The National Hockey League has never fared as well on American television in comparison to the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, or the National Football League, although that has begun to change, with NBC's broadcasts of the final games of the 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2013 Stanley Cup Finals scoring some of the best ratings ever enjoyed by the sport on American television.
In fact, hockey broadcasting on a national scale was spotty prior to 1981; NBC and CBS held rights at various times, each network carrying weekend-afternoon games during the second half of the regular season and the playoffs, along with some (but not all) of the Stanley Cup Finals. From 1971 to 1995, there was no exclusive coverage of games in the United States.
Meanwhile, individual teams have long contracted to air their games on local channels, primarily on regional sports networks and in a few cases on broadcast channels as well.
1950s (CBS)
CBS first broadcast Saturday afternoon National Hockey League games for four seasons from –. Initially, Bud Palmer served as the play-by-play man while Fred Cusick did color commentary and intermission interviews for the first three seasons. In , Cusick moved over to play-by-play while Brian McFarlane came in to do the color commentary and intermission interviews. The pregame and intermission interviews were done on the ice, with the interviewer on skates. No playoff games were televised during this period, and all broadcasts took place in one of the four American arenas at the time.
As previously mentioned, CBS covered the season on Saturday afternoons, starting January 5. For the next three years, they aired games on Saturday afternoons starting on November 2, 1957, October 18, 1958, and January 9, 1960.
According to Sports Illustrated, the NHL dropped CBS because the NHL owners didn't want the fledgling Players' Association to gain a financial cut of the TV deal. This was despite the fact that CBS was at least at one point, getting better ratings than NBC's NBA package from around the same period, especially in cities with NHL, minor-league, or major college (division 1 level) hockey clubs.
1960s
1966 (NBC and RKO General)
The NHL did not return to national television in the United States until the 1966 playoffs.
NBC was the first United States television network to air a national broadcast of a Stanley Cup Playoff game. They provided coverage of four Sunday afternoon playoff games during the 1966 postseason. On April 10 and April 17, NBC aired semifinal games between the Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings. On April 24 and May 1, NBC aired Games 1 and 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Montreal Canadiens and the Detroit Red Wings respectively. Win Elliot served as the play-by-play man while Bill Mazer served as the color commentator for all four games.
NBC's coverage of the 1966 Stanley Cup Playoffs marked the first time that hockey games were televised on network television in color, although a handful of local game telecasts in Boston (WHDH-TV), New York (WOR-TV), and Chicago (WGN-TV) had been colorcast during the regular-season that year. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation would follow suit the following year. NBC's Stanley Cup coverage preempted a sports anthology series called NBC Sports in Action hosted by Jim Simpson and Bill Cullen, who were between-periods co-hosts for the four Stanley Cup broadcasts.
In the United States, the clinching game of the 1966 Stanley Cup Finals on the Thursday evening of May 5 aired in black and white on RKO General-owned stations (including WOR-TV in New York and WNAC-TV in Boston). The commentators for RKO's coverage on that occasion were Bob Wolff and Emile Francis, who had called WOR-TV's coverage of New York Rangers games during the regular season.
CBS had gained rights for an NHL "Game Of The Week" for the 1966–67 regular-season; but could not accommodate regular-season games, so instead, those Sunday-afternoon games were subleased to RKO General.
1966–69 (CBS)
In 1967, CBS carried weekend-afternoon games of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. For the next five seasons, from 1968 through 1972, CBS aired a game each week between mid-January until early-mid May in each of those seasons, mainly on a Sunday afternoon, including playoffs. From 1968 to 1969 through 1971–72, the intermission studio was called "CBS Control", as was the case with other sports coverage, including the NFL coverage.