Jim McKay (1921-2008): Spanning The Globe

Long before ESPN and its imitators, there was a program on Saturday afternoons that told us it was going to "span the globe" and bring us the "constant variety of sports". It would show us "the thrill of victory" and "the agony of defeat". And for the next ninety minutes (or longer, depending on the event), that's exactly what we'd get, whether it was Muhammad Ali boxing or Evel Knievel jumping over the Snake River Canyon.

The program was Wide World of Sports, which ran on ABC from 1961 to 1997. Its host for the first quarter-century was Jim McKay. He covered just about everything on the show, whether it was the significant (track and field, figure skating) or the sublime (barrel jumping, skydiving). He was our guide to the world through athletics, visiting China when the doors were ready to open and interviewing world leaders such as Cuba's Fidel Castro.

McKay also hosted 12 Olympic Games, most of them for ABC. His most significant work came during the 1972 Summer Games in Munich, on a day when Arab terrorists invaded the Olympic Village and took nine Israeli athletes as hostages. McKay was on the air live for several hours before word came that there had been a shootout at the airport, and the athletes were killed in the crossfire.

McKay was one of the most honored sports broadcasters, having won 13 Emmys, a Peabody and a George Polk Memorial Award not just for his on-air work, but for his writing skills. He had been a newspaper reporter prior to his TV career.

McKay represented an era when we trusted that the person inside the box would tell us what was going on in the world, and tell it to us straight. He belonged in the same category as Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and in a more recent era, Peter Jennings and Bob Costas.

Jim McKay, at the age of 86, died on the same day Big Brown attempted to win horse racing's Triple Crown--another event he covered in his long career. Big Brown finished last at the Belmont Stakes--which, as it happened, was telecast by ABC.

Now you can watch the constant variety of sports any time of day on any medium you choose. NBC's coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games will take up more hours than all the other televised Olympics combined. But there will never be another Wide World of Sports. You don't know what you're missing.