Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 13, 1993 TAG: 9303130037
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT, NCAA TOURNEY STARTS SUNDAY
It's one of the most-anticipated, most-watched basketball telecasts of the year. Yet, nobody dribbles and there are no replays.It's the NCAA Tournament Selection Show. It's become so big, it takes two networks. On Sunday at 6:30 p.m., CBS (WDBJ, Channel 7) and cable's ESPN will reveal the 64-team men's tournament field.
So many viewers have pens and paper handy, the show belongs on the Home Shopping Network.
CBS, which has exclusive rights to the tournament, claims it has the brackets first, and has a makeshift studio at a Kansas City hotel, where sportscaster James Brown will reveal the pairings. ESPN, which waits with the rest of the world to have the pairings handed out to the media at 6:30, concedes only that CBS has the first regional bracket revealed first.
"We started doing this a year before CBS ever did it," said ESPN communications director Mike Soltys. "CBS tries to claim it was their idea, but we started it."
That was in 1981, when ESPN aired early-round games and NBC was in its last year as the NCAA network. Bob Ley and Dick Vitale were hosts for a selection show from the Bristol, Conn., studio, after an ESPN staffer sent the brackets to the network via telecopier. Now, ESPN gets its data via fax machines, wire services and even, Soltys admits, CBS.
While CBS has a half-hour show, ESPN airs for an hour. The cable network has more time for analysis and opinion. Billy Packer, who will work in CBS' New York studio with Jim Nantz and Bill Raftery, said viewers "want to know who's playing who, where and when. That's what's most important. The half-hour goes by like it's two minutes."
Why all of the March Madness about the brackets? As Packer said, "The selection show is part of the tournament." It's viewer interest. Office pools. Nielsen ratings.
Consider that last year's selection show telecast on CBS drew an 8.0 rating, or about 7.5 million homes. The average regular-season CBS game is seen in only 3.2 million homes. The rating for the selection show is virtually the same as for the NCAA prime-time, first-round doubleheaders on Thursday and Friday.
The ESPN show had a 2.5 rating last year, or 1.5 million homes. That was higher viewership than 90 percent of ESPN's games.
If you want more talk on the brackets, try radio. CBS will air a three-hour "Selection Sunday" call-in show at 7 p.m. (WFIR, 960 AM). Also, ESPN Radio will devote most of its Sunday night talk to the NCAA (WROV, 1240 AM).
The increased interest in the women's tournament will be reflected in TV coverage, too. ESPN reveals the brackets for the women's 48-team field in a half-hour show Sunday at 12:30 p.m.
\ IN THE RING: Steve Pannell, Roanoke's unbeaten pro boxer, has signed a contract for ESPN's Top Rank Boxing on Thursday, April 8. Pannell, 11-0 with 10 knockouts, will fight Ernest Mateen of Brooklyn, N.Y., in a scheduled 10-round cruiserweight bout on the two-fight show from Resorts International in Atlantic City, N.J.
\ ACC TV LACKING: The ACC Tournament championship game tips off Sunday at 3 p.m., after a one-hour pregame show on WSET (Channel 13). Will the pregame have any substance?
As good as the Raycom/Jefferson Pilot telecasts of ACC hoops are, the pregame shows and postgame and halftime segments again this season have been little more than commercial stuffers and promotional breaks. The halftime scoreboards are woeful.
Of course, the reason the ACC receives about $14 million annually from Raycom/JP is because the advertising time is sold, and it has to be aired somewhere. However, with the scoreboard sophistication on ESPN, sports talk radio and even 900-number phone scorelines, the Raycom/JP network's sad attention to other than the game it is televising is remindful of college hoops on the tube two decades ago.
\ NIGHT RACING: The four-hour ABC telecast of the NASCAR Motorcraft 500 will be pre-empted by WSET Sunday afternoon for the ACC title game. The Lynchburg station will air the Winston Cup race on same-day tape at 11:35 p.m. Richard Petty will join Paul Page and Benny Parsons in the ABC booth at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
\ COACHING EPISODE: Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden will star as himself in the April 12 episode of "Evening Shade."
FSU alumnus Burt Reynolds, who stars as football coach Wood Newton in the CBS show, thinks Bowden is coming to dinner to recruit Newton's son. However, based on game tapes assembled and sent to Bowden by Evening Shade High assistant coach Herman Stiles, the Seminoles' coach is more interested in player No. 88.
Unbeknownst to Bowden, No. 88 is a girl.
\ WHAT'S ON: ESPN is splitting the country Sunday afternoon, with the finals from the Southeastern and Big Eight conferences at 1 p.m. and the Southwest and ACC at 3. In this region, viewers are scheduled to see the SEC and SWC on ESPN. The ACC game is blacked out on cable in the league's backyard. . . . ESPN begins its nine-game coverage of the NIT with three first-round games Wednesday night. . . . Home Team Sports, beginning its 10th year of Baltimore baseball telecasts, will air 90 Orioles' games this season, including 70 from Camden Yards. The HTS opener is Tuesday's exhibition game against the White Sox at 7 p.m. . . . The annual Portsmouth Invitational Tournament, a favorite of NBA scouts because it includes 64 of the nation's top college seniors, has attracted national TV. ESPN will air the PIT final live on Saturday, April 10 at 3 p.m. from Churchland High gym. . . . As expected, ABC, through a deal with sister network ESPN, will air NHL playoff games on five consecutive Sundays afternoons starting April 18. That still puts the entire Stanley Cup Finals on cable, however. The last commercial network coverage of an NHL game was a Stanley Cup Finals telecast on CBS in 1980.