The TV announcers for this telecast were Ray Scott, Ken Coleman, and Frank Gifford. Scott handled the play-by-play duties for the first half of the telecast while Coleman described the action in the second half. Gifford served as the analyst throughout. These videos only cover the TV audio for the second half, so on these clips, Coleman and Gifford call the game. You can hear Scott during the postgame interview segment. During the 1965 season, CBS used designated play-by-play announcers for each team, so Scott (Packers) and Coleman (Browns) got the championship game assignment.
The CBS audio presents a fascinating (if incomplete) glimpse into the TV coverage of the time. The broadcasting style is much more subdued that what we experience today. CBS used a limited amount of the relatively new instant replay technology which Gifford refers to as "stop action" (and sometimes coming from the "end zone isolated camera")
The first video covers the 3rd quarter and starts out accompanied by the radio call of the game. The CBS-TV audio begins at the 10:35 mark of that clip and continues through the entire second video. Notice how you can hear the public address announcer and pep band in the background intermingled with the booth announcer voices - quite a contrast to a modern telecast.
Here is the 4th quarter and postgame. This was the first NFL title game to be televised in color, but at the 26:15 mark, Coleman states that the locker room interview portion of the telecast would be in black & white. The clip also contains a rhyming Viceroy cigarette commercial during the 2-minute warning. And in a move typical of that era, Gifford left the booth early to join Scott in preparing for the postgame show, so Coleman finished the game solo.
A few other notes:
- Considering that this was a championship game, I found it odd that the announcers spent time during the 3Q discussing various draft choice signings by other NFL teams, thereby taking some of the focus away from the game at hand. (Note: The draft was held in November.)
- I spotted a number of times when Gifford didn't offer any commentary between plays and Coleman simply carried the call into the next play.
- Network shilling is nothing new. At the 11:15 mark of the 4Q video, Coleman does a promo for the CBS telecast of the meaningless Playoff Bowl (a consolation game between 2nd place teams) and hypes it as a "big one".
I grew up with Ken Coleman doing Sox games on the radio in the 70s...didn't know he did big NFL games like this.
ReplyDeleteColeman also called the 1964 NFL title game on TV (as he was the CBS announcer for Browns games up through the mid-1960s). And in the early 1970s, he called some NFL games for NBC.
ReplyDelete