In 1953, ABC earned an 11.4 rating for their Saturday afternoon Baseball Game of the Week telecasts. Blacked-out cities, including WCBS in New York City, had 32 percent of households. In the rest of the United States, 3 in 4 TV sets in use watched Dizzy Dean and Buddy Blattner call the games for ABC.
This is the only known extant broadcast of one of these games in the series (Video or Audio). It was mastered from two sources coming from Audograph discs which Phil Gries obtained in 2011.
Even after a day of processing this game to one DVD sound track for uninterrupted listening, of which only five innings survives (missing are the second, third, sixth & seventh innings), the quality of this air check is fair to good with the exception of the final 10 minutes which contains excessive "noise" but very discernable, rare and desirable to include. It contains mostly the sign off (KNXT CHANNEL 2 (CBS TV iN LOS ANGELES) after the game concludes.
This listening experience is quite entertaining listening to the country boy, Dizzy Dean, who, over reacts at times when describing baseball hits...adding plenty of personal anecdotes included while announcing and joking at times with fellow announcer, Buddy Blattner in the booth who pays great tribute to Stan Musial, out of the lineup due to injury.
In 1955, CBS took over the Saturday broadcasts, adding Sunday telecasts in 1957. Dean and Blattner continued to call the games for CBS, calling 26 different Saturday Baseball games in 1957.This is the 23rd game of the series.
The combination of Dean's folksy demeanor and personality and his many flubs in the booth along with Blattner breaking up at times in the booth reacting to Dizzy Dean is the simplicity and charm of listening to this air check...quite different from todays approach by broadcasters.
A baseball game between the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds played on September 7th, 1957. Dizzy Dean, Hall Of Fame pitcher, does the play-by-play. This game is incomplete.
NOTE:
Until 1965 both CBS and NBC Games of the Week National network telecasts of regular season major league baseball games were blacked-out in major league cities.
SELECTIONS FROM ORIGINAL GRAY AUDOGRAPH DISC RECORDINGS, RECORDED OFF THE AIR, REPRESENTING SEVEN CONSECUTIVE DAYS OF KNXT LOS, ANGELES BROADCASTING, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 THRU 7, 1957.
These LOST CBS broadcasts represent an unprecedented one complete week, sign on to sign off, September 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1957 (130 hours on 130 8 & 1/2" diameter discs with a capacity to record 32 minutes per side (side one and side two had the potential capacity to record 64 minutes).
These discs were obtained in Los Angeles by Phil Gries, creator and owner of Archival Television Audio, Inc. in 2011. They were originally found in an establishment, located in Burbank, California, selling old records dispersing its inventory as they went out of business, a few years before.
The rarity of this type of media to record television is not known to have occurred beyond a few incidents, as stated below, at any other time, which make this collection of TV Audio Air Checks, recorded on Gray Audograph discs, an amazing surviving artifact.
The sound quality varies with different broadcasts. After a period of almost three years, processing and digitizing these 130 two sided discs, there is recognition of the rarity of some of these broadcasts providing one of a kind surviving Television Audio Airchecks and are extremely desirable regardless of some of the extraneous sound artifacts heard on some of these tracks which were painstakingly processed and transferred one by one to optimize the sound quality and proper pitch.
NOTE:
To listen to a seminar Phil Gries presented at an ARSC presentation in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 2014, about these Gray Audograph Discs...their genesis, discovery and contents, go to the ATA website www.atvaudio.com and click on ARSC which can be found within the right column on the ATA Home Page.
GRAY AUDIOGRAPH (1946 - 1976)
History:
The Gray Audograph was a dictation disc recording format introduced in 1946 by the Gray Manufacturing Company in the United States. It recorded sound by pressing grooves into soft vinyl discs, like the competing, but incompatible, Sound Scriber and Voice Writer formats.
Audograph discs were blue thin plastic flexible discs, recorded from the inside to the outside, the opposite of conventional phonograph discs. Another difference compared to phonograph discs (78, 45, 33 & 1/2) was that the audograph was driven by a surface-mounted wheel, meaning that its recording and playback speed decreased toward the edge of the disc (like the Compact Disc and other digital formats), to keep a more constant linear velocity and to improve playing time.
The mandatory speed variation correction requires playback on an Audograph player, which ATA possesses and has modified, allowing line out output connections, direct line, to the input of any other recording format device.
Gray Audograph discs were available in three different sizes. The 6-inch diameter disc offered 10 minutes of recording time per side, the 6 & 1/2" disc offered 15 minutes per side. The
8 & 1/2" disc, which is extant in the ATA archive, offered 30 minutes of recording per side.
ALONG WITH THE DICTABELT RECORDER, A GRAY AUDOGRAPH RECORDER MACHINE CAPTURED THE ACTUAL LIVE SOUNDS RECORDED OF GUN SHOTS AT THE TIME OF THE JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION. THESE AUDIO SOUNDS WERE USED IN THE REVIEW BY THE UNITED STATES HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS.
THE GRAY COMPANY CEASED MANUFACTURE OF THE GRAY AUDOGRAPH RECORDER IN 1976.
Cincinnati Redlegs
70-67
St. Louis Cardinals
77-59
Saturday, September 7, 1957
Start Time: 1:33 p.m. Local
Attendance: 12,344
Venue: Busch Stadium I
Game Duration: 2:31
Day Game, on grass
