Heidi Game
| Memorable Sports Moments |
   |
| Invite Your Friends to Rate |
The "Heidi Game" is the name given in football folklore to the American Football League game between the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets played on November 17, 1968.
The game was broadcast on NBC and was the lead-in for the network's new made-for-television movie, an adaptation of the classic children's story Heidi. The game started at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time, allowing three hours before the scheduled 7:00 p.m. start time for the movie. The game was a classic shootout punctuated by hard hits, fights and penalties. The first half ended with Oakland leading 14-12. In the second half the teams traded scores several times and Jets safety Jim Hudson was ejected from the game in the third quarter. Finally, New York took the lead at 32-29 when Jim Turner kicked a 26 yard field goal with only 1:05 left on the game clock. The ensuing kickoff was returned by the Raiders to their own 23 yard line and with that NBC went into a commercial break just before 7:00 p.m.
Contents |
[edit] The Incident
NBC had instructed Dick Cline, NBC's Broadcast Operations Supervisor, to cut to Heidi at 7:00 whether the game was over or not. As the game approached its exciting ending, however, NBC wisely decided to air it to its conclusion and make Heidi wait. Unfortunately, so many viewers were calling the network pleading with them to not cut from the game—or asking if Heidi would air on-time—that the executives could not get through. Cline received no late instructions otherwise, so when the network came back from commercials, Heidi started on schedule.
While millions of stunned fans found themselves watching Heidi, the Raiders scored two touchdowns in nine seconds and held on to win, 43-32, in what has been voted by fans as one of the 10 most memorable games in American football history. Daryle Lamonica completed a 20 yard pass to Charlie Smith. Mike D’Amato grabbed Smith's facemask on the play and the 15 yard penalty put the Raiders into Jets territory on the 43 yard line. On the next play Smith caught a pass and ran by D'Amato for a 43-yard touchdown with 42 seconds left. Oakland was then ahead 36-32. On the ensuing kickoff Earl Christy fumbled the ball at the 10 yard line. The ball landed on the two yard line where Raiders special teamer Preston Ridlehuber recovered it and took it in for a touchdown with 33 seconds left in the game.
[edit] Damage Control
The Jets were stunned but the fans were furious. At 7:20, a crawl across the bottom of the screen announced the ending to the game (during a dramatic point in the movie when Heidi's paralyzed cousin Klara fell from her wheelchair and had to summon enough courage to try to walk). So many fans called NBC to complain about missing the fantastic ending (and to make various and sundry threats) that the switchboard was literally blown. When they couldn't get through to NBC they started calling the police, the telephone company, and the New York Times. At 8:30 NBC made a public apology and the next morning the fiasco was recounted on the front page of the New York Times.
NBC bought advertisements in several major newspapers soon after the incident, proclaiming rave reviews for Heidi, along with a quote from Jets quarterback Joe Namath: "I didn't get a chance to see it, but I heard it was great."
[edit] Aftermath
- The reaction to the Heidi Game resulted in the AFL and NFL, and most other sports leagues, demanding that networks thereafter televise all games to their conclusion. NFL contracts with the networks now require games to be shown in a team's market area to the conclusion, regardless of the score.
- A subsequent broadcast in 1975 on NBC - a network premier broadcast of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - was preempted until the completion of a Washington Redskins-Raiders game.
- At NBC, the network installed a new phone in the control room wired to a separate exchange, becoming known as the Heidi Phone.
- Later in the "Heidi Game" season, the Jets beat the Raiders in the AFL Championship Game, 27-23, and then went on to beat the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.
- In a 1997 poll taken in conjunction with the NFL's 10,000th regular season game, the "Heidi Game" was voted the most memorable regular season game in pro football history by a select group of media. See http://www.raiders.com/history/gm2.jsp.
- Due to the fact that CBS tends to broadcast doubleheaders, and has four hours of primetime programming on Sundays as opposed to Fox's three, it is not uncommon for CBS's primetime to run as late as 11:30pm ET.
- Fox averts most program pre-emptions during the football season by making the 7pm-8pm Eastern hour a buffer for late-running games, airing expendable repeats of their animated series and new episodes of King of the Hill (which do air as scheduled in the Mountain and Pacific time zones, but usually are pre-empted in the Central and Eastern time zones), or branding the half-hour before The Simpsons as a post-game show called The OT in TV listings.
[edit] Recent references
- A clip was played during NBC's 75th Anniversary Special in 2002 highlighted the Heidi game as a NBC blooper by replaying the NBC apology by David Brinkley along with a portion of the game and movie.
- A late 1990s ESPN commercial promoted the cable network by depicting a disappointed Jets fan stunned at not seeing the game in its entirety.
