Don Lane’s one-man mission to bring the NFL, Super Bowl to life for Australian TV viewers
Australia’s outsized NFL fandom began with Don Lane getting weeks-old game videos delivered from the US, then a phone call that changed everything, writes SHANNON GILL.
It was one of the golden rules in the corridors of Channel Nine through the 1970s and 1980s.
Don’t tell Don Lane the NFL scores.
For a time, ‘The Lanky Yank’ with his own tonight show was Australian television’s biggest star. And every week, stacks of tapes of NFL games would be delivered to his office.
The only way he could watch the sport he loved from home was to subscribe to an overseas videotape service and devour them weeks later, as if they were live.
“No one could ever begin a conversation without him saying, ‘Don’t tell me the scores’,” son PJ Lane recalls.
“He was a big New York Giants fan and he just loved the sport.”
It’s a far cry from today, where every NFL game can be watched live in Australia. Next week’s Super Bowl will screen on Foxtel and Kayo (via ESPN) and Channel Seven, while SEN Radio will broadcast the game over the airwaves.
More broadly, the Super Bowl is an omnipresent cultural event celebrated with gusto across Australia. The NFL will hold its first Australian Super Bowl party on Sydney Harbour, the AFL is holding a festival on its Marvel Stadium fields, while thousands of pubs and bars will hold their own American-themed events.
Lane passed away in 2009, yet can take sizeable credit. He was the conduit for a generation of Australian NFL fans.
The pre-Lane history of the NFL on Australian TV was potted, at best. The first Super Bowl aired here was in 1971, two months after it had been played.
The game was finally shown live for the first time in 1984 but the idea of coherently following the regular season was a pipe dream. The NFL bounced around from channel to channel in irregular graveyard slots.
That all changed in 1990, when the ABC acquired NFL rights in Australia and needed a host.
“Dad got contacted by a guy named Pat Furlong at the ABC because they needed someone who could translate the American game for Australian viewers,” PJ tells CODE Sports.
“And it blew up.”
Lane hadn’t been seen regularly on Australian television for a few years. He was yesterday’s man and the last place anyone expected the variety entertainer to pop up was as a sports commentator on the public broadcaster.
At the time, it seemed just as unlikely that Australians would warm to the American game in large numbers.
The ABC treated the sport with deference, giving it a regular 10.30pm slot on Tuesday nights, showcasing a match of the week and highlights of other games. Instead of just playing tapes, Lane made it accessible by peppering the show with his own opinions, enthusiasm, and importantly for novice viewers, explanations of the game.
“The damn thing was tried on every other network but with us, it’s been extremely successful because of our approach,” Lane told journalist Ashley Browne at the time.
A cult following quickly developed. PJ remembers it completely changing the contemporary public perception of his father.
“He’d say back in the 60s it was, ‘I’m a big fan of yours, can you sign this’; then in the 1970s it was, ‘My mother’s a big fan of yours, can you sign this?’; In the 1980s it was, ‘My grandmother’s a big fan of yours …’
“Then the NFL happened in the 1990s and it was, ‘My kids are big fans of you’. Kids my age only knew him as the American football guy.”
In another interview, Lane said: “I’m getting more fan mail now than I got for the Don Lane Show, the ABC are falling over themselves.”
It was so popular that the ABC instituted live audience Super Bowl parties for Lane to helm in the ABC Studios, to complement the direct broadcast. One memorable time, they packed out the Darling Harbour convention centre with NFL fans.
Then the unthinkable happened: the ABC sent Lane back to his homeland to broadcast directly from the Super Bowl itself, for two glorious years.
Those years have extra special memories for PJ. In January 1994, he was smuggled along to attend Super Bowl XXVIII in Atlanta when he was just 10 years old.
“We had friends in Atlanta and he said to the ABC, ‘Look, I’ll do it for free, but can you replace my payment with two first class airfares to Atlanta and I’ll pay for accommodation’. The ABC agreed, so I went over with him.”
The only problem was that PJ didn’t have a ticket, so Lane simply loaded up his boy with equipment to walk into Georgia Dome with the crew.
But he also had a back-up plan … of sorts.
“He said, ‘If anyone asks you, just say you’re a soap opera actor in Australia and you’re our guest’. I said, ‘OK, but what’s the name of the soap opera?’ and he says, ‘I don’t know … call it Coogee Beach!’”
So the non-existent soap ‘Coogee Beach’ snuck young PJ into the Super Bowl to see Dallas defeat Buffalo.
A few years later, pay TV arrived. It completely opened up access to the NFL but didn’t stop Lane spreading the word off-screen.
“We were leaving a musical and he saw (Channel Nine owner) Kerry Packer standing on the corner,” PJ recalls.
“Obviously he knew him, but he hadn’t spoken to him in years. He just said, ‘I’m not going to turn down this opportunity’. So he got out of the car and starts pitching the NFL to Kerry Packer: ‘Hey, you gotta put this on’.”
The pitch worked.
Nine picked up the rights after the ABC deal expired. Eddie McGuire was host but Lane did score a role back at his old home, hosting a sports bloopers series. Lane made one last Super Bowl appearance when the rights switched again, to SBS.
All these years on, with millions of Australians likely to tune in on Monday morning for Super Bowl LVIII between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers, many will trace their knowledge of the sport back to Don Lane and his colourful presentation.
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ESPN will provide specialised Australian content as part of its broadcast for Foxtel; the regular panellists for Channel Seven’s Australian-based Armchair Experts NFL summary show, Cam Luke and Ben Graham, will be in Las Vegas providing content; and SEN has again sent broadcaster Gerard Whateley to call the game play-by-play for radio.
That Lane legacy of tailoring the American game for Australians will be present in all.
“It was really the first time we ever got the NFL brought into Australian living rooms properly,” PJ says.
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