Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 8, 1995 TAG: 9509080109
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
WSLS ran a reverse Thursday, and the Washington Redskins' game Sunday will appear on Channel 10.
Armed with information from the 800 phone service the station uses on its weekly ``Name the Game'' toll-free phone poll, Roanoke's NBC affiliate pulled the Miami-New England game and will air Oakland's visit to RFK Stadium at 1 p.m.
The decision came after WSLS learned a computer hacker had flooded the line with votes for the Dolphins-Patriots game, which received 65 percent of the almost 9,500 votes cast in the weekly poll to select one of the station's NFL telecasts.
``Every other call came from the same number,'' said Eric Newman, operations coordinator of WSLS. ``The single number of calls from that number exceeded the number of votes [3,304] for the Oakland-Redskins game.
``So the only fair thing to do is to give the majority of the viewers who called what they wanted. We will show the Redskins game, absolutely, and that won't change.''
Newman said he suspected a computer hacker when he tried to activate the line (1-800-VOTETEN) for this week's vote. ``It was locked up,'' he said. ``The caller kept cutting in the instant after someone else was calling.''
Newman said WSLS' general manager, Randy Smith, has the number from which the flood of calls came. Newman would not reveal the number or the geographical location of its exchange.
``We know the offender, and we intend to take appropriate care of it,'' he said, but he declined to specify what the action might be.
Asked whether the station would consider dropping the popular contest that is in its third NFL season, Newman said, ``Absolutely not.''
The WSLS switch puts the Redskins on the air in what traditionally has been part of their regional telecast market. In December 1994, Fox Network affiliate WJPR/WFXR (Channels 21/27) yanked a Redskins-Los Angeles Rams game to show a Dallas Cowboys-New York Giants game with playoff implications. The phone callers weren't too friendly to that station, either.
Greg Roberts, Channel 10's sports director, said the calls - mostly irate - about the Redskins' ballot loss began shortly after he announced on Wednesday's 6 p.m. newscast that Miami-New England had won the balloting.
This is the second time Channel 10 has dealt with repeated calls from a hacker in two years and two weeks of the contest, a format used by 13 NBC affiliates to program a portion of their NFL telecast schedules.
The NBC doubleheader Sunday on WSLS will have Denver-Dallas at 4 p.m., following the Raiders-Redskins game.
In the ``Name the Game'' contest for the Sept.17 schedule, voters are choosing between San Diego-Philadelphia and Oakland-Kansas City in the 1 p.m. game. The 4 p.m. matchup assigned by the network will be New England-San Francisco.
Keywords:
FOOTBALL
by CNB