Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 16, 1990 TAG: 9006160146
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When I started working on the TV/radio beat, a friend pointed out that it was only natural. After all, my dad has been involved in the TV/radio business for almost 40 years - as a repairman. In Northern Kentucky, he is known simply as "Jake the TV Man."
You wouldn't believe the number of people who call my mom "Mrs. Jake."
Jake was one of 14 children growing up on a farm in northern Pennsylvania. His mother died before he was a teen-ager.
I thought about him the other day when the World Cup was on the tube. Jake was a soccer star at Covington (Pa.) High School in the late 1930s, leading them to a state championship in his junior year. He suffered a broken leg in the state semifinals as a senior, and Covington lost.
I know he was a star player because not only did his brother - a teammate - and his coach tell me so, the school also bronzed his soccer shoes. When my brother and I played baseball and basketball as youngsters or watched a game on TV, Dad always would say, "Why don't they put a good sport on TV, like soccer?" Of course, that was long before the yuppies' children started kicking the sport to new interest levels.
Brent Musburger may have an $11 million contract, but it seems Jake has 11 million friends. On visits home, I'm still occasionally asked, "Are you Jake's son?" Of course, when he introduces me, now it's always, "This is my brother, Jack." As a comedian, Jake is very subtle, if not always funny.
Because Jake was a TV repairman and he had connections with distributors, we had the first color TV in our neighborhood. Working in Dad's store, I fixed a few radios long before I ever wrote about the wireless. My wife and I have yet to purchase a TV, after almost 18 years of marriage. That fits under the category: "It's not what you know, it's who you know."
He served in a tank-destroyer battalion during World War II. He worked in Pennsylvania coal mines and drove coal trucks in West Virginia. Then, he went to a school for TV technicians because he figured the only certainties in life are death, taxes and at some point your TV's going to break down.
Dad once won $14,000 in a Catholic church raffle. When a priest called and told him he'd won, he was as excited as I've ever seen him, asking the good father, "Are you s------' me?"
I think he bets on the right horse in the Kentucky Derby every year. One time he came to Roanoke, walked into a watering hole, talked to everyone in the place within five minutes and unflinchingly ran a buck-a-head pool on the Preakness.
He has wrangled World Series tickets for his brothers, who drove from Pennsylvania to Cincinnati for one game - then rode with Jake from the Riverfront Stadium garage in the Kentucky governor's police escort. He knows how to get things done.
Jake is 67 now, and he retired in 1985, but he still fixes a television now and then for a friend, out in the garage behind the house. He spends time at the Vets' club. He enjoys Bengals football, and week-long trips to the farm he used to call home. He bakes cakes. He really doesn't watch that much TV, maybe because he spent so many hours for so many years reaching into the other side of the set. He prefers baseball on the radio.
Like most people in TV, Jake has a big personality. He likes people. Sunday is Father's Day, and there's a good chance Jake will enjoy a couple of Dutch Masters Presidents, a Busch or two and some bratwurst. This is a man of simple tastes. This is my dad, and my friend.
Jake the TV Man is 5 feet 6, but he's always been a big TV man to a lot of viewers.
\ On the air: Another father, Jack Buck, returns to the air today as CBS Sports brings back its "Major League Baseball" series with Boston at Baltimore (3 p.m., WDBJ Channel 7). Buck is secure as CBS' top baseball voice because Al Michaels chose to stay at ABC for a six-year, $15 million contract. Buck, the father of eight, will call the All-Star Game, playoffs and World Series with Tim McCarver.
Cable's TNT has averaged a 1.0 rating (462,000 homes) for its first seven World Cup games. The telecasts of the United States' two losses attracted Nielsen ratings of 1.8 and 1.2 (percentages of TNT's available 46 million homes). The 1.8 for Sunday's U.S. opener against Czechoslovakia was comparable to TNT's regular-season NBA average rating, a 2.0. TNT's World Cup coverage continues with doubleheaders today and Sunday.
The NBA Finals were the lowest-rated since the 1984 Celtics-Lakers championship series. The five-game Detroit-Portland series had a 12.3 Nielsen on CBS, down 19 percent from last year's Detroit sweep of the Lakers. That's the difference between having Los Angeles, the nation's No. 2 market, and Portland, ranked No. 27 by Nielsen.
The Miller 500 NASCAR Winston Cup race from Long Pond, Pa., is airing on pay-per-view cable Sunday afternoon. Viewers' Choice, available on some area cable systems, has the show from Showtime Event TV. Cox Cable Roanoke, selling the commercially uninterrupted show for $10.95, had 150 viewers signed up by Friday.
The U.S. Open, with devoted 18-hole coverage of the final two rounds by ABC Sports, again should offer some of the best television of the sports year today and Sunday (1:30 p.m., WSET Channel 13). ABC will use 29 cameras on the two 4 1/2-hour shows from Medinah (Ill.) Country Club. The announcing team includes Roanoke native Ed Sneed, one of ABC's regular on-course reporters.
CBS will announce its College Football Association schedule next week, and the opening doubleheader on Sept. 15 is Pitt-Oklahoma in mid-afternoon, with Michigan-Notre Dame at 9 p.m. . . . SportsChannel America will televise the first two hours of the National Hockey League draft today at 1 p.m. from Vancouver, British Columbia.
by CNB