The Big 10`s demise as a powerhouse football conference has been felt in many places, but perhaps most of all at ABC, which is in the midst of a seven- year contract with the league.
A season of run-of-the-mill games featuring run-of-mill teams has seen ratings drop as much as 18 percent through Nov. 7 in some parts of what the network deems ”Big 10 country”-the East Central and West Central areas of the country.
”It stands to reason that week in and week out, if you put on teams with mediocre records or you don`t have a competitive game, that should hurt you,” says David Downs, ABC Sports vice president for programming.
In other parts of the country, the network is within 5 percent of last year`s ratings, with the Pac-10 way up, according to Downs.
While an argument could be made that ABC`s policy of regionalizing its games has led to the falloff in the Midwest, Downs refutes that: ”The Northeast is pretty neutral. We gave the Northeast the Washington-Arizona game (Nov. 7), and it did a 5 rating, while Wisconsin-Michigan State did 5.5 in the East Central and a 7 in the West Central. The Big 10 game did as well, if not better, than the Pac-10 game would have done in the Midwest.”
ABC averaged a 6.7 that weekend for its five regional games, despite NBC`s showing of the Boston College-Notre Dame clash. Downs figures he has been around ”long enough to realize it`s very cyclical. A few years ago, people thought the Pac-10 was awful.”
Another possible reason for the ratings slump comes Saturday, when the network feeds Washington-Washington State to Midwest affiliates, rather than the more attractive Miami-Syracuse game.
Downs says that ”as part of the Big 10-Pac-10 Rose Bowl obligations,”
the network has to provide a Big 10 and/or Pac-10 game in the 2:30 p.m. time slot to those areas of interest.
After Washington clinched the Pac-10 Rose Bowl berth last Saturday, the network asked the Big 10 about televising Michigan State-Illinois but was turned down because of logistics problems.
”We`ll have plenty of reports of Miami-Syracuse,” Downs promises. And if the Washington-Washington State becomes a rout, ”We may just pull the trigger” and switch to Syracuse.
ABC was criticized earlier in the season for protecting its pay-per-view deal with SET by not switching out of one-sided regional contests.
”That`s simply wrong,” says Downs. The reason the network doesn`t do more switching is that ”it just doesn`t make a lot of sense most weeks,” he adds. ”This is a week it may make some sense in the Midwest.”
– While Downs declined to give a reason for the downturn in the Big 10`s football fortunes, ABC veteran college football announcer Keith Jackson didn`t hesitate when asked about it this week: ”Foot speed,” he said. And what`s the solution? ”They have to go outside the region. You look at times past-Duffy (Daugherty) used to go to South Carolina and Florida; Bo
(Schembechler) went to Florida; Woody (Hayes) went to Florida and Texas to find it. I don`t know if it`s the water or what, but the Sun Belt is where you find the greatest amount of foot speed.”
Jackson, who will be at Saturday`s Michigan-Ohio State game, has made only two other visits this season to Big 10 campuses-last week`s contest at Michigan and the opener at Iowa. ”I like to go everywhere,” he said. ”I enjoyed going to Knoxville to do a game; I enjoyed going back to Penn State. This way, you get an idea who`s pretty good and who isn`t.”
And right now, the Big 10 isn`t.
– Jeremy Margolis, the former U.S. prosecutor retained by SportsChannel to pursue those signal pirates, said he ”wouldn`t be surprised” if some of the 68 bar owners named in Monday`s complaint sought an out-of-court settlement.
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”If people want to go to trial and pay a greater price,” he warned,
”that`s OK, too. The dollars aren`t really the issue. The issue is safeguarding the integrity of SportsChannel`s signal and seeing to it that our legitimate paying customers don`t have to pay for the theft of others.”
What SportsChannel officials found unique about the Chicago case was the high rate of piracy-twice what they find elsewhere, said Margolis. ”They usually find a 5 percent theft rate; here, they uncovered a 10 percent rate. They were quite surprised.”
– TCI has decided to carry SportsChannel-Plus at least temporarily while negotiations continue between the cable system and the regional cable network on a permanent home for the spillover channel. . . . ESPN has scheduled its college football telecasts for Nov. 28: Georgia Tech-Georgia, 3 p.m.; Miami-San Diego State (Marshall Faulk), 6:30 p.m. . . . CBS Sports` Andy Kindle has directed a game in Green Bay during a snowstorm as well as the famous
”Fog Bowl” NFL playoff game in Soldier Field. Kindle has been reunited with Verne Lundquist, who called that Eagles-Bears contest, for Sunday`s Packers-Bears game at Soldier Field. ”I`m almost afraid to go to the game,” Kindle says.