Major League Baseball on ABC was the de facto title of a program that televised Major League Baseball (MLB) games on the ABC network.
It first ran from April 12, 1976 to October 28, 1989, and then from July 16, 1994 to October 26, 1995.
Background
1950s
In 1953, ABC-TV executive Edgar J. Scherick (who later created "Wide World of Sports") broached a "Saturday Game of the Week", television sport's first network series.
At the time, ABC was labeled a "nothing network" that had fewer outlets than CBS or NBC. ABC also needed paid programming or "anything for bills" (as Scherick put it).
At first, ABC hesitated at the idea of a nationally televised regular season baseball program and the MLB barred the "Game of the Week" from airing within 50 miles of any ballpark.
According to Scherick, Major League Baseball insisted on protecting local coverage and didn't care about national appeal. However, ABC did care about the national appeal and claimed that "most of America was still up for grabs."
In April of 1953, Edgar Scherick set out to sell teams rights but instead, only got the Philadelphia Athletics, the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox to sign on; these were not "national" broadcast contracts since they were assembled through negotiations with individual teams to telecast games from their home parks.
It was until the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, that antitrust laws barred "pooled rights" TV contracts negotiated with a central league broadcasting authority.
In 1953, ABC earned an 11.4 rating for their Game of the Week telecasts. Blacked-out cities had 32% of households.
In the rest of the United States, 3 in 4 TV sets in use watched Dizzy Dean and Buddy Blattner (or backup announcers Bill McColgan and Bob Finnegan) call the games for ABC.
CBS took over the Saturday Game in 1955 (the rights were actually set up through the Falstaff Brewing Corporation) retaining Dean/Blattner and McColgan/Finnegan as the announcing crews (as well as Gene Kirby, who produced the Dean/Blattner games and alternated with them on play-by-play) and adding Sunday coverage in 1957.
As Edgar Scherick said, "In '53, no one wanted us. Now teams begged for "Game"'s cash."
In 1959, ABC broadcast the best-of-three playoff series (to decide the National League pennant) between the Milwaukee Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers.
The cigarette company L&M was in charge of all of the telecasts. George Kell and Bob DeLaney were the announcers.