1989 World Series - Radio and Television Coverage

Radio and Television Coverage

ABC play-by-play man Al Michaels, who spent three years in San Francisco as an announcer for the San Francisco Giants, was nominated for an Emmy Award for news broadcasting after giving an eyewitness account of the aftermath of the earthquake at Candlestick Park.

This would be the last World Series that ABC would televise from start to finish (and also the last they would produce themselves) and the last MLB game on ABC, period, until July 1994. The television rights would move exclusively (ABC had shared coverage with NBC since 1976 up until the end of the 1989 season) to CBS the following year. ABC would next televise a World Series in 1995, but only broadcast Games 1, 4, and 5 (the other games were covered by NBC, who had a joint venture with ABC and MLB called The Baseball Network).

Due in part to the earthquake and subsequent interruption of play, as well as the four-game sweep by the A's, ABC only drew an overall Nielsen rating of 16.4 for the Series. This was the first World Series since the introduction of prime-time games in 1971 to draw a rating of less than 20.

CBS Radio also covered the Series, with Jack Buck and Johnny Bench in the broadcast booth. This was Buck's seventh and last World Series call for CBS Radio, as he moved to CBS' television coverage of baseball the following year. Bench continued to call the World Series on radio through 1993 as Vin Scully's color man.