ABC’s Wide World of Sports is an American sports anthology television program that aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) from April 29, 1961 to January 3, 1998….while being seen primarily on Saturday afternoons….and hosted by Jim McKay….as seen in this video herewith….with a succession of co-hosts beginning in 1987….as the title continued to be used for general sports programs on the network until 2006. In 2007, Wide World of Sports was named by Time on its list of the 100 best television programs of all-time.
Jim McKay became a legend of sports broadcasting as a result of hosting Wide World of Sports for the 1st 25 years from 1961 to 1986….when the 25 Year Anniversary Show aired….and as host of this particular salute to the awesome coverage of sports that Wide World covered during that time….which was only fitting as he summed up what ABC Sports had learned over that first quarter of a century of sports coverage….as he so eloquently stated….“We would land in a foreign land….and as we walked down the main streets….we would look down the side streets to see what we could find…..which sometimes would be a dead end….and sometimes nothing at all….but many times we found something remarkable.”
