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Ok let me set the stage for you… The New York Jets are playing a heated back and forth scoring game against the Oakland Raiders. This Game itself had 10 Players that would later become Hall of Famers in it on an added note. The Jets kicker Jeff Turner just kicked a field goal for his team to give them a three-point lead and a score of 32-29 in the forth quarter with less then 2 minutes to play. Oakland gets the ball and is now starting their offensive drive to try to take the lead and the win. Now that the stage is set lets talk about the greatest part of the game. NO ONE WAS ABLE TO WATCH THE REST OF THE GAME!! That’s right, As the millions of sports fans are on the edge of there seats watching this nail biter of a game a commercial break comes on and a poor Swedish orphan named Heidi denied fans to watch one of the fastest scoring stampedes in football. After the commercial came on it was switched right to the Film Heidi. For those of you who don’t know, Heidi was a Children’s book that was turned into a made for T.V film that NBC Promised that no matter what would play at 7pm that night regardless of what was going on in the game. NBC was flooded with angry semi-sober fans wanting to watch the rest of what was guaranteed to be a game for the history books as well as Haters who wanted them to turn Heidi on as scheduled and not turn the game back on. Now what most people do not know is that NBC executives had in fact changed their mind about Switching to Heidi and wanted to postpone Heidi till after the game ended.
However, because of all the angry phone calls NBC was flooded with, NBC executives were not able to reach their Programmer Dick Cline and he did what he was ordered to do and switched over. Well, you might be thinking there was only 65 seconds left in the game how great could the game have gotten anymore amazing. If you were thinking that you were sadly mistaking. Oakland on their Offensive final drive quarterback Daryle Lamonica being a clutch player throws a 20-yard pass to Charlie Smith the Running back and on an added bonus and a brink of luck to Oakland 15 yards were added on top of the play because of a face masking penalty. Now in Jets territory on the 43 yard line Lamonica again throws it to Smith who brings the ball all the way to the End zone. The Raiders now have the lead at 36-32. But the Jets still get the ball back on the following kick off. Or do they?? Nope! On the ensuing kick off the jets fumble it and Raiders Player Preston Ridlehuber scoops up the fumble and scores making the game out of reach for the jets and ultimately win the game 43-32. The Raiders not only managed the win the game but also scored two Touchdowns in the amazingly short time of nine seconds. To put the icing on this already terrible the only people who knew what happened were the people inside Oakland’s Stadium.
In what seemed to be attempt to salvage any love they didn’t lose from fans, NBC Put a ticker on the bottom of the screen to tell everyone the final score of the game. Little did they know that after doing so they upset even more people. The reason being that they put it up during a very emotional part of the film and felt that after the ticker when by it killed the whole thing. Even angrier Phone calls where placed. Now with the Phones Ringing off the hook and millions of waiting on hold, the stress on the switchboard, which controls all the phone calls, blew up. But did that stop all the angry Football fans and irritated Heidi lovers? Absolutely not, after they realized that their calls were not going threw anymore the fans and upset viewers called their Telephone companies, the New York Times, and even the New York Police Department. So many people called the NYPD that even their emergency lines were backed up for hours.
Happily, after this huge mess NBC learned their lesson and installed what is now called the “Heidi Phone” into their programmers offices with an independent phone line and switchboard so their would never be another mess up like that. The NFL also put some preventive measures into their T.V contracts to prevent this from happening by making all Networks that what to show NFL games show the game threw its entirety in its home market no matter what. That week the NFL and Especially NBC went and said that they guarantee that nothing like this will ever happen again with all of the safety measures they put in. NBC also apologized to the sports fans they upset.
workcited
- http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-heidi-bowl
- http://www.inhistoric.com/2008/11/11171968-heidi-game.html
