Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 14, 1995 TAG: 9501160048
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
After 13 years of petitions and phone calls of frustration, the ``Professional Bowlers Tour'' on ABC Sports returns to affiliate WSET (Channel 13). Since January 1982, the Lynchburg station has pre-empted bowling shows through mid-March for ACC basketball telecasts.
However, WSET passed on renewing ACC hoops, which moved to Roanoke's WDBJ (Channel 7). So, for 14 of the next 15 Saturday afternoons, the PBA Winter Tour - a 34-year staple on ABC - returns to the region's viewers.
The series begins today with the AC-Delco Classic from Lakewood, Calif. (2:30 p.m., WSET) Most Saturdays, the Tour's 90-minute, live show airs at 3 p.m. There is no Tour telecast next weekend, but the following 13 Saturdays the PBA will be aired by ABC.
When WSET began pre-empting bowling, Chris Schenkel was the show's host. He still is. The PBA Tour ranks second to ``Wide World of Sports'' among longest-running ABC Sports series, and Schenkel has been there for the duration. And for the last two decades, Nelson Burton Jr. has been the expert analyst.
``Basically, the format's never changed,'' Schenkel said. ``Bowling has been a good friend to me, and the ratings have been consistent. It's been on at approximately the same start time since it began. We're here because of the loyalty of the viewers.''
Bowlers in the Roanoke-Lynchburg market have been anything but silent about the absence of the Tour from area television. In recent years, ABC has cut some of its coverage. The spring-summer tour schedule of eight stops has disappeared, and the winter telecasts have been trimmed from 16 to 14 weeks.
Schenkel, 70, said bowling remains a break-even proposition for the network. The ratings have remained steady, except for slight dips in those Winter Olympics years. However, on a regular basis, ABC's winter bowling shows outperform regular-season college basketball and every pro golf event except the Masters.
``It appeals to a cross-section of viewers,'' Schenkel said. ``It's pretty much the same. You see the bowlers, the lane, the ball, the pins. Replay has added to the show, but otherwise, it's pretty much the same.''
ABC's PBA Tour coverage began in January 1962 after the network was stunned by high ratings for the PBA World Championship on Wide World in May 1961. Schenkel, then doing various sports for various networks as well as being the voice of the football New York Giants, was asked to host.
``In the years I was really busy, it was like a respite; it was relaxing,'' Schenkel said. ``It was a breath of fresh air. Unlike calling some other sports, you didn't have to blow a gasket. I bowled as a kid, and I appreciated how good those guys were. I never looked down on it. I respected them for their ability, and it went from there.''
THEY'RE BACK: The delayed start of the National Hockey League season arrives Friday on ESPN, with the network airing the Buffalo-New York Rangers game at 7:30 p.m. The network has scheduled 14 regular-season games, mostly on Sunday and Tuesday nights through early May, when the pushed-back playoffs begin.
ESPN2 has a 37-game NHL schedule, primarily on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday nights. The Fox Network, which had its new five-year NHL contract start delayed by the labor unrest, won't have a telecast until early April.
REACTIONS: WJPR/WFXR certainly heard from viewers when the station opted to air a Dallas-New York Giants game the last week of the NFL regular season, pulling the Washington Redskins' finale against the Rams in Los Angeles. Stan Marinoff, the vice president and general manager of Channels 21/27, said the station received about 200 phone calls critical of the decision.
``We got about 11 or 12 calls thanking us for showing a game that meant something [in the playoff picture],'' Marinoff said. ``We got about 200 that wanted the Redskins though. Based on that, we'll give a lot of thought to whether we want to drop the Redskins in the future.''
WJPR/WFXR was the only Fox affiliate in Virginia that didn't air the Redskins-Rams game.
NO TURKEY: The ACC's Thanksgiving Friday football regional telecast on ABC next season will have North Carolina at N.C. State, the first time those neighbors have met in a regular-season finale. The Tar Heels won't be playing Duke last for only the second time in 23 years.
BOWL NUMBERS: Virginia's Independence Bowl victory last month over Texas Christian drew 25 percent more viewers than Virginia Tech's triumph over Indiana in the same game a year earlier, with prime time and no bowl telecast competition helping the Shreveport, La., game this year.
However, the 2.5 million homes tuning in for the UVa-TCU game was only slightly more than half of the audience size for the Cavaliers' Carquest Bowl loss to Boston College on CBS a year earlier.
Tech's Gator Bowl loss to Tennessee was seen in 1.97 million homes on TBS. The 3.2 cable rating was a 16-percent drop from the 3.7 for Alabama-North Carolina in the 1993 Gator. The Tech-Indiana Independence game in '93 was viewed in about 1.98 million homes.
EXPRESS TV?: The Roanoke Express and Martin Productions are floating advertising feelers for the first local telecast in the ECHL franchise's history. Preliminary plans for a Feb.4 live telecast from Charlotte, N.C., to air on local cable systems' message channels include a pregame show. If the game is aired, there is a possibility that cable's Home Team Sports also will air the production.
AROUND THE DIAL: WDBJ already has committed to three racing dates at New River Valley Speedway this year. Mike Bell, the programming director at Channel 7, said the Roanoke station will air 250-lap Late Model Sportsman races the afternoons of May 21 and Oct.21 and a prime-time WDBJ-sponsored event on July 29. ... Ernie Irvan, still recovering from a Winston Cup wreck at Michigan last summer, will help The Nashville Network usher in its 1995 NASCAR coverage when he works as a color analyst on the Goodwrench 500 on Feb.26 at Rockingham, N.C. ... Longtime Norfolk sportscaster Bob Rathbun, who has returned to ACC basketball telecasts for Raycom/Jefferson Pilot this season, has been dropped from the Detroit Tigers' radio network after three seasons. Rathbun's partner, Rick Rizzs, also got the boot. ... CBS hoops analyst Billy Packer said that with two months of the season to play, his NCAA Final Four picks are from the Southeastern and Pacific 10 conferences - Arkansas, Kentucky, UCLA and Arizona.
by CNB