The Boomer Experience : Back in the Day

  Fifty-five years ago, fans across the United States had the choice of two networks to watch the first Super Bowl. A giant exception was in the host city of Los Angeles, where fans didn’t even have one network to tune into. Back then, the National Football League blacked out every game in the local market, convinced that televising the game locally would cause fans to watch on TV rather than pay for tickets. The league refused to make an exception for the Super Bowl, which debuted on Jan. 15, 1967. In fact, the first six Super Bowls — which rotated among the warm-weather cities of Los Angeles, Miami and New Orleans —   would be blacked out locally. Super Bowl I — officially called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game — pitted the American Football League’s Kansas City Chiefs against the National Football League’s Green Bay Packers, just months after the two leagues had announced a merger. The game fell far short of a sellout at cavernous Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, even with the bla