Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 18, 1994 TAG: 9411180103
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B5 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
``Sportswriters had very little to do with the success of the NFL. It had to do with television,'' said Will McDonough, a veteran writer for the Boston Globe and analyst for NBC Sports.
McDonough spoke on a panel Wednesday night about the media's impact on the NFL, part of a Smithsonian lecture series celebrating the league's 75th anniversary.
``Monday night football is the thing that made professional football No.1 in America,'' McDonough said.
``It is more money now, but it was more fun then,'' he said about the pre-TV days. ``It was not as much of a business then as it is now. What screwed it up was television.''
Monday night football probably never would have happened if ABC wasn't struggling as a third-place network fearful of local stations dropping their network affiliation, said Dennis Lewin of ABC-TV, one of the show's producers in the early years.
``The Lucy Show'' and ``Laugh-In'' led the ratings wars when the Monday night games debuted in the 1969-70 season.
``It was a defensive move primarily in order to keep defections from happening,'' Lewin said. ``Quite frankly, we didn't have Lucy and we didn't have Rowan and Martin.
``It was a time of radicalism and we made a radical move. We had three announcers. We put some entertainment into it,'' he said.
NFL president Neil Austrian said Wednesday night the league's agreement to split television revenue evenly among teams has been critical to the survival of franchises in smaller markets.
The TV money typically makes up about 60 percent of a team's overall revenue and many teams would be able to replace that with their own local TV contract, he said.
``It's difficult to understand how Green Bay could do that in their own market,'' Austrian said.
Peter King, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, said the growth of television and media coverage of the NFL in general has changed the relationship between players and reporters.
``It's easy to see why players hate us. There's more of us,'' King said. ``It started off with `Entertainment Tonight' and now there's 48 of those silly things.''
King said he was in Cincinnati this week to see young quarterback Jeff Blake, ``who has become a famous person overnight.'' King waited in line for interviews with reporters from ESPN, CNN, three local TV affiliates and a half-dozen newspapers from out of town.
``If you're not ready for the media onslaught, the fifth quarter every Sunday, you're going to have tremendous problems in this league,'' King said. ``It's this huge mass in sort of a huge mombo line following the quarterback or whoever.''
On the other hand, King said, NFL fans seem to have an insatiable appetite for every tiny piece of trivia they can get about their favorite team.
``That's the competitive aspect,'' King noted.
``You guys are so hungry for football information, for information about the NFL, that we are driven to try to find angles that you don't know.''
by CNB