Pitt, Harvard, Princeton, and the Naval Academy. “Our Respects to-,” Broadcasting, November 27, 1944, 44–46.

36 “Atlantic Discovers Sports Radio Sells Oil and Gasoline,” Broadcasting, March 1, 1948, 18, 37, 40, 69; “Painless Commercials to Mark Atlantic Refining Grid Series,” Broadcasting, September 15, 1938, 15; Richard S. Armstrong, Presentation for Seabrook Farms (Philadelphia, PA: W. Wallace Orr Advertising, 1953), 3–4.

37 There was plenty of scoring for the home team as Penn defeated Maryland, 51–56. Few had access to receivers to view the game, but Philco had placed an experimental receiver in the Warwick Hotel in downtown Philadelphia for Philco, Atlantic Refining, and N.W. Ayer executives. Orr represented Ayer in that viewing group. “Televising First Football Game…,” Broadcasting, October 15, 1940, 98.

38 Atlantic Refining and Philco continued the relationship with Penn football over the next ten years with only a one-year interruption during WWII. Smith, Play-by-Play, 52–53.

39 Initially, Tel Ra Productions took office space on the second floor of Louis W. Kellman’s News Reel Laboratory offices at 1733 Sansom Street. Several years later, the Tel Ra marketing and sales personnel moved to space located in the Orr Agency at 1518 Walnut Street. Tel Ra’s production staff moved a short distance away from News Reel Laboratory and established an office at 1805 Sansom Street.

40 William Wallace (Bill) Orr Jr. (son of Tel Ra founder and past president) in discussion with author, June 25, 2013.

41 Burt Bell died in 1959 following his collapsing at Philadelphia’s Franklin Field during the last few minutes of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles game. “Bert Bell, Pro Football Head, Dies After Collapsing at Game, New York Times, October 12, 1959.

42 Davis, Rozelle, 48–51; Robert Lyons, On Any Given Sunday: A Life of Bert Bell (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2010), 234–235.

43 Bill Orr in discussion with author, June 25, 2013.

44 Stan Baumgartner, “Videos Will Bring Camps to Home Fans,” The Sporting News, March 17, 1948, 1–2.

45 “Advertising News,” New York Times, April 19, 1948. “Closed Circuit,” Broadcasting, April 5, 1948, 4.

46 Bill Orr stated that his father probably made the calculation that he may never ascend to the presidency at N.W. Ayer. Ayer’s Harry Batten had served as president since 1936. Owning and running his own agency was a logical alternative. “Harry Batten, 69, of Ayer & Son Dies,” New York Times, July 27, 1966.

47 Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 8, 2023.

48 “News and Notes in the Advertising Field,” New York Times, June 21, 1948.

49 Several of these new Orr agency accounts included Spatola Wine, Seabrook Farms, Thoroughbred Racing Association, and Pennbrook Milk Company. Richard S. Armstrong (former W. Wallace Orr Inc. employee) in discussion with author, June 30, 2014. For early company growth, Bill Orr in discussion with author, June 25, 2013.

50 Armstrong in discussion with author, June 30, 2014.

51 “The “1948 Baseball Preview” is the earliest production this researcher could locate on four newspaper historical databases, the personal archives of Bill Orr and Richard S. Armstrong, and in conversations with Bill Orr. The catalog of Tel Ra Productions’s film archives (Sportsfilm) only lists the specific filmed segments from 1950 onward.

52 Baumgartner, “Videos Will Bring Camps to Home Fans,” 1–2.

53 The 1948 college football season began on Saturday, September 25. Games on this date were the ones featured on the Touchdown program that debuted on Friday, October 2. “Philco Sponsors TV Review of Top Games,” Broadcasting, October 4, 1948, 57.

54 “WPTZ – Television – Channel 3,” Morning Call (Allentown, PA), October 8, 1948.

55 “The Greatest Show on Earth! Sports & News,” Chicago Tribune, January 15, 1949.

56 In 1948 and 1949, Touchdown was also referred to as Philco Touchdown or Philco’s Touchdown in advertising and television schedule listings. Following the 1964, season, Tel Ra produced a similar college football highlight show but under a different name until the late 1960s.

57 The six-segment figure is an estimate that is likely quite conservative. Many of the TeleSports Digest programs Bill Orr and this researcher reviewed for this research contained even more segments.

58 Sportsfilm: The World’s Largest Sportsfilm Library (Berwyn, PA: Private Publisher, 1976).

59 “Beach Dog Races on Video Hookup,” Miami Daily News, January 6, 1949.

60 “Porter, Rose Reach Squash Tennis Final,” New York Times, January 20 1949.

61 “New Telecast Slated,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, January 19, 1949.

