Eighty-seven years ago next Wednesday, on October 22, 1939, NBC’s experimental station W2XBS pointed two cameras at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn and put an NFL game on television for the first time. The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Eagles 23-14 in front of 13,057 fans. Roughly 1,000 people watched at home — and more crowded around monitors at the RCA Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair.
There were no commercials, no graphics package and no surviving recording of the broadcast. What survived was the box score, the announcer’s memories, and the idea that pro football belonged on a screen.
Why the anniversary still matters in 2026
Every Week 6 kickoff this fall — Thursday night in Denver, the Sunday window, the late national games — sits on the other side of that cloudy afternoon in Brooklyn. The sport that once reached about a thousand sets now fills living rooms every night of the week. The Eagles are still in the league. The NFL’s Brooklyn Dodgers are not: the franchise played its last season in 1944.
October 22 is also a Hall of Fame day in the box score. Three future enshrinees were on the field: Brooklyn tailback Ace Parker and tackle Bruiser Kinard, and Philadelphia end Bill Hewitt, who famously played without a helmet.
The game: Dodgers 23, Eagles 14
Brooklyn controlled the day with fullback Pug Manders and kicker Ralph Kercheval. Manders ran for 113 yards on 29 carries and scored from a yard out in the first quarter. Kercheval made field goals from 44, 38 and 45 yards — three kicks of 38 or longer in one afternoon, including a 45-yarder that was the season’s longest. Ace Parker threw a 47-yard touchdown pass to Perry Schwartz in the third quarter; Bruiser Kinard kicked the extra point.
Philadelphia answered twice: Franny Murray’s 1-yard rush in the second quarter, and a 22-yard touchdown pass from Davey O’Brien to Bill Hewitt in the fourth. O’Brien, the 1938 Heisman winner from TCU, finished his second NFL season that fall.
| Quarter | Scoring play | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Pug Manders 1-yard rush (Ralph Kercheval kick) | BKN 7-0 |
| 2nd | Franny Murray 1-yard rush (Hank Reese kick) | 7-7 |
| 3rd | Ralph Kercheval 44-yard field goal | BKN 10-7 |
| 3rd | Perry Schwartz 47-yard pass from Ace Parker (Bruiser Kinard kick) | BKN 17-7 |
| 4th | Ralph Kercheval 38-yard field goal | BKN 20-7 |
| 4th | Ralph Kercheval 45-yard field goal | BKN 23-7 |
| 4th | Bill Hewitt 22-yard pass from Davey O’Brien (Franny Murray kick) | BKN 23-14 |
| Player | Team | Key numbers |
|---|---|---|
| Pug Manders | Brooklyn | 29 carries, 113 yards, 1 TD |
| Ace Parker | Brooklyn | 8-of-19, 116 yards, 1 TD, 3 INT; 6 rushes, 17 yards |
| Ralph Kercheval | Brooklyn | 3 field goals (44, 38, 45) |
| Perry Schwartz | Brooklyn | 47-yard TD catch |
| Davey O’Brien | Philadelphia | 22-yard TD pass to Hewitt |
| Bill Hewitt | Philadelphia | 22-yard TD reception |
How the broadcast worked
Kickoff was at 2:30 p.m. The telecast ran two hours, 33 minutes and 10 seconds with no commercial breaks. Allen “Skip” Walz called the game alone. Eight people worked the production. One camera sat in the box seats near the 40-yard line; the other sat in the mezzanine, over Walz’s shoulder.
Walz did his own spotting. On punts and kickoffs he pointed so the cameraman knew where to swing. Then the light failed. “It was a cloudy day,” he later told the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “When the sun crept behind the stadium there wasn’t enough light for the cameras. The picture would get darker and darker, and eventually it would go completely blank, and we’d revert to a radio broadcast.”
Iconoscope cameras of 1939 needed daylight. Stadium lights were not part of the plan. When the picture died, the audio kept going — television folding back into radio for a few plays at a time.
Watch the story of that first telecast
No known kinescope of the October 22, 1939 game survives. Later explainers reconstruct the day from the box score, Walz’s account and the Hall of Fame record.
Ace Parker and the 1939 Dodgers
Parker, a Duke product who also played baseball for the Philadelphia Athletics, was already the Dodgers’ engine. In 1940 he would be named the league’s most valuable player. He entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972. On this Sunday he completed 8 of 19 passes for 116 yards and the deep ball to Schwartz, while Manders did the between-the-tackles work that kept Brooklyn ahead.
Kercheval’s three long field goals were the difference on the scoreboard. Field goals from beyond 40 yards were rare enough in 1939 that the 45-yarder stood as the season’s longest.
From 1,000 sets to every Sunday
Five years later the Brooklyn franchise was gone. Thirty years later the Super Bowl was a national television event. Eighty-seven years later, the same Philadelphia franchise that lost that afternoon is a weekly national broadcast — and the league’s entire business model runs through the cameras that first flickered on at Ebbets Field.
For more October history on WhyNFL, read October 20, 1963: Jim Brown becomes the career rushing leader and October 21, 1985: The Refrigerator scores. Follow today’s Philadelphia Eagles on our team page.
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