Abstract
This article examines the development of the pairing of pro football and television from 1939, the year of the first broadcast of a pro football game until 1970, the first year the NFL broadcast Monday night games on ABC. Highlighting text from periodicals, including Sponsor, a magazine that served commercial broadcasting, radio, and television advertising buyers from 1946-1964, this article deconstructs socio-historical contexts, both institutional and ideological, that contributed to the coupling of pro football and television. Importantly, it places this history into conversation with Raymond Williams’s concept of mobile privatization to demonstrate that pro football’s materialization on television engaged emerging domestic viewing patterns and rituals of the 1950s and 1960s, ultimately setting the table for how the American television viewing public watches and participates in the game today.
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