Hi, I'm Brian Curtis, the editor at Large of the Ranger.

This is the Pressbox Podcast.

Let me ask you a question.

Did you see what happened in the playoffs last night?

These days, if you missed a game, you'd say, sure, I saw the highlights on Twitter, but

10 or 20 years ago, the answer would have been, I saw the highlights on SportsCenter,

and a decade before that, if you missed the game, you'd say, I didn't see anything.

I just caught the one or two crappy highlights they showed on the 11 o'clock news.

The TV Sports Highlight has been the fans' companion for decades, and if you read the news

about the declining ratings of SportsCenter, you could conclude that we're near the end

of the highlights life cycle, at least it's something that can power a TV show on its own.

So I thought the TV Highlight deserved a proper biography, or at least an oral history, delivered

by the men who have been doing highlights for the last 50 years.

This episode is called The Life and Death of the TV Sports Highlight.

If a listener can imagine this, when we used to come on and do the sports, say, in 1978,

11 o'clock news, we were actually giving the audience the score for the first time.

In other words, I'd say 80% of the audience, maybe higher, didn't know the score of the Yankee

game unless they listened to it or watched it when you came on.

You had a captive audience, so it's a whole different game now.

I really think of myself as being very fortunate to have been a sportscaster in that time.

It was easier to try and make a name for yourself than it is today.

This Warner Wolf, one of the pioneering wise acres in the field of TV sports highlights.

...