MEN OF ICE MAKE IT BACK TO NETWORK TV FOR PLAYOFFS

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

DATE: SATURDAY, April 17, 1993                   TAG: 9304170089
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long
MEN OF ICE MAKE IT BACK TO NETWORK TV FOR PLAYOFFS
It's taken 13 years, but the National Hockey League playoffs return to over-the-air network television Sunday. Well, the icemen return in some locations anyway.
ABC is televising NHL playoff games on five straight Sunday afternoons, this weekend regionalizing three first-round games. Viewers in 90.8 percent of the nation's TV homes will see a game Sunday - but not in Richmond, Nashville, Atlanta - home of female goalie Manon Rheaume - or in Huntsville, Ala., that so-called hockey hotbed that's the new home of the lancered Roanoke Valley Rampage.
The Pittsburgh-New York Islanders/New Jersey opener (1 p.m., WSET) will go to viewers in the East. ABC spokesman Mark Mandel said a syndicated arthritis telethon is pre-empting the NHL in some markets, and next Sunday's potential audience is expected to rise to about 94 percent.
Still, any network exposure is special to the NHL, which hastily signed a five-year, $80 million contract with cable's ESPN just before this season. ESPN, a Capital Cities sister network of ABC, is buying the ABC airtime and producing the network telecasts as part of the contract.
Although the NHL All-Star Game - little more than a high-scoring, no-checking exhibition - has been aired by NBC the past three seasons, Sunday's game will be the first meaningful pro hockey telecast on over-the-air TV since May 24, 1980, when CBS showed the New York Islanders clinching their first Stanley Cup championship with an overtime win over Philadelphia.
How long ago was that? Wayne Gretzky was in his first NHL season, after Edmonton moved from the collapsed World Hockey Association. Mario Lemieux was 14. The Flames were in Atlanta, not Calgary. There was no East Coast Hockey League.
That Islanders-Flyers game also was only a one-game deal. The NHL had no national presence on U.S. television, just in the local markets of NHL clubs. ESPN had been on the air only eight months. The NHL's last network TV package in this country ended May 25, 1975, when a three-year NBC contract expired.
Under new commissioner Gary Bettman, a former NBA executive, the NHL finally is making some movement in expanding its fan base. The awarding of expansion franchises to The Disney Co. and Blockbuster Entertainment should aid the league's exposure, and the move of the Minnesota North Stars into virgin territory - Dallas - may not seem to make sense but it does expand horizons.
The NHL also has renamed and reorganized its divisions based on geography and hopes to create keener rivalries with less travel. The playoff system also has been revamped. Despite those moves, that doesn't mean the NHL will get more acceptance from TV viewers.
One problem viewers cite in watching televised hockey is seeing the puck. So, the NHL is experimenting with a puck that appears fluorescent orange on TV but the standard black to the eyes of players and fans in the arena.
This season's rating on ESPN is a 0.9, or about 650,000 homes - a figure similar to the rating the NHL received on the cable network in 1988 before it lost the contract to SportsChannel America.
ESPN's playoff coverage, starting Tuesday, will include a maximum of 37 telecasts, including all of the conference and Stanley Cup finals. Regionally, Home Team Sports will air all of the Washington Capitals' home playoff games, starting Sunday night.
\ REAL KICK: Here's something different. ABC, making plans for its 1994 World Cup coverage as the United States plays host for the first time, will televise a U.S. National Soccer Team game in June without commercial interruption.
The U.S. Cup '93 game against defending World Cup champion Germany is scheduled June 13. ABC will not air commercials during the two 45-minute halves, nor will use a block in a corner of the screen to insert ads. All commercials will be aired during pregame, halftime and postgame segments.
The World Cup begins June 17, 1994. ABC will televise 11 games; ESPN 41.
\ STRIKING OUT? Cable's CNN takes a half-hour look at the business problems in major league baseball Sunday at 9 p.m. CNN Business News will analyze the economic future of the game in "Major League Business," which will include a segment on why Congress in interested in revoking baseball's antitrust exemption.
\ RACE RECORD: Three days after the death of Winston Cup champion Alan Kulwicki in a plane crash, ESPN posted its record Nielsen rating for an auto racing telecast at the Food City 500 on April 4 in Bristol, Tenn. The rating was a 4.5, or 2.8 million homes, no doubt boosted by viewers tuning in to see ESPN's coverage on Kulwicki's death, as well as the race.
The previous record rating for an ESPN auto race was a 4.2, set by the 1986 NASCAR Bud at the Glen and tied a a year later by the Winston 500 telecast from Talladega.
\ AROUND THE DIAL: The runaway victory by Bernhard Langer at the Masters last Sunday left CBS with only a 6.1 Nielsen rating for its two days of coverage from golf's first Grand Slam event of the year. That's the lowest rating in history, bringing a 27 percent drop in four years. . . . Cable's TNN will still air live coverage of the rescheduled Miller Genuine Draft 500 doubleheader, postponed by March snows, from Martinsville Speedway on May 8. . . . Turner's TBS has signed popular Braves' voice Skip Caray to a four-year contract renewal, at $500,000 annually.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB