<\/p>\n
The competition series debuted in November 1976 and featured stars from ABC, CBS<\/a> and NBC<\/a> facing off in such sporting events as swimming, kayaking, volleyball, golf and tennis. Howard Cosell<\/a>, known for leading ABC\u2019s Monday Night Football<\/a>, hosted the celebrity battle, adding cachet to the proceedings. Among the competitors: Lynda Carter<\/a>, Farrah Fawcett<\/a>, Ron Howard<\/a>, Penny Marshall<\/a>, Loretta Swit<\/a>, Jimmie Walker<\/a> and Robert Conrad<\/a>, plus actual athletes like Caitlyn Jenner<\/a> and Reggie Jackson<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were out at Malibu, and the first day, I started driving home and was so fatigued I couldn\u2019t get my leg off the gas onto the brake,\u201d Adrienne Barbeau<\/a>, star of CBS\u2019 Maude<\/a>, tells The Hollywood Reporter with a laugh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.imdb.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Competition among the original big three networks seems natural, but what happens when you bring that rivalry to life on a playing field with actors? Nearly 50 years ago, ABC did just that with Battle of the Network Stars. The competition series debuted in November 1976 and featured stars from ABC, CBS and NBC facing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1979585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[25538,31714,21751,22556,21993,22860,21912,21738,24141,22205,21913],"class_list":["post-1979584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-actors","tag-actresses","tag-celebrities","tag-directors","tag-films","tag-hollywood","tag-movies","tag-news","tag-stars","tag-television","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Hollywood-Flashback-\u2018Battle-of-the-Network-Stars-Turned-Celebs-Into.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1979584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1979584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1979584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1979585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1979584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1979584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1979584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}