62 Sportsfilm, 1976, 1–238.

63 Nicklaus won by three strokes in an eighteen-hole playoff conducted the following day. He had just turned professional during the previous year.

64 Sportsfilm, 1976, 105–121.

65 Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 2, 2019.

66 This extraordinary year was captured in a 2006 book. Adam Lucas, The Greatest Game Ever Played: How Fran McGuire’s ‘57 Tar Heels Beat Wilt and Revolutionized College Basketball (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2006), 131–178.

67 Sportsfilm, 1976, 47–61.

68 Bill Russell played on all nine of these championship teams. Bob Cousy played on six.

69 During these early years of TeleSports Digest, the Harlen Globetrotters were featured several times. The team was not the entertainment entity of today but a competitive, highly skilled basketball team playing exhibitions against NBA, college, and assorted all-star teams. Sportsfilm, 1976, 62–72.

70 Sportsfilm, 1976, 20–46.

71 Sportsfilm, 1976, 1–238.

72 In a newspaper article, there was a reference to a “donkey baseball” segment on TeleSports Digest. This “sport” was not listed in the Sportsfilm catalog, so it was left out of Table 2. Sportsfilm, 1976, 167.

73 Sportsfilm, 1976, 1–238.

74 The other sports programs barely registered with survey voters. “TeleSports Digest’ is 1^st in Non-Network Sports,” Billboard, September 6, 1952, 19.

75 “Winik Film Best Series Syndicated,” Billboard, July 31, 1954, 5.

76 Michael MacCambridge, The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine (New York: Hyperion, 1997), 23–25.

77 On a national basis, led by executive Ed Scherick, ABC introduced the “Game of the Week” in 1953, which continued throughout the decade on one of the three major networks. Powers, Supertube, 65–76.

78 Deninger, Sports on Television, 16–17.

79 Two professional leagues existed at the time, the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League. Douglas A. Noverr and Lawrence E. Ziewacz, The Games They Played: Sports in American History, 1965-1980 (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1983), 183–184.

80 Deninger, Sports on Television, 15–16.

81 In 1954, it was the CBS network that broadcast the first season of Big Ten basketball. Then Sports Programs Incorporated, assisted by Sports Network Incorporated, picked up the series and aired it in Big Ten markets. “SNI to Televise Hoop Series,” Broadcasting, December 9, 1957, 82. C.D. Chesley and Sports Network Incorporated convinced Atlantic Coast Conference leaders to develop their own regional television network for the 1958 basketball season. Daniel Marshall Haygood, “Spreading the Gospel of Hoops: How Television Helped Make the Atlantic Coast Conference Basketball a Cultural Fixture in the South,” Southern Quarterly: A Journal of Arts & Letters in the South 56 no. 3 (Spring 2019): 9–47.

82 Mark Bowden, The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL, (New York, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008), 2, 13–16, 18, 187.

83 Donna St. George, “Louis W. Kellman, 82, Filmmaker in Phila. For More Than 40 Years,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 23, 1988.

84 The 1923 season was Lou Young’s first season as coach, who was also a former Quaker player.

85 Jim Nicholson, “Louis W. Kellman, Film Producer,” Philadelphia Daily News, December 23, 1988.

86 St. George, “Louis W. Kellman, 82, Filmmaker in Phila. for More Than 40 Years.”

87 “Make Your Debuts, Weddings & Parties Last a Lifetime,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 17, 1938.

88 Nicholson, “Louis W. Kellman.”

89 Of course, that string of fall Saturdays would continue well past November 1949 when this article was published. Zuma Palmer, “Exciting Football Plays Put on Film for Televiewers,” Citizen-News (Hollywood, CA), November 2, 1949.

90 Brian Kellman (son of News Reel Laboratory founder) in discussion with author, March 16, 2017.

91 Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 27, 2014.

92 “Tel Ra’s Make-Them-Yourself Title Cards,” Broadcasting, December 19, 1960, 80.

93 Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 27, 2014.

94 Wismer, The Public Calls It Sport, 5–57.

95 Nelson, Hello Everybody, I’m Lindsey Nelson, 145–261; Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 27, 2014.

96 Bill Orr noted that often TeleSports Digest was aired adjacent to live games or other sporting events. The term, “sports adjacencies” was used at the time to refer to this concept. Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 8, 2023.

97 Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 27, 2014 and May 8, 2023; Richard S. Armstrong, For the Best in TV Sports…TeleSports Digest (Philadelphia, PA: W. Wallace Orr Advertising, 1953), 2–3.

