
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 3, 1990                   TAG: 9004030199
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: BEDFORD/FRANKLIN 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BASKETBALL IS THE WATCHWORD

If you're one of those whose heart jumps when Michael Jordan leaps, and if you're among the millions who were glued to their television sets for Monday night's collegiate showdown between Duke and Nevada-Las Vegas, you'll hardly be surprised that a recent poll has confirmed what you and television executives have known all along: Basketball is booming.

In a telephone survey conducted by the Gallup organization in mid-February, basketball, which had held steady as the favorite spectator sport of about 10 percent of the American population in periodic polls from 1948 to 1981, was listed as the favorite sport to watch by 15 percent of the 1,235 adults surveyed, putting it a point behind baseball, the No. 2 spectator sport.

Football, which replaced baseball as the favorite sport in the 1960s, continued in the No. 1 position with a 35 percent following, statistically indistinguishable from 38 percent in the 1981 poll.

The good news for baseball, which had lost popularity steadily from 39 percent in 1948, is that the decline seems to have leveled. It remained at 16 percent, the same as in the 1981 survey.

The bad news for baseball is that its popularity is concentrated among those over the age of 50 and among those who say they are only lukewarm sports fans.

Basketball, by contrast, is especially popular among younger people, black fans and those who consider themselves "hard-core" fans.

Although the more than 50 percent increase in the popularity of basketball from its 9 percent rating in 1981 to 15 percent in the 1990 poll was just outside the survey's four-point margin of error, the increase clearly reflects the sport's growing appeal in the past decade.

The results of the survey, to be sure, were studded with the inevitable contradictions found in such polls.

For example, when asked how interested they were in following professional or college sports, 30 percent said they had no interest at all.

Yet when asked about their favorite sports to watch, all but 13 percent identified a specific sport, indicating that the popularity figures included those with no interest in their own "favorite" sports.

by CNB