Good day, this is Ian, cosmowanda522, with the passing of a TV legend on my mind.
"Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport... The thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat... The human drama of athletic competition... This is ABC's Wide World of Sports."
Those were the famous words of Jim McKay, the legendary host of ABC's Wide World of Sports anthology series who, as of the time of this posting, recently died at the age of 86. Everyone in the wide world of sports is saddened to hear of his passing.
Back in the 1960s, the young ABC network was experimenting with all sorts of different programming, something characteristic of all fledgling TV networks, such as the Fox network. In 1960, ABC started airing a sports show focusing on sporting events in other countries, not just those in the United States. Jim McKay was there and he was able to host WWOS with a little bravery and a lot of class. At a time where satellite television was scarce, and not many other people were able to see the world in person, Jim McKay brought the world to his TV viewers, and showed all of America that there is indeed a "sports world". In four decades and all those miles of traveling, it would be very, very difficult to think of a sport that McKay hadn't covered in this wide world.
But in the wide world of sports, perhaps McKay's greatest triumphs were his work on the Olympic Games. Of the 12 Olympic Games he did, perhaps his most memorable moment was his handling of the massacre of the 1972 Munich games (which had lots of other memorable moments as well) that saw 11 Israeli athletes taken hostage and killed. When he said, "They're all gone." it became one of the most memorable lines in sports broadcasting history.
He was one of the most important figures of American television, let alone sports television. Jim McKay, a true television Olympian, was 86, and he will sorely be missed, not just by yours truly, but by sports fans everywhere, all around the wide world of sports. This is Ian (cosmowanda522) signing off.