On Television
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television MASTER CHESSCASTER BY MARVIN KITMAN The morning that public television's coverage of the Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky world championship chess match was to begin, word went out that...
...It is not Boris Goudinoff...
...The New York Network's replay of the wildly popular matches in Reykjavik?It is," Lyman observed on opening day, "the only show in town"-is reminiscent of Les Keit-er's ticker-tape simulations of out-of-town baseball games on radio, minus the cheering crowd noises...
...The film shown was taken the first day of the match (July 11...
...Of course, when Bobby plays with us in Washington Square we aren't bothered by cameras, only muggers...
...He wants the cameras," ABC chess master Larry Evans commented...
...You must understand that our chess master is extremely sensitive...
...Anyway, Bobby heard Carson and said to himself, 'I'm going to go out and beat this son-of-a-bleep Carson or Spassky or whoever I'm playing.' At the time, you recall...
...Although television's first chess-caster confounded the experts by showing up on opening day, relations between the New York Network and its superstar have not been entirely smooth...
...They knew that Johnny personally admires Fischer's values, his love of money, his insatiable desire for publicity...
...Producer Mike Chase's preliminary estimate of the audience's size apparently was way off...
...This is amazing . . ." For me the highlight was observing Fischer's behavior immediately after his historic first move...
...The conspirators had decided the only thing that would motivate Fischer was for him to be attacked publicly by Middle America's biggest late-night talk-show star-Perhaps the most-loved name in television history...
...It is Borris (as in Morris...
...Or was it the "Dixie 500" in Georgia?-all race tracks tend to look alike on TV...
...Bobby immediately ordered everybody out of the pool at his hotel in Iceland so he could have complete silence while he thought of the best way to beat Carson...
...The reason Johnny has such big Nielsen numbers is that all the eggheads secretly watch him...
...Goudinoff, who analyzed the ploy for me over his chessboard in Washington Square Park, chortled: "What Carson did so enraged Fischer that he got butterflies in his stomach...
...Bill Fleming, the Wide World announcer, took great pains to assure viewers that the cameras upsetting Fischer did not belong to ABC...
...Technically this move is known in chess as the 'Queen to Pawn Four Gambit.' No, it's the 'King to Pawn Four Goose.' Oh, just call it the 'Encino (California) Cut-Off Jam.' Everybody will know what you're talking about...
...You can't believe the suspense here," Fleming proclaimed in that over-excited tone of voice usually employed to describe automobile races...
...When he was young his parents didn't take any motion pictures of him...
...On one board the play-by-play announcer (Lyman) posts the moves relayed from Iceland...
...That's what makes a chess match...
...There is no reason why television couldn't use a still camera, too...
...Unfortunately, these were silent films and you had to be a lip reader to hear the grandmaster's protest...
...At this very moment, the most profound television thinkers are trying to explain the attraction of this slow-moving, visually boring but intellectually stimulating event...
...He just wants to control them...
...Then the color man (also played by Lyman) explains what happened at the analysis board...
...There was talk that he was about to quit the match, which would have left a black mark on America's international escutcheon...
...We have only bought the first rights," he said...
...Fischer was behind Spassky, 0-2...
...We attempted to assure him that while indeed we have cameras, the likelihood of anyone's watching was nil...
...This may reflect back to Bobby's youth," Goudinoff suggested...
...How Carson, the master of saying the right thing at the right time (it's usually written down on the cue cards), could have made such a traitorous remark was a mystery until I spoke to a noted chess master...
...Fischer's attitude toward the cameras also puzzled me...
...But while the edited film of the match was good-i especially enjoyed the 29th and 55th moves on television-the overall impact of the actual event was not nearly as emotionally involving as the re-creations staged by the camera-shy Shelby Lyman in the public TV studio at Albany, never before regarded as the chess capital of America...
...According to one rumor, he would not show up at the studio because he had a pathological fear of riding the bus to Albany, where the program was originating...
...A second major controversy that rocked television during the first week of the match involved the not-so-well-known chess nut Johnny Carson...
...What you don't understand," explained Boris N. Goudinoff of Mas-sapequa, N.Y., "is that this was something we in grandmaster chess call 'reverse psychology.' Fischer heard Johnny Carson on shortwave TV...
...All keen observers of the match know these things...
...By the way, be sure not to spell my name wrong...
...Kodak Brownie movie cameras were just becoming popular in the late 1940s, but Bobby's family was too poor to own one...
...Lyman did threaten to withdraw from our program," admitted producer Mike Chase, "when he discovered that our studio is equipped with cameras...
...According to Channel 13, the public station in New York City carrying the tournament, its phones have been tied up with calls from hundreds of viewers, many of whom disagree with Lyman's analysis...
...As it has turned out, the Spassky-Fischer series has had the highest ratings on public television since Elizabeth R. The match has also turned out to be the most exciting nonvisual entertainment show the medium has come up with since hearings...
...Then he stood up, walked to the judge's desk and, as Fleming recounted, "started screaming for a policeman to remove the cameras...
...Another version had it that Lyman, unhappy with the honorarium public TV was paying him, was demanding a percentage of the money viewers of participating stations would be donating to support the unprecedented attraction...
...The checkmate he loves the most is a blank check that he can fill in...
...A group of long-haired chess fans approached Carson on a Los Angeles freeway in the dead of night," Goudinoff continued...
...When the great histories of this championship are finally written, they will say it wasn't that Fischer played well or that Spassky played poorly, but that Johnny Carson motivated him...
...I thought ABC exercised remarkable restraint in not providing instant replays of the great moves...
...It wasn't until the second week of the match that the widely discussed camera work in Iceland was finally shown on ABC's Wide World of Sports (July 22), as a co-attraction with "The Firecracker 400," an automobile race in Florida...
...For the first time," the host of NBC's Tonight Show told millions, "I am rooting for the Russians...
...made Marshall McLuhan obsolete...
...he asked after the first move of the first match, shifting the pieces with razzle-dazzle fingerwork that took this viewer's breath away, "and go down the path that made him lose his last two games to Spassky...
...He listens to him all the time...
...For starters I would submit, "The invention of chess in 600 A.D...
...Actually, he is very fond of still pictures, since his parents owned a still camera when he was a boy...
...Neither were they shown in slow-motion or on isolated cameras...
...it's his favorite show...
...Does Fischer play the Grunfeld...
...Given all the prestige and money at stake, NBC had to do something to instill Fischer with the confidence and will to win...
...Lyman's masterful kibbitzing is credited with increasing the popularity of chess...
...And they persuaded Carson to try the reverse psychology...
...He looked around the auditorium for the cameras that were shooting the match through a hole chopped in an 8-inch-thick concrete wall...
...On Television MASTER CHESSCASTER BY MARVIN KITMAN The morning that public television's coverage of the Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky world championship chess match was to begin, word went out that Shelby Lyman?the play-by-play announcer for the tournament-had mysteriously disappeared...
...Believe me, a high-speed Nikon could catch the action of a chess match perfectly well...
...Still, I think Fischer's fear-of-cameras neurosis can be cured by paying him more money," Goudinoff concluded...
Vol. 55 • September 1972 • No. 17