- On the 35th anniversary of the game in 2003, the NFL Network broadcast the 1968 Heidi movie along with interviews and the two Raiders touchdowns viewers missed. Instead of directly competing against a Monday Night Football game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the San Francisco 49ers, the network had a continuous on-screen scrolling graphic showing football statistics from 1968.
- The TV special Most Outrageous Live TV Moments 2 showed clips from the Heidi Game incident. Shown was footage of the game being cut to the Heidi Movie, an apology by David Brinkley who then showed highlights of the touchdown that would've been seen live by football fans if NBC hadn't cut the game off to show the Heidi movie (in the east).
- ESPN parodied the Heidi Game during their presentation of "The Match-up of the Millenium" in which using old NFL Film clips to pit the greatest team of the NFL's History against each other. (such as 60's Packers, 70's Steelers, 80's 49ers, 90's Cowboys) During the end of the game between the 80's 49ers versus 60's Packers, The 80's 49ers with the score tied drove down the field for a chip-shot FG which would win them the game. Just as the ball is being kicked the "feed" is lost and a shot is shown with the title Heidi and a speaker announces it like is the beginning of a tv movie. The shot is quickly taken off and shows the 80's 49ers distraught after they missed the chip-shot FG.
- During Cartoon Network's former tradition of "The Big Game", during a "game" between Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, the "score" had gotten ridiculously one-sided (Coyote's "score" was in negative points), that Cartoon Network "cut" to the beginning of Heidi, to which commentator John Madden interrupted and they mentioned that it was a joke.
[edit] Similar events
Up until the mid 1980s, Hockey Night in Canada also used to switch from the end of late running games to show the start of the national news. Dave Hodge once threw a pencil in the air after he had to announce CBC's decision to not show the end of an overtime game, and was subsequently fired.
Another NHL hockey game on the CBC was abruply cut off in British Columbia at 7:58 p.m. PDT during the 2nd overtime of a playoff game involving two American teams to bring on coverage of the [[British Columbia general election, 2001 British Columbia Provincial Election, even though the election was a predicted landslide. The CBC had the ability to warn its viewers in BC that they would switch to election coverage at around 8 p.m. (through text scrolls, overtime intermission news breaks), yet failed to do so and thereby surprised viewers with the sudden cutoff.
In 1986, a somewhat similar incident occurred during CBS' college football telecast of the game between USC and Notre Dame, from the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. Notre Dame had the ball at the USC 9-yard-line and lined up to attempt a field goal with two seconds left, trailing 37-35, when Notre Dame called a time-out. CBS then cut away to a commercial break, but the teams returned to the field, and Irish kicker John Carney kicked the field goal to win the game, 38-37 as time expired. By the time the network returned to the game, the kick had already taken place and the Irish were celebrating the win.
In 1989, an incident similar to the above took place during Super Bowl XXIII. The American Forces Network was handling the live feed to the United States military in Europe. San Francisco had just reached the Cincinnati 10-yard line, where they called timeout. AFN was not allowed to show American television commercials, so it cut away from the Super Bowl feed to show two AFN-produced advertisements. After those commercials, AFN then cut back to a still-shot of the stadium, but after a few seconds cut away for a third commercial. Immediately after that commercial ended AFN cut back to the game, only to show San Francisco celebrating the game-winning touchdown. The following year all personnel involved in broadcasting the Super Bowl were carefully briefed on the "proper operating procedures."
In 1990, TNT broadcast the Italy-Ireland quarterfinal match of the 1990 World Cup and cut away to commercials with about 8 minutes left in the first half. During the commercial break Salvatore Schillaci scored the only goal of the match. As a result, in 1994 ABC and ESPN agreed to show all matches of the World Cup without commercial breaks, thus forcing ads to be placed in a box at the top of the screen during play.
In 2004, during the coverage of a cricket Test match in Australia where Shane Warne was on the verge of becoming the sport's highest ever wicket-taker, instead of staying with the cricket, the Nine Network instead cut to a game show, The Price Is Right.
In 2005, the British network ITV covered Formula One's San Marino GP in Imola, Italy. As Michael Schumacher harried race leader Fernando Alonso with three laps to run, ITV switched to a 3-minute ad-break. The action returned on the final lap, where Alonso won the race. After the race, the network was bombarded with complaints.
In 2006, pan-European sports channel Eurosport joined the Champ Car race in Milwaukee in progress (with 2/3 of the race already being over) and cut to commercials with 2 minutes left on the clock (it had been turned into a timed event). When they returned, the celebrating crew of race winner Sébastien Bourdais could be seen.
In 2006, the New York Rangers played the Pittsburgh Penguins on NBC when they decided to show a replay of a save when the game was playing, just as the replay finished the Rangers were celebrating a goal by Marek Malik which was not seen live.
