David Rosenthal

It's actual monopoly versus collusion.

The first one was collusion, right?

This is creating a monopoly.

So, once this passes Congress and the merger is approved—remember, it won't actually happen until 1970—

There's this little matter of the World Championship game, this super matter.

There had never been anything like this before.

This is the wholesale invention of a new major sporting event for the first time within the TV era.

Nothing like this had ever happened.

The World Series was created way before the TV era.

These guys are smart.

They're smart business people.

They're smart media people.

Even though the TV contracts are already in place on the NFL and the AFL side for their respective seasons, including their respective championship games, this is a new game.

There's no contract in place yet for this.

So they re-bid it, the rights to this world championship game to all the networks.

And CBS and NBC are living because they've already got the rights to the respective leagues.

So what ends up happening?

They both feel like they can't bear to not win the rights to broadcast this new game.

They each end up paying $1 million for the rights to both broadcast it.

So this game now is going to be broadcast to the nation on both CBS and NBC.