'Heidi Game' turns 45

Forty-five years ago Sunday I was worried some silly football game would delay the beginning of “Heidi,’’ which I and many of my fellow 8-year-olds were very much looking forward to watching.

Happily, NBC executives left the Jets-Raiders game right at 7 p.m., and all was well! Kind of.

As it turned out, there were many football fans less than enthusiastic about the move, especially after the Raiders scored twice in the final minute and won, 43-32.

To mark the anniversary of one of the most notorious incidents in TV history – and in case you missed it the first time – SNY will replay the frantic finish during its Jets postgame show.

Curt Gowdy Jr.. SNY’s executive producer, provided the video, which someone gave him years ago on a DVD, with the NBC play-by-play by his late father, Curt Sr.

It features the call Gowdy was asked to recreate of the Raiders’ last two touchdowns after the fact for use on news programs.

“The interesting thing about the situation is really the impact it had on the future of live sports television, especially NFL games,’’ Gowdy Jr. said Friday. No longer after that were games allowed to be cut off in the markets of the teams involved, barring some sort of news emergency.

“Heidi" would not have qualified.