The 1960 Rome Games made their way into American living rooms via a harried journey.
CBSsecured the rights to broadcast the Games for less than $500,000, and with zero competition.
(Today the same rights go for around $1.5 billion.)
Gennady Schatkov and Muhammad Ali at the 1960 Rome Olympics.Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
There was nothing like the 24/7 live coverage of today.
Then the announcers would add color commentary, dubbing over the tape from Italian cameras.
There was no live play-by-play.
Regardless of how useful they were on site, getting the tapes out of Rome was another story entirely.
CBS didn’t have a private jet for the footage.
But perhaps his most difficult task was getting the tapes to play at all.
In this state, the tapes wouldn’t play so McKay put them in his armpits (!)
to warm them up until he could get them to work in the machine.
“It couldn’t be more different from the grandiosity of Olympics coverage today,” says Maraniss.
