On November 17, 1968, at exactly 7:00 PM the television movie Heidi began playing on NBC as scheduled, something millions of people up and down the east coast were very angry about. It had almost nothing to do with the film itself, but instead what it had interrupted as title card appeared and set the scene as “Frankfurt at the turn of the century.” NBC was facing an unprecedented situation at the time: the Jets-Raiders game, which had seen an inordinate number of delays from penalties and clock stoppages, had gone past the allotted time window. Communication broke down, wires were crossed, and what happened next made television history.
It was an important football game for Jets fans, and an especially bad one for which to miss the final minutes. The two teams had history, with the Raiders having denied the Jets a chance at winning their division in the prior season, as well as numerous earlier games that had been close and hotly contested. At this particular juncture in the season, a Jets win would have put them in contention for the division championship and a shot at going to the Super Bowl. And the game went well for the Jets. They scored first, and entered the fourth quarter firmly in the lead with 26 points to the Raiders’ 22. The Raiders scored a touchdown, but the Jets knocked in a field goal, leaving it tied at 29 points each. With a little over a minute left on the game clock, the Jets scored another field goal, putting them three points in the lead. They kicked off to the Raiders, and just as they began to return the ball the screen switched over to a jaunty orchestra and a horse drawn carriage carrying young Heidi through the streets of turn-of-the-century Frankfurt.
NBC had actually decided to let the game play on, but the decision hadn’t reached the critical man in time. Earlier that week, NBC President Julian Goodman had firmly instructed his executives that no matter what happened, Heidi would go on at 7 PM sharp. It had been heavily promoted, and was even being sponsored by Timex, who would likely be upset were the beginning of the broadcast to be delayed for any reason. But as the game turned out be an exciting one even Goodman, who was watching the game from home, changed his mind that the game should be allowed to finish. The NBC executives began phoning around to each other and confirmed that they all agreed on a delayed start for Heidi, but when the Executive Producer attempted to reach the operations center he couldn’t get through. The switchboards had been clogged by hundreds of people calling in to ask if the game would be allowed to finish, while others were calling in to ask if Heidi would begin as scheduled. When he hadn’t heard anything, the head of operations defaulted to his original instructions and started Heidi promptly at 7.
The backlash was immense, and was invigorated due to the final score. In the seven minutes it took to finish the game following NBC’s switchover to Heidi, the Raiders rallied and scored two touchdowns to come from behind and win the game. It had been one of the most exciting games of football played to that point, and all of the Jets fans on the east coast had missed it. To make up for cutting away, NBC ran the score across the screen during the Heidi broadcast, but did so at an especially dramatic moment, thus angering those who had tuned in to see the movie. NBC was derided by viewers and other networks alike, so much so that the game itself became known as the “Heidi Game” and the act of cutting into other programming during an exciting moment has become known as a “Heidi Moment,” and of which there have been many since that day in 1968. Additionally, in order to ensure they would never be denied the right to finish the action on the field, all of the major sports leagues began including protection clauses in their TV contracts barring the networks from cutting off broadcast. And so, the next time you’re watching sports on TV and the game is spilling over into the next time slot, you can thank Heidi for the fact that you won’t miss the ending.