98 A letter found in the University of Notre Dame archives indicates the “start date” of TeleSports Digest as being early April 1950. TeleSports Digest is described as a “filler television program” by Tel Ra’s George Kerrigan Jr. in a letter to Notre Dame’s Charles Callahan, the Director of Sports Publicity. The discrepancy in dates is attributable to Tel Ra taking TeleSports Digest off the air temporarily after March/April 1949 and then restarting the show in April 1950 with United Artists Corporation as its distributor. A search of two newspaper databases supports this assertion. Tel Ra Productions & Notre Dame spring training letter from George J. Kerrigan Jr. to Charles M. Callahan, April 25, 1950, UASI 2113, Tel Ra Folder, University of Notre Dame Archives, South Bend, IN.

99 The article stated that by July 1950, United Artists Corporation had already secured “eight sponsors” for the program. United Artists Corporation is also referred to in industry publications as “United Artists Television.” “Film Report,” Broadcasting, July 24, 1950, 68.

100 “United Artists Corporation: Presents the Biggest and Best Show of its Type for Year-Round Sports Telecasting,” Broadcasting, August 27, 1951, 74.

101 Armstrong, For the Best in TV Sports…TeleSports Digest, 3; Richard S. Armstrong, The Opportunity That Comes Once in a Lifetime (Philadelphia, PA: W. Wallace Orr Advertising, 1953), 6.

102 Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 8, 2023.

103 “Firm May Get ‘Long John’ Cugat Shows for Distribution,” Billboard, October 23, 1954, 5.

104 These markets figures reported in industry publications must be viewed critically. The publications would report based on press releases sent from production companies or distributors with perhaps optimistic or ambitious goals for a program’s market penetration. “New York Roundup,” Television Digest, April 1960, 37.

105 Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 27, 2014.

106 Bill Orr fondly recalled the University of Oklahoma sports information director calling him up frequently during football season reminding him of the Sooners’s scheduled game that upcoming weekend and issuing an invitation for a film crew to visit Norman.

107 Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 8, 2023.

108 Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 27, 2014.

109 Richard S. Armstrong, Tel Ra: A Professional Approach to TV Programming (Philadelphia, PA: W. Wallace Orr Advertising, 1953), 2. Palmer, “Exciting Football Plays Put on Film for Televiewers.”

110 Ed Sabol’s Blair Motion Pictures filmed and produced the 1962, 1963, and 1964 NFL Championship highlight films that led to Sabol pitching his company to NFL commissioner, Pete Rozelle, for the 1965 season. The league and its teams promptly purchased Sabol’s firm, which has been creating NFL programming to this day. Following that 1964 season, Tel Ra was suddenly out of the NFL picture. Vogan, Keepers of the Flame, 13–16.

111 George Kerrigan who was the technical director, oversaw a team in charge of game film production. Bill Orr in discussion with author, June 25, 2013.

112 One of the Tel Ra editors was Castleman D. Chesley, a former guard for the University of Pennsylvania Quakers during the 1930s. Chesley went on to form his own sports production company, producing programs for sports properties, such as Atlantic Coast Conference basketball games, the Notre Dame Sunday morning football highlight shows, among others.

113 Palmer, “Exciting Football Plays Put on Film for Televiewers.”

114 Palmer, “Exciting Football Plays Put on Film for Televiewers.”

115 Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 27, 2014.

116 This fifteen-minute version of TeleSports Digest packaged together highlights from major sporting events, such as the Kentucky Derby, the Army-Navy Game, the Indianapolis 500, NBA Championships, the World Series, and hundreds of others. Armstrong, The Opportunity That Comes Once in a Lifetime, 6; Dick Dunkel’s Football Ratings began in 1950 and was hosted by Bob Wilson; the first show each fall was a season preview while the final episode of the season covered the “strength ratings” of college bowl teams, see Richard S. Armstrong, Dick Dunkel’s Football Ratings (Philadelphia, PA: W. Wallace Orr Advertising, 1953), 2–3; and for Major League Preview each separate show had themes, such as “Winter Review,” “Spring Training Sites,” “Leading Hitters,” and “Pitchers,” and “Review of National League;” see Richard S. Armstrong, Major League Preview: An Informative Television Show on Baseball (Philadelphia, PA: W. Wallace Orr Advertising, 1953), 4–6.

117 Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 27, 2014. Armstrong in discussion with author, March 23, 2015.

118 Richard S. Armstrong, All Star Sports Associates and Tel Ra Productions (Philadelphia, PA: W. Wallace Orr Advertising, 1953), 2–3.

119 In calculating the numbers, only sixteen seasons were included for college and professional football even though TeleSports Digest was produced for eighteen years. TeleSports Digest was not produced during the 1949 and 1966 football seasons. Sportsfilm, 1976, 1–238; Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 2, 2019.

