Iowa college football on TV: KRNT vs. the NCAA
One station defies the blackout rules, and another pays the price
In our previous episode, the Big Ten Conference’s early exposure to televised football went from complete fear to complete embrace. The Iowa Hawkeyes appeared on TV in New York and Los Angeles years before Iowa City. By the mid-1950s, the clamor for televised sports was overwhelming.
The NCAA, which had taken complete control of college football telecasts in 1951, would have none of it. “With unrestricted TV the big colleges would become bigger at the expense of the smaller colleges,” Robert Kane of Cornell University, and the chairman of the 1953 NCAA TV committee, told Broadcasting • Telecasting magazine in January 1954.1
In early 1955, a threat from the Big Ten to ignore the restrictions was quelled with a mixture of national and regional games. One of the NBC national games was Iowa-Michigan on Oct. 29.
A red-letter date in the history of football: Nov. 5, 1955
A sold-out Minnesota-Iowa game on Nov. 5, 1955, was to be televised by CBS stations across Iowa, except for KRNT in Des Moines. Why? Because Iowa State was playing a home game against Nebraska that was not televised, and any game within a 90-mile radius of a TV station meant that station couldn’t carry any other game. (Iowa State had no comment except to say the university had nothing to do with it.) KRNT felt it had no choice but to act in the “public interest” — and pirate the CBS feed to air the game. (Iowa won, 26-0.)
“Along with the N.C.A.A., the Big Ten is concerned that any TV station can, with impunity, contravene regulations which have been devised to provide the public with a maximum of college football television consistent with the interests of the colleges,” the Big Ten’s television committee said in a statement. The conference ended up not taking any action — but the NCAA swung the hammer.
The NCAA banned Iowa’s CBS stations from showing the following Saturday’s regional game.2 WMT in Cedar Rapids retaliated by showing two hours of a title card reading “Wisconsin-Illinois game blacked out by NCAA” interspersed with a recorded message from William B. Quarton, the station’s founder. “Apparently, Big Ten, the Pacific Coast Conference, Notre Dame and other large schools are in a hassle with the NCAA over their present policies. Obviously, the broadcasters and you, the public, are in the middle. The broadcasters don’t like to be in the middle and, I am sure, you don’t either.”
CBS partially defied the ban, arguing that it had a contractual obligation to let KVTV in Sioux City air the game (which it did). NCAA director Walter Byers told the Associated Press, “CBS is apparently prepared to disregard basic agreements and commitments it has with the NCAA. The implications are serious. It is a matter for the lawyers to unravel now.”
Ben Sanders, manager of radio station KICD in Spencer and former president of the Iowa Broadcasters Association, told the AP the controversy “brings the problem of NCAA monopoly out into the open.”
Quarton didn’t let up, and lobbied for Iowa’s Nov. 19 game at Notre Dame to be shown on CBS stations across the state. The only game that was supposed to be televised that day was UCLA-USC on NBC, but Notre Dame had a special closed-circuit feed sent to select Sheraton hotels.3 At the last minute, with Amana Refrigeration footing the bill, WMT was granted an exception to show the game because it was the Hawkeyes’ “home station.”
Iowa Gov. Leo Hoegh was not satisfied. “The University of Iowa is a state-owned tax institution supported by the tax dollars of every Iowa citizen from every corner of the state and every television outlet, therefore, is the home station as far as the university is concerned,” he said. When the game aired, KRNT was able to show “seven or eight minutes” before being cut off — a pity, because Notre Dame’s 17-14 comeback win resulted in Irish fans tearing down the goalposts in South Bend for the first time.
A ‘feudalistic monopoly’
In 1956, the NCAA drew a new map that made Iowa a “swing state” for regional broadcasts. NBC won the contract for national games, including Iowa-Minnesota on Nov. 10. NBC signed a separate agreement with the Big Ten for $315,000 for games on the five Saturdays that had regional broadcasts, including Indiana-Iowa on Sept. 29.
The “swing state” status still didn’t solve the problem. In October 1957, irate football fans flooded the Cedar Rapids Gazette’s sports department with complaints that KWWL didn’t air the Ohio State-Illinois game. “Apparently KWWL erred in listing this game because it was a regional telecast that was blacked out in the Iowa area by NCAA rules,” Gazette sports editor Gus Schrader wrote. “The state of Iowa is listed in the Big Eight territory, so Big Ten games are not shown here unless the University of Iowa is involved.”
The KRNT debacle resulted in a pair of editorials from Broadcasting • Telecasting attacking the NCAA’s “feudalistic monopoly.” (Admittedly, B•T wasn’t entirely a disinterested party here.) “It would be hard to imagine a combination operating in more rigid restraint of trade than the members of the NCAA are acting in their joint restrictions on football television,” it said Nov. 21, 1955.
It would take three decades for the U.S. Supreme Court to agree, through its ruling in NCAA v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma. Everything snowballed from there, from Notre Dame’s first NBC contract to the pillaging of the Pac-12 Conference. Four decades later, the Big Ten Conference will have 18 teams and the Big 12 Conference will have 16, each spread across four time zones.4
In August 2022, the Big Ten signed a seven-year media rights deal with CBS, NBC and Fox. It is worth more than $7 billion and some sources put it closer to $8 billion. The conference’s press release doesn’t mention a number at all.
On Oct. 4, the Big Ten released five years of football schedules for 18 teams. Iowa is slated to play at USC in 2025 and 2028. 2025 will be the 75th anniversary of the Iowa-USC game televised locally in Los Angeles. Perhaps the game should be on a Friday night at 10:30 p.m. Iowa time once again — this time as a conference game, televised nationwide, with millions of viewers.
The ad on the linked page is a rare piece of Iowa television history: KCRG-TV was KCRI-TV for its first 11 months.
Technically, the NCAA said the ban was for the state, but in reality, it only hit KRNT and WMT. It didn’t apply to WHBF in Rock Island. KGLO in Mason City told the Associated Press it wasn’t planning to air the game “and was blacked out anyway today because of the Simpson-Upper Iowa game at nearby Fayette.” By NCAA rules at the time, since Fayette was 88 miles away, this was a logical statement.
Father Edmund Joyce of Notre Dame said in January 1956 that only 2,000 people watched the Iowa game on closed-circuit TV.
Since Arizona doesn’t observe daylight-saving time, does this really mean the Big 12 is only in three and a half time zones?
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Well-researched, and informative. Thank you!