40th Grey Cup - Grey Cup's First Telecast

Grey Cup's First Telecast

This was the first Grey Cup match to be televised as CBC Television's Toronto flagship station, CBLT, paid CAD$7,500 to the Canadian Rugby Union for the rights to broadcast the game. The broadcast was only available locally on CBLT which had only begun broadcasts less than three months earlier. Live network television connections with other CBC stations were not available until 1953, although kinescope films of the game were produced for movie theatres and other television stations.

A technical failure prevented viewers from seeing 29 minutes of the game video. This interrupted the telecast during much of the third quarter, although commentator audio was still transmitted. Images were restored into the final quarter when CBC technicians repaired the link at the CBC's tower which received the feed from Varsity Stadium. The reported cause of the transmission relay failure was a vacuum tube worth $1.85. Despite this setback, this inaugural Grey Cup broadcast was reported to have had the most viewers of any Canadian television production to that date.