There used to be a time, maybe 20 or 30 years ago, when to any basketball fan growing up in this area the middle of March meant one thing-state tournament time. It was the original March Madness.
It was a time when the telecast of the Illinois High School Association championship game could force even the NCAA title contest between Loyola and Cincinnati onto tape delay.
It was a time when families would gather around the black-and-white TV set to cheer on their hometown team, or Mom and Dad`s hometown team, or just that tiny school for that obscure town with only 50 students.
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But times change.
This year`s IHSA basketball tournament has returned to SportsChannel in the Chicago area after a year on over-the-air TV. And, adding insult to injury for high school basketball fans, the March 21 Class AA title game-what should be the jewel in the high school sports crown-has been relegated to
”spillover” status by the regional cable network.
Many cable systems will carry the game live on SportsChannel-Plus. Others, however, will air it only when regular SportsChannel shows it on tape after the Blackhawks-Maple Leafs hockey game. And for those 50 percent of the area who don`t have cable, it means no TV at all.
”When we started to televise the high school tournament 40 years ago, both in terms of the event and in terms of sports coverage, it was a big deal,” says IHSA Executive Director Dave Fry. ”We just hit a high point of interest.”
Since then, professional and college athletics discovered the economics of television-and marketing.
”A high school game`s still a high school game,” says Fry. ”A station has to weigh whether a high school game, even if it`s the state tournament, will draw a bigger audience than another old movie. If you just want to watch basketball, there`s two or three places you can watch it.”
Moving to cable was a tough draw for Fry and Kost Broadcasting executive producer Jim O`Boye, who negotiated with other local stations, including WGBO- Ch. 66, last year`s carrier, before settling on SportsChannel.
”WGBO had an interest,” O`Boye says. ”While `GBO is a nice station and it reaches all the homes (in the area) as opposed to cable, the environment surrounding SportsChannel is better because it`s the station for sports. The promos mean more.”
O`Boye adds his production company was ”very aware” half the area homes don`t have cable. ”We`ve convinced ourselves that those people who are going to be our audience for the most part have cable because they`re sports fans,” he says.
SportsChannel General Manager Jim Corno says his station gives the IHSA something it can`t get anywhere else.
”Nobody else has given non-revenue sports exposure in this market,” he says, pointing to this weekend`s taped coverage of the boys state swimming meet among other events.
Fry says another recent problem has been ”getting (over-the-air)
stations to clear time. We`ve actually had to buy time the last couple of years. We`ve just been unable to get the stations to carry the entire tournament.”
O`Boye echoes Fry`s concern. ”The first priority in Chicago was to get the games on live,” O`Boye says. ”This year, because of the way the schedule fell (on SportsChannel), we`re able to get all the games on live.”
Which is important to sponsors, according to O`Boye. ”Before, so many games were tape-delayed,” says O`Boye, ”the advertisers saw no value in them. They`ll take SportsChannel-Plus and the replay because to them that`s a positive. They get their commercials on twice.”
Of the 18 games scheduled for SportsChannel, five have been slated for
”spillover” space. One of them is the Class AA boys championship. Two others are Friday night`s Class A quarterfinals, which were bumped from regular SportsChannel-with Kost`s permission-by the Great Midwest tournament semifinals.
If the state basketball tournament no longer is the TV attraction it once was, is it time for a change, perhaps a return to the one-class system of 20 years ago?
”No,” said Fry. ”If I were talking about a state tournament just having the biggest splash we could possibly have, then I would say yes. But that`s not why we run the tournament. We`d like to have as much television exposure as we possibly can get, but we don`t believe we ought to sell the character of the program down the river in order to get it. We`ll take what we can get. We wish we could make it available on free TV. That would be our highest goal.”
– There will be high school basketball on free TV this weekend when WGN-Ch. 9 airs the Public League championship at 5 p.m. Sunday. . . . WLUP Radio will carry several NCAA tournament games, starting with second-round regional coverage March 21 and concluding with the championship game April 6. WGN Radio, of course, will follow De Paul`s adventures. . . . ESPN televises nine games National Invitation Tournament games, starting with a triple-header Wednesday and continuing through the final April 1. . . . UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian, who doesn`t know when to leave the party, will join Billy Tubbs
(Oklahoma) and Nolan Richardson (Arkansas) at a Monday live taping at Bub City restaurant of ”March Madness: College Basketball Tournament Preview.”
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The Intersport-produced program will air three times on SportsChannel, debuting at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
– If National Hockey League players go on strike and NHL teams use replacement players, SportsChannel will continue to air Blackhawks road contests
(”because we`d want to,” said a station official) but probably would dump its ”HawkVision” pay-per-view plans for the playoffs. . . . SportsChannel officials have discussed the possibility of Bo Jackson joining Hawk Harrelson and Tom Paciorek in the White Sox TV booth but haven`t contacted either the injured White Sox slugger or his agent in any formal way.