120 Other reasons were that some film cannisters did not arrive in Philadelphia on time for processing and editing. Perhaps poor-quality chemicals were used during film processing, rendering certain sports filmed segments unusable. Most significantly, Orr asserted that the program listings in the Sportsfilm catalog, on which the segment counts for this research were based, did not include all of the programs and segments. The result is that the estimate for this research of the total sporting events covered by Tel Ra for TeleSports Digest is most likely undercounted.

121 Perhaps there were twenty crews sent out during an extra sports-packed weekend, especially during football season. A few articles suggest that the number was perhaps even higher. One of Kellman’s obituaries asserted twenty-two camera operators were sent out each week just for football games in the early 1950s. Nicholson, “Louis W. Kellman,” 26. An article in Hollywood’s Citizen-News claimed that thirty camera operators were sent out for Touchdown and National Pro Highlights during the 1949 season. Palmer, “Exciting Football Plays Put on Film for Televiewers.”

122 Armstrong, Dick Dunkel’s Football Ratings, 3.

123 “W. Wallace Orr; Advertising Agency Head,” Philadelphia Daily News, June 4, 1962.

124 TeleSports Digest “reruns” were aired in numerous small markets throughout the US in 1975 and 1976. Several of the shows aired in Canada in 2003. Bill Orr stated that these were unauthorized airings.

125 This renamed program aired through the 1969 football season. In 1970, ABC started producing NCAA Football Highlights, a Sunday program that highlighted the previous day’s games, thus making Tel Ra’s College Football Highlights, which contained the games from the previous week essentially obsolete. ABC’s program ended following the 1974 season. “Two College Football Series Set by Tel Ra Productions,” Broadcasting, April 28, 1969, 71.

126 ABC paid $8.5 million for five years of airing AFL games each week of the season, the championship game, and the all-star game. Deninger, Sports on Television, 25.

127 Up to this point, individual NFL teams negotiated television contracts on their own. Deninger, Sports on Television, 26–27.

128 The NCAA continued its tight grip on televised college football games, strictly limiting the number of games on television.

129 “TV Sports: $140-Million Bonanza,” Broadcasting, June 7, 1965, 42.

130 Bill Orr in discussion with the author, May 8, 2023.

131 According to Jim Spence, former ABC sports television executive, Wide World of Sports carried sporting events that entertained and intrigued viewers in the moment of watching them but ones that viewers did not care to read about in the morning papers. Spence, Up Close & Personal, 67.

132 There were some obvious exceptions. Team-specific delayed sports films continued to exist with the obvious example of the Notre Dame Sunday morning highlights that aired the day after the Irish’s Saturday games. College football and basketball coaches’ shows, typically airing weekly in specific local markets, gained broad traction in the 1960s. Bill Orr in discussion with the author, May 8, 2023.

133 “Football: Now 7-Month TV Staple,” Broadcasting, August 16, 1965, 32.

134 The show was distributed throughout the country and featured Coach Ara Parseghian as narrator and analyst. “Tel Ra to Offer Films,” Notre Dame Football 1965 Dope Book, 30, University of Notre Dame Archives, South Bend, IN; “TV Sports: A Special Report,” Broadcasting, June 7, 1965, 56; “Notre Dame Football for TV,” Broadcasting, August 8, 1965, 83.

135 “Syndicators Find Market for Football,” Broadcasting, August 12, 1968, 68.

136 These films are the only ones in existence that captured ACC basketball during the 1970s, a time in which great teams and outstanding players led the conference. Bill Orr recalled that Tel Ra produced the highlight reels each year through the 1970s.

137 Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 27, 2014.

138 Sportsfilm, 1976, Introduction page.

139 Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 2, 2019.

140 This bounty of films contained a few NFL games from the 1948 season. These filmed games were not part of the National Pro Highlights program because the program was not on air yet. However, Bill Orr specifically recalls Tel Ra’s film of the 1948 NFL championship game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the St. Louis Cardinals on December 19, 1948. This game and perhaps a few other NFL games from the 1948 season were likely included in the earliest TeleSports Digest programs from January 1949.

141 Vogan, Keepers of the Flame, 86.

142 Bill Orr in discussion with author, May 2, 2019.

143 Tel Ra Productions essentially was the sports syndication version of Ziv Television Programs, Inc., which provided syndicated entertainment shows to local television stations during the same era.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Marshall Haygood

Daniel Marshall Haygood is a professor of Strategic Communications in the School of Communications at Elon University. He teaches a range of classes, including advertising, academic research, and digital brand communications. He has twenty years of advertising experience, including twelve in account management at D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles in the firm’s New York, Tokyo, and Beijing offices. He worked on accounts, such as Procter & Gamble, Mars, and Anheuser Busch. His research interests include advertising/media history and sports broadcasting history.