ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 19, 1997 TAG: 9704210121
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: ON THE AIR
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
Martinsville Speedway is in the midst of renegotiating its NASCAR telecast contract with ESPN. The best 50th anniversary present the track could get Sunday is a big audience for the Goody's Headache Powder 500.
The 1 p.m. telecast has an NFL draft two-hour lead-in, and the site of the longest continuous Winston Cup racing should expect a good rating, if it follows the season's trend. For last year's April race, Martinsville got a 4.2 rating on ESPN, which was the network's Winston Cup average for the year.
Although that average was a 50 percent hike from four years earlier, it would be like a 35th-place finish on the track now. For its three Winston Cup races in 1997, ESPN has gotten a 5.3 at Richmond, a 5.2 at Darlington and a 4.8 last Sunday at Bristol. The first two of those brought the largest and third-ranked Winston Cup audiences in the cable network's history.
After a solid Daytona 500 rating on CBS (8.6, the second-highest in history without a Winter Olympics lead-in), the stop at Rockingham gave the Nashville Network its largest audience - for any show - in history. It was the most-watched cable show in February. Then, CBS had a 6.6 Nielsen for the April 6 race at Texas Motor Speedway, making it the most-watched NASCAR event, outside the Daytona 500, since the 1971 Atlanta 500.
In other words, Martinsville - getting a $575,000 rights fee per race this season and $600,000 in 1998 - is negotiating at the right time.
PICK 'EM: An old TV hand, St. Louis coach Dick Vermeil, removed some of the suspense from the NFL Draft with Thursday's deal for the No.1 pick, but there will be plenty of folks tuned in for the 17 combined hours of coverage on ESPN and ESPN2 starting at noon today.
The clubs have 15 minutes to make a first-round selection and 10 minutes in the second round. That's sort of the difference between watching grass grow and watching concrete harden. The draft airs today from noon-7 p.m. on ESPN, then moves to ESPN2 through the third round. Sunday, ESPN has the 11 a.m.-1 p.m. start, with ``the Deuce'' finishing the seven rounds when ESPN goes to Martinsville for the race.
IN DRIBBLES: The NBA playoffs open Thursday with doubleheaders on Turner Broadcasting's TNT and TBS, and NBC gets its schedule started next Saturday and Sunday with five games. Turner's cable networks will air a minimum of 40 games over 30 nights, about three-fourths of those on TNT.
TNT and TBS will combine for eight games the first two days of the playoffs and 15 games in the first five days. NBC, which again has the NBA Finals in early June, will have approximately 30 games, including all of the best-of-seven finals in prime time.
REALLY COLD: The NHL playoffs began this week, and the first of Fox's six consecutive Sunday afternoon games airs Sunday, with the New York Rangers at Florida in Game 2 of their first-round series (2 p.m., WFXR). Up to 72 NHL postseason games will be televised by ESPN, ESPN2 and Fox, most of those on the cable networks.
In the first round, ESPN and ``The Deuce'' will combine for up to 26 games, with a maximum of 21 scheduled in the conference semifinals. All conference finals will be televised on Fox and ESPN. For the Stanley Cup final, Fox switches to prime-time games (three), with ESPN having the remaining games in the best-of-seven series.
Who will get there? ESPN analyst and former Los Angeles coach Barry Melrose is picking defending Cup champion Colorado and Dallas in the Western Conference final, with New Jersey and Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference.
TIGER TALE: Tiger Woods drove the Masters' final round CBS telecast to a record, as the most-watched golf show in history (13.7 million homes, 50 million viewers), but the 14.1 national Nielsen rating also left a historical perspective.
That number was the highest for a golf telecast since the final round of the Phoenix Open in January 1976, which had a 16.5 on CBS. That was so long ago, the golf viewership was helped by a huge lead-in audience that had watched Pittsburgh defeat Dallas in Super Bowl X that afternoon.
GLOVES ON: Tonight, Home Box Office will air the tape of last Saturday's TVKO presentation of the WBC welterweight fight in which Oscar De La Hoya took Pernell Whitaker's title in a 12-round unanimous decision. The fight airs at 10:30. The TVKO telecast set pay-per-view boxing records for a non-heavyweight bout, with 800,000 home buys and a $32 million gross. It beat the 740,000 and $26 million for the Whitaker-Julio Cesar Chavez fight in 1993.
It's a women's weekend in the ring on ABC. ``Wide World of Sports'' airs its first women's bout today (4:30 p.m., WSET) as Yvonne Trevino defends her WIBF super flyweight title against Brenda Rouse. Then, in the network's acclaimed ``Passion to Play'' series devoted to women's sports, the question Sunday at 5 p.m. is whether women's boxing is ``Spectacle or Sport?''
AIRWAVES: ESPN2 begins an extensive schedule of track and field and running events Monday with a live telecast of the Boston Marathon, in a 2 1/2-hour show starting at 11:55 a.m. The network and the Boston Athletic Association have a new, four-year contract for the race. ... The 4.0 rating ESPN earned for the Tennessee-Old Dominion NCAA women's basketball championship game three weeks ago was 25 percent higher than any regular-season game the cable network aired this season. The only men's game on ESPN in the last five years with a rating that high was the Connecticut-Georgetown final in the Big East tournament in 1996. ... WROV (1240 AM) has gone to five shows a week for its ``Talkin' Sports'' call-in effort hosted by Brian Davis. The show airs weekdays from 5-6:45 p.m., before Salem baseball broadcasts.
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines KEYWORDS: AUTO RACING BASKETBALL HOCKEYby CNB