The CBS production of “The NCAA Basketball Championship Selection Show,” which airs at 5:30 p.m. Sunday on WBBM-Ch. 2, is bare-bones television-just a host, a few charts, a couple of analysts and poof!-like magic-it’s gone.
Yet, it’s the best-and nearly the most-watched-little show on the tube. (Last year, the selection show had an 8.0 Nielsen rating, more than double the rating the network averaged for its college basketball games.) And Billy Packer, who was instrumental in getting the program on the air in the first place more than 10 years ago, knows why.
“We’ve found that people don’t want opinions,” says Packer, who joins Jim Nantz and Bill Raftery on Sunday’s program. “They don’t want something dressy. They want to know, `Hey, Coppin State got in . . . when are they playing, who are they playing against, where are they seeded, and where’s the game?’ “
That’s what the selection show does-it tells viewers about the 64 teams that will be playing in the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament over the next three weeks.
“It’s become a pretty successful program,” says Packer. “This is not a high-production situation. But the half-hour goes by like it’s two minutes.”
Packer credits former CBS executive producer Kevin O’Malley with taking an idea Packer had been pushing since his days at NBC and running with it.
“I always felt this was an important part of the season,” says Packer, who finally realized his dream in 1982. “Kevin really took hold of the idea of having a selection show. To me, every place I went, people were messing around with the pairing sheet. If that many people are interested, why not go ahead and give them the first taste of it. And we did.”
James Brown will host the show from the hotel in Kansas City where the NCAA tournament selection committee meets. Prior to the men’s program, Brown will announce the women’s selections during halftime of the Indiana-Wisconsin game, approximately 2 p.m.
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– Katarina Witt went back into training last week. No, not for the Olympics, for another bout with TV. “I spent the weekend learning my English again,” she said this week before joining NBC’s three-day coverage of the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague. Witt, a two-time gold medal skater, will provide rinkside analysis, a role much different from the one she had with CBS last year at the Winter Olympics.
“During the Olympics, I worked more in a studio, where it was more relaxed,” said Witt. “This time, I will be more near the ice. I will see how I can handle it. It might be more exciting, but it will be more difficult because it will have to be more spontaneous. I learned a lot from working with CBS . . . but I feel very safe with this group.”
Witt said she “enjoyed myself” as a CBS analyst. “By the time we got to the end, I got more comfortable doing little standups and stuff. I started to enjoy being in front of the camera. I learned things from it.” But when Witt was asked just what she had learned, longtime friend and co-NBC analyst Sandra Bezic jumped in: “She learned she prefers to be on the ice.”
– Once again, live TV coverage of the IHSA Class AA boys basketball championship March 20 will be relegated to SportsChannel-Plus (a problem in some areas where cable systems don’t carry the spillover channel) due to a conflict with a Blackhawks game on regular SportsChannel. All the smaller-school Class A semifinals and finals Saturday will be carried live on SportsChannel, although some of the quarterfinals Friday will be bumped to an unprecedented third spillover channel because of SportsChannel conflicts with the Bulls as well as Great Midwest and Mid-Continent tournament semifinals.
Class A play-by-play chores will be split between Jim Albracht and Dick Luedke, with Greg Starrick providing color for all games. Dan Roan and Tom Stocker will alternate play-by-play for Class AA, with Kenny McReynolds handling the color. Joe Paschen hosts all the state tournament telecasts.
– The Public League boys basketball championship, scheduled Sunday at the Pavilion, is without a TV home. The game had been telecast on WGN-Ch. 9 the last few years. “We had too many commitments with our preseason (baseball) games,” said WGN executive Jim Zwerekh, “especially with the White Sox. We couldn’t find room for (the Public League).” The telecasts had been put together by Central City Productions, which bought the time from Channel 9. Central City boss Don Jackson was unavailable for comment.
– ABC expects to renew its college basketball contract with Raycom in light of the improved ratings (up 22 percent to 2.8) this season. Despite the snafu at WLS-Ch. 7 (which showed the first half of the Notre Dame-Louisville game instead of the scheduled Duke-North Carolina contest), last Sunday’s ABC/Raycom double-header had higher ratings than the college games on CBS and the NBA telecasts on NBC. . . . ESPN will try to steal some of CBS’ thunder Sunday with its own NCAA tournament selection shows-for the women’s tournament at 11:30 a.m. and an hour for the men’s tourney at 4:30 p.m.