Sportscasting: Not in the Same League

In sports telecasts, the biggest network doesn't necessarily win. CBS crowed last week that its Super Bowl coverage pulled nearly 70 million viewers, the largest TV audience ever for a sporting event. But that had less to do with the quality of its coverage than with the irresistibility of the attraction.

During the football season, CBS's coverage was rarely in the same league with the other networks. Yet its games averaged 17 million viewers v. NBC's 9,000,000 and ABC's 6,300,000. The reason is simply that CBS outbid the competition for the established, sure-draw National Football League, while NBC settled for the newer American Foot ball League and ABC was left with college games.

To be sure, all three networks now employ the instant replay, stop-action and other camera techniques that make going to the stadium obsolete. But ABC, which popularized many of the innovations, is still the peerless pro. A case in point was its telecast of the final round of the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am Golf Tournament from Pebble Beach.

At the 16th hole, for example, an alert cameraman caught Jack Nicklaus opening his club face on an approach shot. That, explained Commentator Byron Nelson, was for backspin. And sure enough, the ball hit beyond the pin and rolled back, back—whoops, too far. When he got to the par-five 18th hole, Nicklaus was four strokes behind, so he audaciously decided to go for an eagle. His second shot landed on an impossible rock perch at the top of a sheer drop down to the ocean. A forehanded ABC crewman was in the right place with a hand-held camera to watch him agonizingly line up and then blow his desperation third shot—and with it any chance for the top prize.

By contrast, CBS's Super Bowl coverage was unimaginative and, worse, cluttered with cliches and network promotions. One "promo" actually ran right through a kickoff. Paid commercials also got in the way—but it was easy to see why. Commercial time for the Super Bowl telecast sold for an unprecedented $150,000 a minute.