ABC Olympic broadcasts

The Olympic Games aired in the United States on the broadcast network ABC at various times from the 1960s to the 1980s. ABC first televised the Winter Olympic Games in 1964, and the Summer Olympic Games in 1968. ABC last televised the Summer Olympics in 1984 and Winter Olympics in 1988.

While CBS aired both the 1960 Winter and Summer Games (marking the first time that the Olympics were broadcast on American television), by 1964, a different network showed the Winter Games: ABC. Roone Arledge won broadcast rights for his network and began a relationship with the "five rings" that would last over two decades. The program used many of the same production staff from ABC's Wide World of Sports, as well as the same host, Jim McKay, who moved to ABC from CBS in 1961. In 1968, ABC showed both the Winter Games and the Summer Games.

The 1964 Winter Games were in Innsbruck, Austria, and coverage was taped and flown by plane back to the United States. All of it was in black-and-white, but with most Winter Olympic events in the morning (local time), most TV coverage aired the day the events were held. A portion of the Closing Ceremony was televised live via satellite (Telstar, which had to be tracked and allowed about a 15-minute window between the U.S. and Europe when it was zooming over the Atlantic). Everything else was videotaped and flown to the U.S. via a Munich-London-New York route. There was little margin for error. If a flight was canceled, ABC had a tape of a U.S.-Romania hockey game, played the day before the Opening Ceremony and shipped over, ready to play. All went well and it never made the air.

ABC aired 16.5 hours of coverage of the Innsbruck Games, the majority of the coverage occurring outside of primetime.

By 1968, ABC was broadcasting the Olympics in full color, and satellites made possible live coverage of several events at the Winter Games in Grenoble, France. In reality, only the Opening Ceremony and the ladies figure skating final were televised live via satellite; most other coverage was sent via satellite to ABC and run off tape from New York. The 1968 Winter Olympics were the first to be televised in color (except for a couple of events French television fed in black-and-white). Highlighting the 1968 Winter Games was a dramatic sweep in men's alpine skiing by Frenchman Jean-Claude Killy.

Nearly all of ABC's coverage of the Summer Games in Mexico City was broadcast live due to the lack of time difference and how close America and Mexico are in travel. The major highlight of the Summer Games was a world-record long jump by Bob Beamon of the United States, which was aired live in the US.

In 1972, NBC showed the Winter Games from Sapporo, Japan, then ABC returned to carry the Summer Games in Munich, Germany. It was during the Summer Games that Palestinian terrorists attacked the Olympic Village and killed 11 Israeli athletes. Although Chris Schenkel was the actual host of the Games that year, Arledge assigned the story to McKay largely because McKay had been a local news anchor in Baltimore, Maryland prior to joining CBS in 1950 and later ABC in 1961. McKay was joined on set by ABC news correspondent (and former and future evening news anchor) Peter Jennings, and coverage continued for many hours, until the outcome was known. Howard Cosell went with the film crew to get interviews in the village.

After an unsuccessful rescue attempt of the athletes held hostage, at 3:24 AM German Time, McKay came on the air with this statement: