ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 25, 1997 TAG: 9701270101
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: ON THE AIR
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
There is a notion - misguided, it says here - that the Fox Network will gain a certain sports legitimacy Sunday when the network airs its first Super Bowl.
Actually, Rupert Murdoch's network became big-time in sports several years ago. It wasn't when Fox stole a piece of the NFL pie from CBS with a $1.58 billion bid over four seasons. A rich guy can buy anything.
When Fox told viewers it was serious about sports was when it hired John Madden, and then Pat Summerall, to keep together what had been regarded by many as televised sports best team. That brought more credibility to Fox's NFL debut than a big check.
Summerall and Madden will finish this NFL season Sunday as they have five previous ones for CBS, calling Super Bowl XXXI together (6 p.m., WJPR/WFXR) from the Louisiana Superdome. It is their first Super Bowl in five years, and they've missed the big game where their presence has become as huge as the game's Nielsen rating.
The Green Bay-New England game will give Summerall-Madden the lead in Super Bowl telecasts called by one team. Summerall is working his 24th Super Bowl telecast or radio broadcast. He was an analyst for five, and this is his ninth on TV play-by-play, another record. Curt Gowdy is next, with seven. Madden's sixth Super Bowl takes him past former NBC voice Merlin Olsen among Super analyst appearances.
They are finishing their 16th NFL TV season together, a former end and kicker and a former coach. Summerall, 66, and Madden, 60, are the same as they always have been on the air. One is sparing with his words. The other is like clashing cymbals.
Do they ever hear footsteps? Have they lost a foot off the fastball?
``I would worry if we lost a foot off the fastball,'' Madden said during a phone conference call earlier this week.
``The footsteps always will be there,'' said Summerall. ``I think whatever we've done, we haven't slacked off in terms of how we prepare. I think we've gotten more comfortable as the years passed. If we ever did fit, we fit now about as well as we ever really have. I don't see that diminished in any way.''
Summerall and Madden have brought an ``old-school'' attitude to a network that will try just about anything. Fox appeals to younger viewers with shows with an attitude that are about as far from Summerall and Madden as you can get. Madden's work on the telestrator, sometimes leaning toward Bart Simpson's off-beat world, gives Fox another dimension, too.
Maybe it could be called ``The X and O Files.''
The giddiness at Fox about its first Super Bowl is understandable. The game will provide the network not only with its highest viewership in its short history, but network advertising sales on the 71/2 hours, pregame through postgame, will approach $95 million.
``What defined Fox as a major player was the acquisition of the NFL,'' Summerall said. ``This game is just the culmination of that.''
``If you think about it, four years ago, there wasn't even a Fox Sports,'' Madden said. ``I remember saying first thing that it shouldn't even be called Fox Sports. It was Fox Sport, the NFL. Now, less than three years later, we're doing the Stanley Cup, World Series and Super Bowl in the same year. That's pretty amazing.
``This is the cream on that thing. This is the crown. The others are nice. This is the Super Bowl. Hell, it's not even a game any more, it's a day - Super Bowl Sunday.''
It will begin on Fox at 1 p.m. with the 90-minute ``All-Time All-Madden Super Bowl Team,'' a special in which Madden presents a team of 39 players with Super histories, most of whom played long before anyone heard of Melrose Place. A record 31/2-hour pregame show follows. Fox will use 29 cameras during the game telecast, or 1.3 for every player in the game at one time.
``The Super Bowl is about excess,'' explained Fox Sports executive producer Ed Goren.
For every one of Fox's innovations that are solid and being copied - the score/clock in the upper left of the screen for example - there are who-needs-it features like the audio that takes viewers out of replays and back to the live telecast. What Summerall and Madden bring is a certain comfort level to Fox's NFL viewers. Maybe this is a new network trying new things, but these guys are familiar.
They're also important. The top eight rated programs in Fox's history are NFL games. No.9 is Game 5 of last year's World Series. Next was the NFC championship (Dallas-San Francisco) postgame show two years ago.
``We've already proven we can handle this,'' Madden said of the network. ``We've proven it by the way we've handled the seasons we've done, the playoffs and championship games we've done.''
Fox also brought the Summerall-Madden producer-director duo from CBS, Bob Stenner and Sandy Grossman, respectively. Goren is another ex-CBSer, too.
``We're not unlike the teams here, Green Bay and New England, in that you might throw in a wrinkle or two, but you don't throw out your regular game plan,'' Goren said from New Orleans earlier this week. ``The Super Bowl doesn't need gimmicks. We will be judged on how well we document what takes place on the field. That's our focus, not gimmicks.''
In Summerall, Fox has a link to the first Super Bowl, when it was called the ``AFL-NFL World Championship.'' He was a CBS analyst that day. In Madden, it has an 11-time Emmy winner in 12 nominations as the top sports analyst on the tube. Billy Packer ruined his streak a few years ago.
Only one of the last 25 Super Bowls has posted a Nielsen rating of less than 40. Of the 10 most-watched programs in TV history, seven are Super Bowls. Of the 10 highest-rated programs in TV history, nine are Super Bowls. That's why, for the rights to just one Super Bowl in four years, Fox doesn't mind taking a projected loss of $350 million on its first NFL contract.
And on the first Super day in network history, Fox has the right guys doing the talking.
LENGTH: Long : 108 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: FOX. John Madden (left) and Pat Summerall deserve aby CNBtrophy for their Super Bowl coverage. This is their sixth Super Bowl
together, their first on Fox. color. KEYWORDS: FOOTBALL