Remembering Jim McKay McKay passes away Saturday June 7, 2008 at age 86 Jim McKay 1921-2008 Posted Saturday, June 7, 2008 By Terry Aichele Broadcasting lost one of it's giants on Saturday, June 7, 2008 with the passing of Jim McKay at his home in Maryland at the age of 86. The passing of the long time horseracing enthusiast came just hours before Big Brown was to make his ill fated attempted at the first Triple Crown win since the 1970s. It was ironic that one of the big sports stories of the year would happen on the same day as his passing. It is kind of a sad closing of a door since Disney had just announced a few weeks ago that all Wide World of Sports branded activities at their parks were going to given the ESPN brand. Maybe that was the final straw for Jim and in a sense for most of us "of a certain age" as an ESPN anchor put it. Jim McKay worked at the Balitmore Sun following his duty in World War II. When the newspaper started a TV station McKay was to transfer over and work in the new medium. It wasn't long that he was signed by CBS and moved to New YOrk to host a daily variety show called the Real McKay. In the mid fifties he worked on a summer game show Make The Connection which was broadcast on NBC. Throughout the late 1950s McKay became a sports announcer and anchored CBS's coverage of major sports events including The Masters golf tournament. He shared anchoring the CBS film and tape coverage of the Olympics in the 50s through 1960. But back then Olympic coverage was plugged into empty Saturday and Sunday parts of the schedule with a half hour here and an hour there. In 1960 ABC contacted McKay about joining the production of a summer replacement series called Wide World of Sports. The show became an immediate success based on a format of usually covering two or three sports events for 90 minutes on Saturday afternoons. In the beginning the segments included live, taped and filmed segments. In the early years of the show all international productions were shot on film or videotape and shipped back to the U.S. for editing. Once communications satellites became available in 1964 Wide World rapidly incorporated satellite transmission of major sporting events from around the world. I remember when Saturday afternoon was scheduled around Wide World of Sports. Sure there were the barrel jumping or snake hunting competitions that were less than interesting but in fifteen or twenty minutes it would be on to Monte Carlo for a car race or to the Alps for skiing. But there were also the world class track meets, Harlem Globetrotters, Ali, cliff diving, stunts and lots of first class sports coverage. It is widely reported how his finest hour was during the 1972 Munich Olympics when Arab terrorists broke into the Israeli dorm in the Olympic Village and abducted eleven athletes. This might sound like a memorium but ABC's team of Peter Jennings, Lou Cioffe, Howard Cosell, Chris Schenkel as well as McKay reported the situation to America. McKay stayed with the story even when the satellite time was switched to other networks. Back then there were only a few satellite channels available and there was a minor controversy when ABC had give up the channel from time to time to allow other networks to transmit their news and TV shows. It was one of the most memorable moments of the 1970s as ABC provide live primetime coverage of what was happening. The reported movement of hostages and terrorists to an airport near Munich. Random reports were sometimes conflicting. Finally McKay, surrounded by ABC reporters, turned to the camera and said, "They're all gone." The next day Walter Cronkite sent a message congratulating McKay on excellent coverage. Some of the reports made it sound that it was a surprise that Cronkite would send such a message to McKay. It shouldn't have been such a surprise - they were the anchors of CBS Olympic coverage back in the 50s and had known each other for years. Things, in a sense had come full circle. Wide World was in a sense too successful. It had done such good job whetting the North American appetite for sports that it was inevitable that ESPN or something like it would come along and need to to fill 24 hours a day with stuff. Instead of one Australian Rules Football game a year there were now 20. Instead of an occasional Gray Cup or Hockey just during the Stanley Cup playoffs we as sports buffs wanted it all the time. Instead of waiting a week to see the Gran Prix of Monaco we began to want it on the same day, even live in the morning. It seemed like Jim McKay could handle anything ABC through at him. Of course part of that was research, hard work and a great production crew. But it was obvious that he enjoyed 99% of what he was covering. His enthusiasm and professionalism set a pretty high bar for all that followed. It was sad to see NBC take over the Olympics. It was also sad when Wide World of Sports ceased to be a show but instead a brand in the 1990s. It's been something like ten years since Wide World faded from the scene. Jim McKay continued to anchor coverage of ABC Sports but they became fewer and fewer during the 1990s. ABC "loaned" McKay to NBC in 2002 for coverage of the Winter Olympics from Salt Lake City.