A blog about television by TIME’s TV critic James Poniewozik.
Jim McKay, 1921-2008
Sportscaster Jim McKay died over the weekend at age 86. I make no secret on this blog that I don't watch a lot of sports, but for me, McKay—known for his versatile coverage of the Olympics and for being the voice of ABC's Wide World of Sports—brings back for me the weekends as a kid when I still did, and when his WWS broadcasts exposed us to "the constant variety of sport." It's appropriate that McKay should have died in an Olympic year, since unfortunately his best-known moment of broadcasting was his anchoring coverage of the deaths of Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972. But I'll remember him best for his work on Wide World of Sports, which, in the guise of bringing America sports, actually brought America the world.
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