With another major league baseball season opening today, the office or Commissioner Bowie Kuhn has indicated a willingness to accept suggestions on how to avoid playing World Series games on Yom Kippur without loss of income to NBC-TV. Joe Reichler, public relations director of the office, has advised the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, as did another spokesman last October, that while “we have reviewed this from time to time over the years and Baseball has given it serious consideration,” no way has been found to get around the financial factor. Reichler, a former sportswriter who is Jewish “and very proud of it,” pointed out that a nighttime Series game tentatively scheduled for this season–not on Yom Kippur–will cost the network $500,000 in prime-time revenues. Rubbing out a weekend game is even more difficult, he noted, because the television audience then is far greater and “the ratings are important.” World Series conflicts with the Day of Atonment occurred in 1965, 1967, 1968 and 1970, and will recur in 1973 and 1978 if Baseball continues its practice of starting Series on Saturdays.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
