Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 19, 1994 TAG: 9402190121
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Joy will work as a pit reporter Sunday for CBS Sports at the 36th Daytona 500 (noon, WDBJ). Next weekend, he'll move upstairs at North Carolina Motor Speedway to start another NASCAR season calling races for The Nashville Network.
There will be an empty seat beside him at Rockingham - created by Bonnett's death eight days ago in a crash during practice at Daytona International Speedway.
"Last weekend, I tried very hard to remain quite numb," said Joy, whose candor and opinions have distinguished his 20 years in motorsports broadcasting. "We spent all day last Saturday going through tape to put together the tribute show to Neil that aired last Sunday on TNN. Then I had the Busch Clash last Sunday for CBS. It wasn't easy.
"In this business, no matter what the tragedy, you take pains to tell the story. Buddy Baker [who has worked TNN's NASCAR schedule with Joy and Bonnett] and I have talked every day about Neil, about how it's going to be strange without him at Rockingham and after that."
Joy said no decision has been made about replacing Bonnett, nor does he expect anything permanent to be done soon. A fitting tribute would be to leave Bonnett's chair vacant for the Goodwrench 500. However, Joy said, "It's very difficult to do a race of that length [500 miles] with only two people in the booth."
Bonnett's absence also left a technical void for today's taped telecast of Thursday's Twin 125 qualifying races (noon, WDBJ) and Sunday's 500. His Chevrolet was to have toted one of the in-car "Race Cams" for CBS. Lake Speed gets that camera, joining Dale Jarrett, Ernie Irvan, Geoff Bodine and Jeff Gordon with the remotes.
Asked about this Winston Cup season, Joy said the climb of young drivers from the Grand National ranks "will force a lot of older independent drivers out of the sport. I think you're going to find a lot of names getting squeezed. At places like Rockingham and Dover in the past, there have been races without full fields. Now, you have more than 40 drivers trying to run every week."
Some things won't change.
"I don't think there will be a lot of different people winning," Joy said. "Four cars will win more than half of the races - in no particular order, Rusty Wallace, Dale Earnhardt, Ernie Irvan and Mark Martin."
\ OLYMPIC MOMENT: CBS Sports is thrilled with its Winter Olympics ratings, but unquestionably the best is yet to come, thanks to Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. The Nielsen ratings for CBS ON THE AIR JACK BOGACZYK Sports' prime-time telecasts with women's figure skating Wednesday and Feb. 25 could invade a Nielsen territory previously reached only by Super Bowls among sports events.
Super Bowl XXVIII had a 45.4 rating on NBC, ranking 10th among sports Nielsens - all Super Bowls. The Nancy-Tonya soap opera finals Feb. 25 figure to top that number and approach the Nielsen sports record of 49.1 for Super Bowl XVI in 1982 (San Francisco-Cincinnati in Pontiac, Mich.).
That Super Bowl ranks fourth all-time in the Nielsens, behind the final episode of "M*A*S*H" in 1983 (60.2), the "Who Shot J.R." episode of "Dallas" (53.3) in 1980 and the closing night of "Roots" (51.1) in 1977. The next three in the rankings are Super Bowls.
As if CBS needed something to lure viewers besides Nancy vs. Tonya, the prime-time show Feb. 25 also will include the finals of the men's skiing combined slalom, in which American Tommy Moe stands second in a bid for his third medal of these Games.
Although the women's figure skating finals begin at 1 p.m., there is no chance CBS will allow cable's TNT to air the event live.
\ THE FRONT ROW: Bob Uecker will return to network television this baseball season, joining NBC Sports as the No. 1 analyst on the new Baseball Network package to be shared with ABC. Uecker will team with play-by-play man Bob Costas, with Dick Enberg and Joe Morgan as the No. 2 team. Morgan also returns to ESPN as the analyst on Sunday night telecasts with Jon Miller.
ABC Sports will reunite Al Michaels, Jim Palmer and Tim McCarver, who returns from CBS' four baseball seasons, on its top team. Brent Musburger and ESPN's Buck Martinez will form the second team. In addition, NBC and ABC will use club broadcasters on other regional telecasts. NBC has the All-Star Game and league championship series in 1994, with ABC getting the new first-round playoffs and the World Series.
\ FOX FUNDS: The Fox Network's sports division didn't stop paying big bucks after dealing for four NFL seasons for $1.58 billion and signing analyst John Madden for $32 million. This week, Fox added Matt Millen as a game analyst at an average of $600,000 annually. Millen follows Madden, Pat Summerall and Terry Bradshaw from CBS to Fox.
Fox will be paying a combined $11.5 million annually to those four. Industry sources said NBC tried to woo Millen, a rising star, with an annual offer of $750,000, a promise of a No. 2 team spot with Marv Albert next season and the potential to replace Bob Trumpy as the network's top analyst in 1995. Millen chose Fox because he only wanted to work football and Madden did a solid selling job.
\ BROTHERLY LOVE: There's no truth to the rumor that ESPN will use ring announcer Michael Buffer to call the play-by-play Thursday night in Philadelphia for the Atlantic 10 Conference basketball rematch between Temple and Massachusetts. It's not going to yield Tonya-Nancy numbers, but after Sunday's altercation between coaches John Chaney and John Calipari, more viewers will watch.
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB