History of the National Football League on television
NBC was the first major television network to cover an NFL game, when on October 22, 1939, it broadcast a game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Brooklyn Dodgers; the network was still only in its infancy, with only two affiliates, the modern day WRGB (now a CBS affiliate) in Schenectady and W2XBS in New York City. Portions of that game still survive via films, but the film is not footage from the telecast (recordings of television broadcasts did not begin until 1948). The use of a sideline camera, the sole camera used in the 1939 broadcast, would become the standard for all future NFL broadcasts until 2017; the angle is particularly suited for estimating yardage, compared to more mobile camera angles that began to appear in the 21st century.
1933 NFL Championship Game
"The First Fifty Years", a 1969 book that chronicles the first half-century of the NFL, listed the 1933 NFL Championship game as the first of "Ten [Games] That Mattered." The National Football League's first championship game was as good as it should have been," says the book. "There are great occasions and great games, but they rarely get together. In 1933, they did...[.] They were two good teams playing on a meterological [sic] accident, a good field in Chicago in December. About 25,000 came out, the largest crowd since Red Grange first came up, and the game they saw was worth the price." The book concludes that "the game had already shown the fast-moving, high-scoring excitement in pro football's future."The NFL had only four game officials in ; the back judge was added in , the line judge in , and the side judge in .